10. Never allow MS. notes, letters, &c., to litter the tables and the room. MS. notes should be kept in folding pads, or in drawers, and letters carefully filed and put away.
11. No book should be left open and placed face downwards, in order to mark the place where the reader has left off; no other practice so speedily spoils books as this.
12. Always have a good index or catalogue of the contents of your library.
The last is as important a rule as any. A library without a catalogue is, as Thomas Carlyle expresses it, “A Polyphemus without an eye in his head.” Isaac D’Israeli, who has left us such a vast treasure-house of book lore, says that the man who possesses a fine library cannot be “more animated than a leaden Mercury who does not aspire to make some small addition to his library, were it only by a critical catalogue. He must be as indolent as that animal called the sloth, who perishes on the tree he climbs, after he has eaten all its leaves.”
The task of cataloguing must not dismay the amateur; the task is a most useful one, and can easily be managed. The best catalogue would be this:
Let it be divided into three primary divisions: The body, containing the titles, authors’ names, date, and place of publication, and the size and description may be added if considered necessary; index of authors’ names, with the number of the pages of the catalogue on which their works will be found, and an index of subjects.
The body should be divided into thirteen divisions, which are: 1, Theology; 2, history and biography; 3, science and philosophy; 4, art; 5, bibliography; 6, antiquities; 7, political and commercial; 8, poetry; 9, travels; 10, MSS.; 11, novels; 12, miscellaneous; 13, periodical literature. These may be subdivided, if necessary. The subdivisions are: History into (1) national, (2) local, (3) biography, and (4) genealogy; science into (1) medicine, surgery, and chemistry, (2) natural history, (3) geology, and (4) mechanics; art into (1) painting, sculpture, &c., (2) music; antiquities into (1) chronicles, ballads, and other ancient literature, (2) history of antiquities; political into (1) standard works, (2) pamphlets, &c.; travels into (1) ancient, (2) modern; miscellaneous into (1) law, (2) drama, (3) educational, (4) miscellaneous.
The books in the body should be entered under the authors’ names, alphabetically arranged, under each division, the full titles, description, &c., following. A very good plan is to tack to each entry in the catalogue finding symbols, as “Bookcase A, shelf 3,” which denotes where the book is to be found.
Now as to the actual mode of taking the census of the books to be catalogued. A large number of sheets of paper, about the size of ordinary writing paper, must be procured, each sheet being divided into three columns. The centre column (the largest of the three) is reserved for the full description of the book as it is to stand in the body of the catalogue; the column on the left is reserved for the exact account of the subject treated of by the book; that on the right for the author’s name, as in the following example: