How to Catalogue a Library Part 1

How to Catalogue a Library.

by Henry B. (Henry Benjamin) Wheatley.

PREFACE.

_Those who are interested in library work are constantly asked where a statement of the first principles of cataloguing may be found, and the question is one which it is not easy to answer. Most of the rules which have been printed are intended for large public libraries, and are necessarily laid down on a scale which unfits them for use in the making of a small catalogue. I have divided out the subject on a plan which I hope will commend itself to my readers, and, after discussing the most notable codes, I have concluded with a selection of such rules as I trust will be found useful by those who are employed in making catalogues of ordinary libraries.

Here I must express the hope that my readers will excuse the frequent use of the personal p.r.o.noun. If the use of "I" could have been avoided, I would gladly have avoided it; but as the main point of the book is the discussion of principles and theories, it seemed to me that such value as the book may possess would be entirely destroyed if I did not give my own opinions, founded upon a somewhat long experience.

In dealing with a subject such as this, I cannot hope to convince all my readers, but I trust that those who disagree with my arguments will be willing to allow them some force.

The compilation has been attended with constant feelings of regret in my own mind, for almost every page has brought up before me the memory of two men with whom I have at different times discussed most of the points here raised,--two men alike in their unselfish devotion to the cause of Bibliography. Mr. Henry Bradshaw's work was more widely known, but Mr. Benjamin R. Wheatley's labours were scarcely less valued in the smaller circle where they were known, and both brought to bear upon a most difficult subject the whole force of their thoroughly practical minds. I have learned much from both, and I have felt a constant wish to consult them during the preparation of these pages.

All those who prepared the British Museum rules are gone from us; but happily cataloguers can still boast of Mr. Cutter of Boston, one of the foremost of our craft. Mr. Cutter has prepared a most remarkable code of rules, and has not only laid down the law, but has also fearlessly given the reasons for his faith, and these reasons form a body of sound opinion. May he long live to do honour to Bibliography, a cause which knows no nationality._

H. B. W.

_October, 1889._

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION.

Before we can answer the question implied in the t.i.tle of this little book, it will be necessary for author and reader to agree as to what a catalogue really is.

The word "catalogue" is used to mean a list or enumeration of men or things. Thus we have a catalogue of students, but in actual use we differentiate the two words, and a list ("a mere list") is understood to mean a common inventory, often in no particular order (although we can have alphabetical or cla.s.sified lists); while a catalogue implies something fuller and something disposed in a certain order. What the limit of that something fuller and what that certain order as applied to a catalogue of books really are, it will be for us now to consider.

It was formerly very much the fashion for those who knew little of the subject to speak as if nothing was easier than to make a catalogue. All you had to do was to have a sheet of paper and the book to be catalogued before you, and then to transfer the t.i.tle to the paper. No previous knowledge was necessary. But those who were better acquainted with the difficulties that beset even the cataloguer, realized that Sheridan's joke about "easy writing being d.a.m.ned hard reading" was applicable to the work produced under these circ.u.mstances. Since the discussion on the British Museum Catalogue, and the consequent attention to the first principles of bibliography, these ignorant views are not so generally held, but still many erroneous opinions are abroad. One of these is that the clerical portion of the work of cataloguing or indexing is derogatory to a superior person, and therefore that he should have an inferior person to help him. The superior person dictates, and the inferior person copies down; and the result in practice is that endless blunders are produced, which might have been saved if one person had done the work.

Another vulgar error is that cataloguers form a guild, with secrets which they wish to keep from the public. This is a grievous mistake. The main object of the good cataloguer should be to make the consultation of his work easy. He knows the difficulties, and knows that rules must be made to overcome these difficulties; but he does not care to multiply these rules more than is absolutely necessary. The good cataloguer will try to put himself into the place of the intelligent consulter--that is, the person who brings ordinary intelligence to bear upon the catalogue, but has not, necessarily, any technical knowledge. Some persons seem to think that everything is to be brought down to the comprehension of the fool; but if by doing this we make it more difficult for the intelligent person, the action is surely not politic. The consulter of a catalogue might at least take the trouble to understand the plan upon which it is compiled before using it.

Formerly it was too much the practice to make catalogue entries very short, and to leave out important particulars mentioned on the t.i.tle-page; but now the opposite extreme of writing out the whole t.i.tle, however long, is more common. It should be remembered that in the judicious compression of a t.i.tle-page the art of the cataloguer is brought into play, for any one can copy out the whole of a long t.i.tle. I cannot help thinking that this latter extreme is caused by some misunderstanding of the relative conditions necessary for the production of bibliographies and catalogues. Of course catalogues form a section of the cla.s.s Bibliography; but we understand also by the word "bibliography" a collection of t.i.tles of books on a special subject, or belonging to a particular literature.

The uses of a bibliography, either of a national literature or of a subject such as _History_, are to find out what books have been written, either by a particular author or on a particular subject; to find whether a certain point is dealt with in a certain book; or, it may be, to see whether a book you possess is the right edition, or whether it is wanting in some particular. For these purposes it is most important to have full t.i.tles, and collations with necessary additional information given in the form of notes. Very often the particulars included in the bibliography will be sufficient in themselves to save the consulter from the necessity of searching for the book.

The uses of a catalogue are something quite different. This is in the same house as the books it describes, and is merely a help to the finding of those books. It would be absurd to copy out long t.i.tles in a catalogue and be at the cost of printing them when the t.i.tle itself in the book can be in our hands in a couple of minutes. Sufficient information only is required to help us to find the right book and the right edition. How far this should be given will be discussed in a later chapter. It is necessary for us, however, to remember that when the catalogue is printed and away from the library it becomes to some extent a bibliography, and therefore when a library contains rare or unique books it is usual, for love of the cause, to describe these fully, as if the catalogue was a bibliography. This is the more necessary because we are so deficient in good bibliographies. The ideal state, from which we are still far off, would be a complete and full bibliography of all literature, and then cataloguers could be less full in their descriptions, and reference might be made to the bibliography for further particulars. It is a standing disgrace to the country that we have no complete bibliography of English authors, much less of English literature generally.

It has long been the dream of the bibliographer that a universal catalogue might be obtained by the amalgamation of the catalogues of several collections. Thus it was the intention of Gerard Langbaine, Provost of Queen's College, Oxford, and Keeper of the University Archives, to have made a cla.s.sified catalogue of the Bodleian Library, and to incorporate with it all the books not in the Bodleian but in other Oxford libraries, public and private, so as to show at a glance all the books that existed in Oxford. He died, however, on February 10th, 1657-58, without having carried his design into execution. Dr.

Garnett, in his valuable paper on "The Printing of the British Museum Catalogue" (_Transactions_, Fourth and Fifth Meetings of the Library a.s.sociation of the United Kingdom, 1884, pp. 120-28), gave words to his aspiration "that the completion of the Museum Catalogue in print may coincide with the completion of the present century," and he continued that no better memorial of the nineteenth century could be produced than a "register of almost all the really valuable literature of all former centuries." This is very true; but I think that catalogues can only form the groundwork for bibliographies, and are not sufficiently satisfactory to supersede them. Moreover, each country should produce its own national bibliography.

Mr. Cutter divides libraries into (1) those for study, and (2) those for reading; and this division must always be kept in view. We shall chiefly consider the first division, although it will not be right altogether to pa.s.s over the latter. Libraries for reading have been rightly considered in the light of educational inst.i.tutions; and the various points connected with the information to be given to readers, as to what they should read, and how they should read, perhaps belong more properly to Education than to Bibliography.

As to the order in which the catalogue should be disposed we have considerable choice, and Mr. Cutter has given in the _United States Special Report_ (pp. 561-67) a most elaborate cla.s.sification of the different species of catalogues, but the main divisions are the cla.s.sified and the alphabetical. Years ago the cla.s.sified was considered the ideal; but when this ideal was brought down to practice it usually failed, and the result was almost useless. The late Professor De Morgan made the following pertinent remarks on this point:--

"A cla.s.sed catalogue is supposed to be useful to those who want to know what has been written on a particular subject. Now, in the first place, who are the persons who look at a book list with any such view? Not beginners in a wide field of research. Did any one in his senses ever go to a library to learn geometry, for instance, and take the subject in a cla.s.sed catalogue, and fall to work upon some author because he was therein set down? This attempt to feed the mind _a la carte_ would certainly end in an indigestion, if, which is rather to be hoped, it did not begin in a surfeit."[1]

Again:--

"Any one who is willing to trust the maker of a catalogue, however highly qualified, with the power of settling what books he can want in reference to a given subject, is either a person who consults only the most celebrated works, and has nothing to do with research, or one who is willing to take completeness upon trust, and to content himself with blaming another person if he do not reach it."[2]

It is a common mistake to speak of a cla.s.sified catalogue as a Catalogue Raisonne. A Catalogue Raisonne is a catalogue with bibliographical details and notes, in which the merits or demerits of the books are discussed. Therefore a Catalogue Raisonne can be alphabetical as well as cla.s.sified. An alphabetical catalogue can be either one of authors, or of subjects, or what the Americans have styled the Dictionary Catalogue.

A catalogue of authors will contain the description of anonymous books under headings in the same alphabet, and it may either have an index of subjects, or subject cross-references included in the general alphabet.

But as the rules to be considered later on relate chiefly to the catalogue of authors, it is not necessary to say more on this point here. Again, De Morgan has made some excellent remarks on the catalogue of authors:--

"An alphabetical catalogue has this great advantage, that all the works of the same author come together. Those who have had to hunt up old subjects know very well that of all lots which it is useful to find in one place, the works of one given author are those which occur most frequently. Again, those who go to a library to read upon a given subject generally know what authors they want; and an alphabetical catalogue settles the question whether the library does or does not contain the required work of the author wanted. We believe that of those who go into a place where books are collected, whether to read, buy, borrow, (or even steal), nineteen out of twenty know what author they want; and to them an alphabetical catalogue is all-sufficient."[3]

Mr. Cutter has written the history of the Dictionary Catalogue in the _United States Special Report_ (pp. 533-39), and he traces it back in America to about the year 1815.

Mr. Crestadoro, in his pamphlet, _The Art of Making Catalogues of Libraries_, 1856, recommended an inventorial catalogue of unabridged t.i.tles arranged in no order, but numbered, and an alphabetical index to the numbers of this inventory. The index thus formed was somewhat similar to the Dictionary Catalogue (_United States Special Report_, p.

535). Mr. Bradshaw held very strongly the view that an alphabetical catalogue was an index, and that a full shelf catalogue was the real catalogue; and few things he enjoyed more than to read through a list of the books as they stood on the shelves.[4] In a letter to me, dated September 9th, 1879, he wrote:--

"It is a cardinal point with me that an alphabetical catalogue of a library is really an index, or should be so, to any other kind of catalogue you choose to make; while if you once lose sight of this fact you are quite sure to c.u.mber the catalogue up with bibliographical details which are entirely out of place."

Scientific cataloguing is of modern invention, and to the British Museum it is that we owe the origination of a code of rules--rules which form the groundwork of all modern cataloguing. Good catalogues were made before rules were enunciated, but this is accounted for by the fact that bibliographers, like poets, are more often born than made.

Carefulness must be one of the chief characteristics of the cataloguer, for he will frequently find himself beset with difficulties. Mr. W. F.

Poole, the author of that most useful work the _Index to Periodical Literature_, states this very forcibly when he writes:--

"The inexperienced librarian will find the cataloguing of his books the most difficult part of his undertaking, even after he has made a diligent theoretical study of the subject. He will find after he has made considerable progress that much of his work is useless, and scarcely any of it correct."[5]

The cataloguer must not jump to conclusions upon insufficient authority, or, as some persons have proposed, take a short list from the books and amplify the t.i.tles from bibliographies. Such a course will lead to endless blunders, and create confusion like that described by Professor De Morgan:--

"Lalande, in his _Bibliographie Astronomique_, wrote from his own knowledge the t.i.tle of the second edition of the work of Regiomonta.n.u.s on Triangles, Basle, folio, 1561. He knew that the first edition was published about thirty years before, and so he set it down with the same t.i.tle-page as the second, including the announcement of the table of Sines, Basle, 1536. Now, as it happened, it was published at Nuremberg in 1533, and there was no table of Sines in it. The consequence is that Apian and Copernicus are deprived of their respective credits, as being very early (the former the earliest) publishers of Sines to a decimal radius. No one can know how far an incorrect description of a book may produce historical falsehood; but there are few writers who have the courage to say exactly how much they know, and how much they presume."[6]

Before concluding this Introduction it may be well to say something about a few catalogues that have been issued in the different styles.

One of the best cla.s.sified catalogues ever published in England is that of the London Inst.i.tution, which was first printed in 1835, and completed in 1852.[7] This has indexes of subjects, and of authors and books. The catalogue is very useful as a bibliography; and as the library was well selected, the reading of its pages is very instructive; but what shows the general uselessness of a cla.s.sified catalogue for the work of a library is that in actual practice an alphabetical finding index has been in more constant use than the fuller catalogue.

Of an alphabetical catalogue of subjects an example may be found in that of the Library of the Board of Trade, which was published in 1866. Here the authors are relegated to an index, and all the t.i.tles are arranged under the main subject. This may be convenient under some circ.u.mstances, but it is not satisfactory for general use. The idea of the scheme was due to the late Mr. W. M. Bucknall, then librarian to the Board of Trade; but the catalogue itself was made by the author of this book. The system adopted was to use the subject-word of the t.i.tle as a heading; but an exception was made in the case of foreign words which were translated. For instance, there is a heading of Wool. Under this first come all the English works; then the French works under sub-headings of _Laine_, _Laines_, and _Lainiere_; then German under _Schafwollhandel_ and _Wollmarkt_. From these foreign words in the alphabet there are references to WOOL. There is, however, no more cla.s.sification than is absolutely necessary; and it may be said that if all the books had been anonymous the scheme would have been an admirable one.

The Dictionary Catalogue mostly flourishes in America; but a very satisfactory specimen of the cla.s.s was prepared by Mr. D. O'Donovan, Parliamentary Librarian, Queensland. It is ent.i.tled, _a.n.a.lytical and Cla.s.sified Catalogue of the Library of the Parliament of Queensland_ (Brisbane: 1883. 4to). The books are entered under author and subject with full cross-references, and all the entries are arranged in one alphabet. There are abstracts of the contents of certain of the books, and references to articles in reviews. In the preface Mr. O'Donovan writes:--

"I have made a catalogue of authors, and index of t.i.tles, and an index of subjects, a partial index of forms, and having thrown the whole together into an alphabetical series, the work may be referred to as an ordinary dictionary."

Of the usefulness of the Dictionary Catalogue there cannot be two opinions, but the chief objection is that it is a waste of labour to do for many libraries what if done once in the form of a bibliography would serve for all.

A most important example of this cla.s.s of catalogue is the _Index-Catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon-General's Office, United States Army_, of which nine large volumes have been issued. This owes its existence to Dr. J. S. Billings, and the publication was commenced in 1880. An enthusiastic friend is inclined to describe it as the best of published catalogues.

Authors' catalogues are the most common, and it would be invidious to point out any one in particular for special commendation.

It is rather curious that the United States, which is now to the fore in all questions of bibliography, should have produced in former times many singularly bad catalogues. There is one cla.s.sified catalogue which may be mentioned as a typical specimen of bad work. There is an index of authors, with such vague references that in some cases you have to turn over as many as seventy pages to find the book to which you are referred.[8]

The oddities of catalogue-making would form a prolific subject, and we cannot enter into it at the end of this chapter; but s.p.a.ce may be found for two odd catalogues which owe their origin to the Secretary of the old Record Commission.