A reference only is necessary to other forms of MS. which have been proposed from time to time, as none of them has been adopted by any number of libraries. The very old libraries occasionally use a slip catalogue; the Bodleian and British Museum, for example, paste slips into volumes or guard books resembling large scrap-books in approximate alphabetical order, and other libraries use similar methods. The system is a good one in many respects; the public understands and likes it; but the catalogue runs to so many large volumes that its accommodation would be a serious matter for the ordinary library; and the congestion of entries, with loss of all but approximate alphabetical order at most letters of the alphabet, will be obvious. Adjustments will be explained in the next chapter.
It is not the intention here to recommend any special method or form of cataloguing; individual library systems have individual needs; and no librarian should make so important a decision as to the character of his catalogue without an examination of such catalogues as have been named and described. Our next chapter will illustrate the physical forms of catalogue sufficiently, we think, for most practical purposes.
262. Codes and Rules
262. Codes and Rules[9].—Whatever + form of catalogue is chosen, the main entry is practically the same for them all; that is, the author entry; and a whole literature of cataloguing rules and codes now exists which must receive careful attention. The principal of them are as follows:
Bodleian Library. Rules for the Author Catalogues of Printed Books and Printed Music. See Supplement to the Staff-Kalendar, 1911, etc.
British Museum. Rules for Compiling Catalogues in the Department of Printed Books, 1906.
Cutter, C. A. Rules for a Printed Dictionary Catalogue. 4th ed., Washington, D.C., 1904.
(The most complete and detailed work on the subject.)
Quinn, J. H. Library Cataloguing, 1913. Truslove & Hanson.
(The best English text-book for beginners, but limited mainly to the dictionary form, which the author prefers.)