DIVISION VIII
CATALOGUING, FILING, INDEXING
CHAPTER XVIII
CATALOGUING METHOD
256. General.
256. General.—Of the interior administrative work of the municipal, or even more of the university or institutional library, that which occupies most time and thought is cataloguing. A catalogue is properly defined as an explanatory, logically-arranged inventory and key to the books and their contents, and differs from a bibliography in being confined to the books in a given library. For its production wide knowledge both of cataloguing rules and of general subjects is required, and experience in ordinary reference work is essential. The staff, therefore, to whom the cataloguing is entrusted should be highly trained and well educated; that is to say, that part of the staff which deals with the final processes in cataloguing—the choice of headings, treatment of titles, annotation, selection of added entries, and the filing of the finished material. In large libraries cataloguing staffs are chosen with care, and cataloguing rooms are arranged for the work with a careful regard to the value of natural lighting, of furniture so arranged that the cataloguer has not to rise from his desk every time he wishes to make a reference, and, indeed, with the object of producing the best results at a minimum expenditure of energy. Even in the smallest library, where the librarian does the cataloguing, a preliminary attention to such matters as the construction of the cataloguing table and its accessibility to the inevitable cataloguer’s reference books, will save much labour hereafter. It may not be superfluous to add that as cataloguing is exacting work, it is fatiguing work, and no assistant should be kept at it without variation for a longer time than he can remain mentally alert and fresh. Eye-strain and fatigue mean inaccuracy, and at the best inefficient work, and seven hours is a maximum that should not be exceeded.
257. Kinds of Catalogue.
257. Kinds of Catalogue.—There is no more important decision that a librarian has to make than that of the form which the catalogue is to take. A wrong choice here will produce months of labour to make good the error. The choice will no doubt be influenced by the kind of public for which the catalogue is required. The public may be general in character, and within that somewhat vague definition may be artisan, or commercial, or what not; or it may be special—with a large number of students. The public a municipal library has to serve usually combines all these elements; and in choosing the form of catalogue, a librarian may be guided by the desire to serve them all, but to emphasize the educational side of his work. The questions which a catalogue or catalogues may be expected to answer are: what books has the library (a) by a given author, (b) on a given subject, (c) having a given title. Most catalogues may, by the addition of indexes, be made to yield this information with varying degrees of efficiency. The various forms, and examples of them, should be considered carefully before the choice is made. Those most recognized are the Author catalogue, the Dictionary catalogue, the Classified catalogue, and the Alphabetical-Classed catalogue.
The author catalogue is most valuable in the hands of literary men and of experts, but is of very limited use to the reader whose knowledge of authors is small. It is simply an alphabetical arrangement of author entries of books, without any reference in that arrangement to their subjects. The best examples of this form of cataloguing are the British Museum Catalogue of the Printed Books and the Author Catalogue of the London Library.
The dictionary catalogue is the form most popular here and in America, and, unfortunately, is usually the most defective. As its name implies, it resembles the ordinary alphabetical arrangement of the dictionary, and embraces in one alphabet entries of authors, subjects, titles, and series. The principle of subject entry is that books are entered under the specific subject, and not usually under broad headings; thus books on Trees are entered under that word, and not, as in a classified catalogue, under their historical, or logical, place in Botany. The dictionary form is that most attractive to the general reader, and in its ideal form is a remarkably effective instrument; that is to say, when it analyses the subjects in books, and links all specific and general headings by cross-references. The best examples are the Brooklyn Library Catalogue and the Index Catalogue of the U.S. Surgeon-General’s Library; and good English examples, which will repay study, are the catalogues of Bishopsgate Institute, London, and of Hampstead Public Libraries which seems to be modelled on the Bishopsgate catalogue. Objections to the dictionary catalogue are that it gives no connected view of any subject and of its collateral subjects, that it is rarely cross-referenced adequately, that headings are chosen haphazard, and, what is its chief objection, if it is printed it is out-of-date the day after publication—an objection which does not apply so much to the printed classified catalogue, as that lends itself to publication, and to revision, a class at a time. Librarians using this form should base their subject entries upon the A. L. A. List of Subject Headings (second edition, 1912) or the Library of Congress List (in progress, issued in parts by the Library), as these will secure a choice of recognized headings and save much labour in deciding between alternative headings. The application of the Library of Congress list may be studied in The Library Association Index to Periodicals (1915-16), which is, in the main, arranged upon it.