Mr. Josephson: I did not say how many cards give contents notes, but how many titles need more than one card.
Chairman: That is the strong point. It is not three per cent. nor anywhere near it. Those cards that ran over were not all contents notes. The actual number of contents notes that run over is very small indeed. And moreover, you have this bibliographical note on every card. You are going to put it between the contents note and the title every time.
Mr. Harris: I would like to ask what proportion of cards have contents notes at all.
Mr. Josephson: I don't think I can answer that. It is between ten and twenty-five per cent.
Mr. Harris: The point I was about to make was that I think it is well to sacrifice something for the sake of uniformity, for the aid of persons who consult the catalog; and as Mr. Josephson says only fifteen to twenty-five per cent. of the cards have contents notes, in seventy-five per cent. the collation would immediately follow the title. And therefore it seems to me it is desirable not to have the contents note follow the title.
A show of hands was called for.
Chairman: Before we have the show of hands, may I say one thing more? I don't believe that most of you that have not been using these cards know how useful the contents note is or what it is for. It is to furnish your analyticals. If you want to analyze a volume of essays, for example, your contents note does it all for you with just a little bit of clerical work when the cards come in. You have fifty items that you would like to represent in your catalog, and the card does it all for you. It is costing you one to three cents instead of fifty or sixty cents.
Mr. L. P. Lane: I have learned a good deal since I have been in the Boston Public Library by observing the practices which that library has departed from. I know the library did in times past print contents and have an entry designed to fit one particular item of contents and then underline that item on the card. That has been found so unsatisfactory that when we now recatalog anything and deem any item of contents worthy a separate entry we catalog that item separately and print a second card.
Mr. Andrews: If the Library of Congress will do this we do not care for many contents notes. I didn't understand the Library of Congress proposed to print analyticals, but rather to print contents notes; that they, and most of the libraries that print cards, found their economy on this point. But it is really the Library of Congress that must be consulted as to the desirability of many contents notes.
Mr. Hanson: That has been one of the perplexing questions with us in printing cards. We do use the contents as analyticals to some extent, underscoring the particular item on the heading given. But where an analytical is what we catalogers call an imprint analytical, that is, with separate title and pagination, we find it more economical to print a separate card for that title. In other cases and where we find it very inconvenient to use the contents card, we print analyticals.