Essays in Librarianship and Bibliography

by Richard Garnett

At last, however, the copy goes to press, the proof is promptly returned and corrected (we are content with a single revise), and the three or four bulky volumes of manuscript are condensed into a single handy and portable volume of type, printed in double columns and on ordinary paper for subscribers, but for reading-room use in single column on a strong vellum paper, adapted to bear rough handling, the opposite column being left blank for insertions, and the book supplied with guards to allow of interleaving. There have hitherto been on the average 220 columns or 110 folios to a volume. On the average of twenty entries to a column, which is rather under the mark, this gives 4400 titles to each volume. The blank space left for insertions and the provision for interleaving would allow of this number of titles being quadrupled, but the weight of the paper prescribes a limit which it would be inconvenient to transgress. Supposing that each volume will take 9000 titles only, then, as the Reading Room will accommodate 2000 volumes of catalogue without encroachment on the reference library, sufficient space will have been provided for eighteen millions of titles, or for three centuries' accumulations at the present annual rate of increase. A year or two ago we were at an utter loss how to accommodate less than three million titles. Several volumes are now (September 1882) in hand in various stages of progress. The number fully completed and placed in the Reading Room is twenty-two, which comprise the contents of about 70 manuscript volumes, including, with

many others, all in letter A after the article Aristotle to the end. They have cost, in round figures, £2450, or about £110 each. Arrangements lately completed will diminish this cost by nearly a sixth, and the sum economised will be available for additional printing. It ought to be stated that all the extra work entailed by printing has been performed by the ordinary Museum staff, with no addition to its resources, except an arrangement by which two gentlemen work two or three hours' overtime.

It is of course apparent that if a large portion of the catalogue is to be put within reach of the present generation the scale of operations must be greatly enlarged. We may one day see the whole of the printing of the Museum a special department, like the Clarendon or Cambridge University press, with a head and a staff of its own, and carrying on operations by the side of which those I have been describing will appear diminutive. At present the Museum force and the Museum grant are nicely adapted to each other. With a stronger staff we could easily spend much more money, with a weaker staff we could not spend what we do. Every effort is of course made to expend the full amount within the year, not only that it may not return unused into the Exchequer, but, from consideration to the just claims of our printers, who have engaged a number of extra hands whom they cannot afford to keep idle. Hence, as I have stated, we are content with a single revise, and deliberately prefer systematic energy to minute accuracy. Misprints and other

oversights will, no doubt, be detected, which a more deliberate procedure would have obviated. I do not desire to have the air of apologising for a catalogue which, even if tried by a severe standard, will, I am persuaded, be pronounced a creditable work; but I wish it to be understood that these blemishes, as well as some defects of arrangement manifested in long sets of cross-references, are not unknown or overlooked. They will diminish as the work proceeds; confident, meanwhile, of a generous construction, we are deliberately of opinion that it is infinitely better to run the risk of letting them pass than to open a door to the capital enemy of all good administration—arrear. Other shortcomings are necessitated by the fact that the Museum Library is not an inert mass, but a living organism. You have not to deal with a closed collection of books like the King's Library, whose authors are dead, and to which no addition can ever be made. The very titles before you have been prepared during the last forty years by twice forty persons of various idiosyncrasies, whose work, with every care, it is often no easy matter to harmonise. While the product of their heterogeneous authorship is at press, the Accession Catalogue is in progress under independent management; thousands of titles are annually written and entered which will one day have to be amalgamated with the general series, and discrepancies must sometimes occur. Moreover, the catalogue of the world's literature partakes of the mobility of the world itself. Designations are altered, as when successful generals become barons,

or popular churchmen bishops; anonymous authors are brought to light; periodicals and works in progress are completed or relinquished; errors are detected and corrected; improvements and modifications are introduced. The catalogue of an institution like the British Museum, dealing with a mass of matter already accumulated, and intended to register an ever-accumulating mass of matter for ever and ever, must not aspire to absolute perfection, and can never attain finality.

A few words, in conclusion, upon the duty and interest of the public to support the Museum undertakings, and the practical end at which, as it seems to me, we ought to aim. The catalogue cannot, at the present rate of progress, be completely printed in much less than forty years. We shall all agree that this progress ought to be accelerated, but this can only be by increased liberality from the Treasury. This will be accorded in proportion to the Treasury's conviction of the value of our work, and this conviction will greatly depend upon the appreciation of this usefulness manifested by the public. If we are to do a national work, we must have national recognition. I am not at all using the language of complaint or disappointment. It would be well worth the Museum's while to print the catalogue for its own sake, even if it did not dispose of a single copy; and in fact the number of subscriptions is very much what was expected. I wish, however, that we could succeed in this, as in some other things, beyond expectation. Something is probably to be ascribed to the peculiarly

quiet manner in which this great change was effected. Mr. Bond's reforms "come not with observation." A question which had been so long and clamorously agitated while unripe was, being ripe, settled in a few conversations, and with a little official correspondence, so noiselessly and unostentatiously, that many of those most interested in the matter have never heard of it. Many who have heard of it are probably under the impression that the original high terms of subscription have been maintained. This is not so. All the sections of the Accession Catalogue are now issued for an annual subscription of £3; and all volumes of the General Catalogue for an annual subscription of £3, 10s. This does not bring it within the reach of every purse: still there must be many students and men of letters in easy circumstances who would find it well worth their while to secure on such terms a register of the literature of the world. Our late lamented friend and colleague, Professor Jevons, was a type of the class I have in my mind; and I know that on the eve of his death he had determined to become a subscriber. From another point of view it may be urged that to support the Museum Catalogue is to take a long step towards the attainment of the still grander object of a Universal Catalogue. At present a Universal Catalogue is a Utopian Catalogue. I have the greatest respect for those who have advocated it as an undertaking immediately practicable. I have no doubt that the twentieth century will speak of them as men before their age. But they are before it.

Their project is at present intricate, indefinite, intangible. They want a base of operations. As Sir Henry Cole himself discerned when he made his not altogether fortunate experiment of printing a specimen article from the Museum Catalogue, this catalogue supplies such a base. Let us know clearly what is in it and what is not; let whatever it contains be put clearly before the world in type; and we shall be able to proceed systematically and intelligently to fill up its lacunæ from the catalogues of other libraries, and from the special bibliographies which are increasing and multiplying year by year. In saying "then" I would not foreshadow a date which many of this generation may not hope to see. My aspiration is that the completion of the Museum Catalogue in print may coincide with the completion of the present century. This is an age of anniversary demonstrations. When a great man dies he bequeaths to his country—his centenary. It may be predicted that if the twentieth century finds the world at peace it will be inaugurated with more displays and solemnities than all preceding centuries together. Well, I do not know how we could offer it a more acceptable gift than a register of almost all the really valuable literature of all former centuries. Such a register the British Museum Catalogue, if then completed, would afford; and a precedent would be set for a similar issue every succeeding century, or half or quarter century, as might be found most expedient, which would show at one view what that particular interval of time had effected for mankind in literature.

Evidently, however, the catalogue cannot at the close of this century be absolutely complete as respects the Museum, as a host of accession titles will have been growing up, a great part of which, coming after the volume which would otherwise have included them has been printed, will be too late to be comprised in the general alphabetical series. It may not, perhaps, be too much to hope that the claims of culture upon the State will by that time be sufficiently recognised to induce the Government to bear the cost of reprinting the whole catalogue with these titles, that the literary register may be as complete as possible, and to provide for the regular repetition of the process at definite intervals. If, however, this is not done, there is still another agent that may be invoked. When the Museum shall have adopted Photography as it has adopted Electricity; when it shall possess—and I trust that long ere that period it will possess—a photographic department, an established branch of its organisation in which, the salaries of the staff being defrayed as in other departments by the State, there will be no expense to be considered beyond the mere cost of chemicals, there need be no limit to the reproduction of its treasures. Sculptures, coins, and prints can be disseminated over every hamlet; manuscripts can be multiplied indefinitely and exchanged with foreign libraries for corresponding donations, illustrative of English history and antiquities; foreign and country scholars will be able to consult rare books and unique manuscripts without leaving their arm-chairs; and, above

all, the scattered portions of the nearest approach the world will have made to a Universal Catalogue may be brought together, digested into alphabetical order, and, reproduced in facsimile by this beautiful art—fit mate of Printing in that she too preserves what would else perish, and brings light into many a dark place—be given to the world.[86:1]