Having said so much for the classed catalogue, it may be pointed out that the whole of the books contained in a library by a particular author cannot be ascertained by it without some trouble, unless it has a brief-title author-index as shown in section 112, nor can the books upon a stated country, say China, be found together in one place, those upon the religions of China would not be grouped with those upon its social customs, those upon its natural history would not be with either of these, and a book dealing with all of these together, inclusive of a description of the country, would be in a separate place.
108.—The arguments for and against the two styles of catalogue being carefully weighed, more especially from the point of view of general usefulness to the public concerned, and with due regard to cost of production, and choice having been made of the classified form of catalogue, the cataloguer will first decide upon the scheme of classification to be adopted, presuming that the library in hand is not already classified or its system of main classes is unsatisfactory for cataloguing purposes. This having been accomplished by means of Brown’s Manual of Library Classification, which summarises all the various systems, the author-entry is made upon the general principles already laid down in Chapters III. to VII. of the present work which are all equally applicable.
A line or two must be left at the top of the slip on which the entry is written for the purpose of marking the classification, division, and sub-division either by their names or by numbers, if the scheme adopted has a numerical notation. Supposing for example the book is
Ward, James. Historic ornament: treatise on decorative art and architectural ornament. Illus. 2 v. 8o. 1897
the slip or card would be marked as follows on the right hand top corner, as being the most convenient for sorting,
Fine Arts. [The class].
Ornament. [The division.]
or if the well-known Dewey Classification[2] is used, the number 745 would be written in the same place, signifying the class “Fine Arts,” the division “Drawing, Decoration, Design,” and the sub-division or definite subject, “Ornamental design.”
Under Brown’s Adjustable Classification,[3] the entry would be marked C 76, denoting the class, “Fine Arts,” the division “Decoration,” and the sub-division “General practice and examples.” In the dictionary catalogue this book would be entered under “Ward” and “Ornament.”