The abbreviation Ed. may be used either for editor or edited, the position marking the meaning. The year of publication is not on the title-page, but is taken from the end of the preface, which is dated "June 30, 1906"; being, therefore, an addition to the title-page it is enclosed in brackets. The value of giving the year of publication wherever possible is unquestionable. When there is no clue to it in the book itself, all available sources of reference should be searched, more particularly the English Catalogue of Books and library catalogues. In the event of the search proving fruitless, the letters "n.d.", signifying no date, are put in place of the date.
As was the case with the previous book, each essay in the book deals with a separate subject, yet the whole forms a single subject, and may be fitly placed under a heading entitled, say,
Social Question, The:
Keeble, S. E. (Ed.) The citizen of to-morrow.
[1906]
Such a heading would be specially reserved for books dealing with the whole social problem, and no book should find a place under it if upon a particular phase, such as housing, the land, unemployment, etc., as the position for these is under the name of the special subject they deal with. As recommended already, See also references should be given from it as books upon the separate subjects come up for cataloguing.
The book is unlike that upon the Church of England, inasmuch as it lays no particular stress upon the efforts of the Wesleyan Methodists towards social reform. At the same time, the work has been prepared under the auspices of the Wesleyan Methodist Union for Social Service, and this must be recognised, in full catalogues at any rate, by the entry
Wesleyan Methodist Union for Social Service.
The citizen of to-morrow; ed. by S. E. Keeble.
[1906]
A book of this varied nature is a little puzzling in regard to its right place in the classified catalogue, as some parts of it bear on topics in the class Sociology, though in the aggregate it may be regarded as belonging to Social Ethics, and so is marked 177.
In the books hitherto taken as examples, no entries have been given under the first words of the titles, as it is not considered that they are required. There is the remote possibility in this instance of the book being remembered by its title, but that does not justify the entry, as any person interested would remember one of the three entries already given. When it is thought essential or desirable to give a title-entry, it will be shown as we proceed. The older catalogues of popular libraries were largely based upon the principle of a title-entry for every item; the first or some other striking word of the title-page being taken; it being considered rank heresy to go behind the words of the title, as already mentioned. The result was often confusing, if not actually misleading. A case in point is that of the first book we took in illustration (page [34]). Under the old system this would have appeared as
Portugal, In. By A. F. G. Bell.