Mr. Fletcher: The matter has been put off to such a large extent that the State Library at Albany has undertaken to publish this supplement; but it has been delayed. They intend to print it for their own state use, but allow the Publishing Board to distribute it to other places. As to a revision, I do not know whether it has been undertaken. I think that the original edition was not electrotyped, and that there are no plates existing to reprint it from.
Chairman: I will read a question from the Hartford Public Library on the arrangement of author, editor and translator in a card catalog—whether to be put in one alphabet or arranged separately?
Miss Crawford: That hits upon a very practical experience which we had in Dayton. We arranged the works of an author under the author's own works; then the author as editor; and then author as joint author; and then the author as translator; alphabeting by the word which happened to follow the name of the author at the top of the line. We tried that for three or four years, and at the end of that time we ourselves in our own use of the catalog were so continually running up against our own arrangement as a thing which we never used and which was a constant blunder to us that last year we set about rearranging all the authors so as to bring them in one alphabeting order by the first word of the title, [regardless of whether it was as author], editor or compiler. Of course when translator or editor of a specific person's work, that entry was placed after the others.
Mr. Fletcher: That is our practice, after having used the other for some time. We now undertake to put all the works of an author in a general series, whether he is author, or editor, or collector, or whatever it be, if the work is significant as his work. We put those all in one alphabet, as if there was no such addition after his name, and then we put at the end the two notes which are in the nature of cross-reference. If a man is translator of somebody else's work we cannot very well put those in as his works. Everything else we put in one series.
Mr. Perley: In the library of the Institute of Technology, of Boston, we arranged the authors, joint authors, translators and editors all in one common alphabet. It seems to me in a library of this kind such an arrangement is especially good, because the public patrons of the library never seem to take very kindly to distinctions, however interesting they may be to the librarians; and it happens very often that the American translator is a good deal more important to the American reader than the original author from whom it was translated. And in the same way a joint author may take equal rank with the author in the main entry.
Miss Crawford: 1 o: "Enter under highest title unless family name or lower title is decidedly better known." Will you keep the title in the vernacular in all cases? For example, will you always say "Fürst von" instead of the English form, and "Graf von," etc.?
Mr. Hanson: There is a varying practice as to that. I will say for the Library of Congress, where they are purely titles of honor or minor noblemen, we use the vernacular; but we have found it advisable for kings, in fact for sovereigns, to use the designation king, emperor, pope, etc., in English.
Miss Kroeger: Has anything been said about entering sovereigns and popes in the vernacular or English form? The rule says, "May be given in the English form."
Mr. Fletcher: I think we should generally feel, as Mr. Cutter expresses it in his rule, that this is a matter of progress; and before long our library committees will not tolerate "Henry" instead of "Henri" for king of France, or "Lewis" instead of "Louis." We are in a transition stage, and this "May be" means that it is considered allowable while we are in the transition stage to use the English form instead of the vernacular. But give names of sovereigns in the vernacular. The same thing is true of names of cities. Some librarians are leading us a little and giving Wien for Vienna.
Mr. Perley: It seems to me the use of the English form would largely depend upon the length of the custom. I think for the names of the Italian cities which have been given common English names since the Middle Ages we are justified in using the English forms, and the names of persons in the same way.