How to Catalogue a Library

by Henry B. Wheatley

II.

Mr. Cutter's rules on this question of arrangement may be considered best under the respective headings of Transactions and Journals.

Transactions.

Mr. Cutter says (rule 40):—

"Societies are authors of their journals, memoirs, proceedings, transactions, publications.... The chief practices in regard to societies have been to enter them (1. British Museum) under a special heading—Academies—with a geographical arrangement; (2. Boston Public Library, printed catalogue) under the name of the place where they have their headquarters; (3. Harvard College Library and Boston Public Library, present system) under the name of the place, if it enters into the legal name of the society, otherwise under the first word of that name not an article; (4. Boston Athenæum) English societies under the first word of the society's name not an article; foreign societies under the name of the place. Both 3. and 4. put under the place all purely local societies, those whose membership or objects are confined to the place. The first does not deserve a moment's consideration; such a heading is out of place in an author-catalogue, and the geographical arrangement only serves to complicate matters, and render it more difficult to find any particular academy. The second is utterly unsuited to American and English societies. The third practice is simple; but it is difficult to see the advantage of the exception which it makes to its general rule of entry under the society's name; the exception does not help the cataloguer, for it is just as hard to determine whether the place enters into the legal name as to ascertain the name; it does not help the reader, for he has no means of knowing whether the place is part of the legal name or not. The fourth is simple and intelligible; it is usually easy for both cataloguer and reader to determine whether a society is English or foreign....

"Fifth Plan, Rule 1. Enter academies, associations, institutes, universities, libraries, galleries, museums, colleges, and all similar bodies, both English and foreign, according to their corporate name, neglecting an initial article when there is one.

"Exception 1. Enter the royal academies of Berlin, Göttingen, Leipzig, Lisbon, Madrid, Munich, St. Petersburg, Vienna, etc., and the 'Institut' of Paris under those cities. An exception is an evil; this one is adopted because the academies are usually known by the name of the cities, and are hardly ever referred to by the name Königliches, Real, etc."

I cannot agree with Mr. Cutter's remarks in the above extracts. After a pretty extensive experience of the cataloguing of transactions, I have found plan No. 2 far and away the most convenient for reference; it has its own peculiar difficulties, but these are really much fewer than in any of the other plans, and I entirely fail to see why it should be stigmatized as "utterly unsuited to American and English societies." No doubt a large number of societies come under the heading of London, but most large towns in the country have their societies, and the societies of Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool, and Manchester all find their proper places in the alphabet.

The fourth plan may be simple, but it is far from logical, and some good reason is required for the adoption of separate rules for English and foreign societies.