Another important heading is that of Liturgies, which is likely to be extensive in a large public library. It requires the special arrangement of an expert, but the British Museum and the Cambridge University rules deal with this subject.
There is some difficulty in choosing the proper heading for certain reports of voyages. Sometimes these are written by an author whose name occurs on the title-page. In these instances the book is naturally catalogued under its author's name, and it is only necessary to make a reference under the name of the vessel.
But there is another class of voyages more elaborate in their arrangement, which either are anonymous or have many authors. There is usually an account of the voyage, and then a series of volumes devoted to zoology, botany, etc. Sometimes these voyages are catalogued under the name of the commander as Dumont d'Urville for Voyage autour du Monde de la Corvette l'Astrolabe; but it is in every way more convenient to use the name of the vessel as a heading, and bring all the different divisions under it, as Astrolabe, Challenger, etc.
Anonymous and Pseudonymous Works.
We now come to consider the large question of the treatment of anonymous books. I read a paper on this subject at the Conference of Librarians, and I venture to transfer to these pages the substance of that paper with some further remarks. Before entering into the discussion I wish to protest against the use of the term "anonym," which appears to me to be formed upon a false analogy. It may be a convenient word, but it is incorrect. A pseudonym is an entity—a false name under cover of which an author chooses to write; but an anonymous book has a title from which an important something is omitted, viz., the author's name. You cannot express a negation such as this by a distinctive term like "anonym." I am sorry to see that the term has found a place in the Philological Society's New English Dictionary (Murray), although it is stated to be of rare occurrence in this sense.
In dealing with the titles of anonymous books, it is necessary, in the first place, to agree upon the definition of an anonymous book. Barbier, who published the first edition of his useful Dictionnaire des Ouvrages Anonymes et Pseudonymes in 1806, gives the following: "On appelle ouvrage anonyme celui sur le frontispice duquel l'auteur n'est pas nommé."
Mr. Cutter gives the same definition, and adds: "Strictly, a book is not anonymous if the author's name appears anywhere in it, but it is safest to treat it as anonymous if the author's name does not appear in the title."
The Bodleian rule (16) also is:—"If the name of a writer occur in a work, but not on the title-page, the work is also to be regarded for the purpose of headings as anonymous, except in the case of works without separate title-page."
Barbier, however, in the second edition of his book (1822), was forced by the vastness of his materials to adopt a more rigid rule. The best definition of an anonymous work would probably take something of this form: A book printed without the author's name, either in the title or in the preliminary matter.