There are plenty of treatises on classification, of which accounts
may be found in Edwards’s Memoirs of Libraries and Petzholdt’s
Bibliotheca Bibliographica. The classification of the St. Louis Public
School Library Catalogue is briefly defended by W. T. Harris in the
preface (which is reprinted, with some additions, from the Journal of
Speculative Philosophy for 1870). Professor Abbot’s plan is explained
in a pamphlet printed and in use at Harvard College Library, also in
his “Statement respecting the New Catalogue” (part of the report of
the examining committee of the library for 1863), and in the North
American Review for January, 1869. The plan of Mr. Schwartz, librarian
of the Apprentices’ Library, New York, is partially set forth in the
preface to his catalogue; and a fuller explanation is preparing for
publication. For an author-catalogue there are the famous 91 rules of
the British Museum[1] (prefixed to the Catalogue of Printed Books, Vol.
1, 1841, or conveniently arranged in alphabetical order by Th. Nichols
in his Handbook for Readers at the British Museum, 1866); Professor
Jewett’s modification of them (Smithsonian Report on the Construction
of Catalogues, 1852); Mr. F. B. Perkins’s further modification (in
the American Publisher for 1869), and a chapter in the second volume
of Edwards.[2] But for a dictionary-catalogue as a whole, and for
most of its parts, there is no manual whatever. Nor have any of the
above-mentioned works attempted to set forth the rules in a systematic
way or to investigate what might be called the first principles
of cataloguing. It is to be expected that a first attempt will be
incomplete, and I shall be obliged to librarians for criticisms,
objections, or new problems, with or without solutions. {4} With such
assistance perhaps a second edition of these hints would deserve the
title—Rules.[3]
[note] 1. Compiled by a committee of five, Panizzi, Th. Watts, J.
Winter Jones, J. H. Parry, and E. Edwards, in several months of hard
labor.[/note]
[note] 2. To these may now be added: Condensed rules for an author
and title catalogue, prepared by the co-operation committee, A. L.
A. (printed in the Appendix of the present Rules); F: B. Perkins’s
San Francisco cataloguing (1884); C: Dziatzko’s Instruction für die
Ordnung der Titel im alphabetischen Zettelkatalog der Univ. Bibliothek
zu Breslau (1886), of which an adaptation by Mr. K. A: Linderfelt
will shortly be published; Melvil Dewey’s Condensed rules for a card
catalogue, with 36 sample cards (published in the _Library notes_,
v. 1, no. 2, 1886, and reprinted as “Rules for author and classed
catalogs;” with changes, additions, and a “Bibliography of catalog
rules” by Mary Salome Cutler, Boston, 1888, and again as “Library
School rules,” Boston, 1889); G. Fumagalli’s Cataloghi di biblioteche
(1887); H: B. Wheatley’s How to catalogue a library (1889); and
various discussions in the _Library journal_, the _Neuer Anzeiger_,
and the _Centralblatt für Bibliothekswesen_.[/note]
[note] 3. In this second edition I have retained the discussions of
principles of the first edition and added others, because it seems
to me to be quite as important to teach cataloguers the theory, so
that they can catalogue independently of rules, as to accustom them
to refer constantly to hard and fast rules. The index, which will be
published separately, has been enlarged so as to form an alphabetical
or “dictionary” arrangement of the rules.[/note]
{5}