of books, but even this department is subject to the general law of
specialisation, and the character of a collection must vary as it falls
within the category of national, academical, or municipal libraries. The
mission of the national library is the simplest: its character is
determined for it by the enactment which in most civilised states
constitutes it the general receptacle of the national literature, good,
bad, and indifferent, and imposes the corresponding obligation of
rendering itself the epitome of foreign literatures, as far as its means
allow. Every such library is the mirror of its time, and perhaps even
its services to contemporaries are of less real account than those which
it performs for posterity in preserving the image of the past. This is
the apology of the librarian's anxiety to collect what the uninitiated
regard as trash. Yesterday's news-sheet, waste paper to-day, will be
precious after a century, and invaluable after a millennium. The same
principle justifies the heavy expenditure which it is frequently
necessary to occur in procuring what is truly illustrative of the
history of a life or a nation, even when it comes in the costly shape of
a bibliographical rarity. A black-letter ballad on a Smithfield
martyrdom, a collection of cuttings illustrating Byron or Dickens, must
be secured for the national Museum if at all within the compass of its
resources. Hardly as much can be said for another class of rarities—the
vellum page or the sumptuous binding which makes a volume a work of art,
but adds nothing to the value or significance of its contents. Such
luxuries, the darlings of the genuine bibliographer, the tests of his
professional taste and the _chevaux de bataille_ of his collection, are
nevertheless only to be indulged in by a conscientious man when he is
certain that such an indulgence is compatible with the ends for which
national libraries exist. Even the ideal of rendering the library a
representative of the thought and knowledge of the age must either be
moderated, or pursued at the risk of incurring comparatively
expenditure. A new periodical gives pause: it must be taken, like a
wife, for better or worse; for once commenced it can seldom be dropped.
New editions of scientific works occasion much perplexity: it is equally
vexatious to be behind hand with the latest results of discovery, and to
spend money over something which is certain to be soon superseded by
something better still. In such cases compromise alone is possible, and
compromise can never be quite satisfactory. Such difficulties press less
heavily on the curators of academical libraries, where the demand for
universality is not preferred, and even an accidental circumstance may
legitimately impart a bias to the entire collection. The acquisition of
Professor De Morgan's books, for instance, has made it imperative upon
the University of London to be always strong in logic and mathematics,
at all events. The principle of specialisation, indeed, admits of being
carried very far in a large community, where it is possible to conceive
groups of libraries working in different directions to a common end,
and mutually completing each other. Such a system was supposed to have
been inaugurated at Oxford, although we have only heard of two colleges
which are actually working it out—Worcester, with its deliberate and
most laudable bent towards classical archæology; and All Souls', whose
noble collection of law books might, if law were more scientifically
taught in this country, contribute to make Oxford a great school of
jurisprudence. Some of the other college libraries, it is to be feared,
justify the philippic which Mr. Ernest Thomas, at the Oxford Conference,
clenched with this climax of scornful reference to a flagrant case, "The
librarian receives only ten pounds a year, and I am sorry to say that
even that is too much."
The municipal librarian has his peculiar difficulties. His means are
seldom large, and out of them he has frequently to provide for branch
libraries, involving numerous duplicates. He has to study not only what
his public wants, but what it thinks it wants; not only to make ready
for guests, but to "compel them to come in." This raises the difficult
question how far the taste for fiction should be condescended to in free
libraries. We cannot agree with those who think that public money may be
properly expended upon trashy novels, in the chimerical hope that the
appetite for reading they will probably create may be devoted to
worthier objects. It is far more likely to destroy any latent capacity
for serious reading which a more judicious treatment might possibly have
called forth. At the same time, the adverse experience of mechanics'
institutes has shown that it will not answer to be too austere in such
matters, and indeed the man who is capable of relishing Thackeray or
George Eliot is not far from the kingdom of culture. Other novelists of
a less purely intellectual cast may awaken the love or stimulate the
pursuit of knowledge. Scott indirectly teaches not a little history,
Marryat not a little geography; either might provoke a craving for
further information, and both are adapted to keep the mind in a state of
healthy curiosity, susceptible of new impressions and ideas. The
municipal librarian will also consider the especial circumstances of his
locality. Leeds, we understand, collects everything relating to the
history or processes of the woollen manufacture, and the example will no
doubt be generally followed. One of the most useful suggestions made at
the Librarians' Conference was that provincial librarians should make a
point of collecting publications printed in their own districts, as well
as the municipal documents which are rarely deposited in the British
Museum. It met with a cordial response, and we believe is being
extensively carried out.
Due provision having been made for replenishing the library with the
books most appropriate to its circumstances, the question of the
catalogue next presents itself. The controversies which used to prevail
on this point may be regarded as in a great measure laid to rest. The
rules of cataloguing, framed in 1839 by Sir A. Panizzi, Mr. Winter
Jones, and their staff, will, we believe, be now generally accepted by
bibliographers as embodying the principles of sound cataloguing.[43:1]
They may not be equally satisfactory to the general public, with its
preference for rough and ready methods; a very short experience,
however, will convince any man that such methods in cataloguing mean
simply hopeless confusion, and that it is far better that a book should
be now and then hidden away than that entire categories of books should
be entered at random, with no endeavour at principle or uniformity. On
the part of almost all qualified bibliographers, the Museum Catalogue
receives the sincerest form of flattery—imitation: the few points still
debated, such as whether anonymous books with no proper name on the
title-page should be entered under the first substantive or the first
word, are not material; and the impediments sometimes experienced in
consulting it arise from no defect in its cataloguing rules, but from
the great difficulty in digesting such long and complicated articles as
Academies into a perspicuous and logical arrangement. The problem is no
longer one of cataloguing, but of classification, and in this department
ample room remains for discussion and scientific progress. The question
of the strictly classified catalogue _versus_ the strictly
alphabetical, may, indeed, be considered as decided. The former method
may have answered in the library of Alexandria; but the multiplicity of
the departments of knowledge in our own day, their intricacy and the
nicety with which they blend and shade into each other, render
cataloguing solely by subjects a delusion. A catalogue of books on any
special subject must either be imperfect, or must contain a large number
of entries repeated from other catalogues; while, in any case, the
reader can never satisfy himself without a tedious search that the book
he has at first failed to find is not after all actually in the library.
If, nevertheless, a subject catalogue without a general alphabetical
arrangement is often useless, it must be admitted that an alphabetical
catalogue without a subject index is not always useful. It is somewhat
humiliating for the librarian unprovided with this valuable auxiliary,
to find himself dependent upon the classified indexes to the London
publishers' list and Brunet's _Manuel du Libraire_ for information which
he ought to be able to supply from his own catalogue. Even the Bodleian,
we perceive, is about taking measures to prepare an index of subjects,
and the Bodleian is a library for scholars who might not unfairly be
expected to bring their bibliographical information along with them. The
need must evidently be more imperative in libraries which assume a
distinctly educational function, and in those which, like the national
and most municipal collections, are supported at the expense of the
learned and the ignorant alike. The recognition of the want, however,
imposes an additional strain upon the resources of the institution,
which the British Museum, at all events, over-burdened as it is already,
cannot encounter without a considerable addition to its resources. The
question of classification is, moreover, most difficult of solution.
Only two points seem universally agreed upon: that the best subject
index must be far from perfect, and that the worst is far better than
none. Two principal methods are proposed for adoption. The first is the
simple and obvious one of recataloguing every book entered in the
Alphabetical Catalogue in the briefest possible form, and breaking up
these titles into sections, according to subject, the alphabetical order
being still preserved in each. Thus Simson's "History of the Gipsies"
would be found in the General Catalogue entered at length, and again in
an abridged form in a special index of books relating to the Gipsies,
which would refer the reader to the General Catalogue. The other system
is the so-called Dictionary Catalogue, which combines the main entry and
the subject entry in the same alphabetical series. In such a catalogue
Simson's book would be entered twice over, under Simson and under
Gipsies; while Paspati's "Dictionary of the Dialect of the Turkish
Gipsies," if the librarian were as accommodating as some of his
fraternity, would stand a chance of being catalogued four times over,
under Paspati, Gipsies, Turkey, and Dictionaries. This system, first
brought forward by Mr. Crestadoro, the very able librarian of the
Manchester Free Library, and retouched by Messrs. Jewett, Abbott, and
Noyes, in the United States, has been thoroughly discussed in Mr.
Cutter's masterly contribution to the American report on public
libraries. Mr. Cutter, on the whole, supports the plan, whose defects he
has nevertheless stated with his usual force and candour. The principal
objections are the great bulk of a catalogue constructed upon such a
plan, and the sacrifices of one of the principal advantages of an
alphabetical classed index, the congregation of a great number of minor
subjects into a grand whole. In such an index, for example, works on the
liberty of the subject, Bankruptcy, Divorce, though formed into special
lists, would still be found together within the covers of the same
comprehensive volume on law, and, taken all together, would afford a
general view of whatever existed in print upon that grand division of
human knowledge. In the Dictionary Catalogue, where authors and subjects
are thrown together in the same alphabetical series, this advantage
would be lost; Bankruptcy would be in one part of the catalogue, Divorce
in another, and a general view of the entire body of legal literature
would not be available at all. The inconvenient bulk of a Dictionary
Catalogue (except in the case of small libraries, and any small library
may one day become a large one), would be owing to the necessity for
multiplying cross-references. To take Mr. Cutter's own illustration, a
treatise "On the Abolition of the Death Penalty" must be entered along
with other books referring to the subject under the head of "Capital
Punishment." The average reader, however, will not think of looking for
it there. He will turn to "Death" or under "Penalty," and, not finding
the book under either heading, will conclude that it does not exist in
the library. Two cross-references to "Capital Punishment" must
accordingly be made for his accommodation; and, after a few generations
of literary industry, the catalogue, like the proverbial wood, would be
invisible on account of the entries, generally speaking; the cardinal
error of plans for dictionary catalogues appears to us to be an
excessive deference to the claims of the average reader. Nothing can be
more natural, considering that these plans originated in Manchester and
were perfected in the United States, where the educational character is
much more distinctly impressed upon libraries than in England, and where
the appetite for knowledge is as yet in advance of the standard of
culture. It is fortunate when the librarian is able to consider not
merely what may be most acceptable to a miscellaneous body of
constituents, but also what is intrinsically fit and reasonable.
We must hold, then, that the alphabetical index of subjects should be
the auxiliary and complement of the Alphabetical Catalogue, not a part
of it; that each book should be entered in it, as in the catalogue, once
and once only; that the minor indexes should be grouped together so as
to form collectively a whole (_e.g._ ornithology and ichthyology, as
sub-sections of zoology); and that the operations of cataloguing and
indexing should go on _pari passu_. If this is attended to for the
future, the future will take care of itself; but "not Heaven itself upon
the past has power," and it is discouraging to think upon the immense
leeway which remains to be made up in most of our great public
libraries. The experience of the Bodleian will be very valuable, and we
must confess to much curiosity to see how long the operation of
classifying its multifarious contents will take. In the British Museum
the foundation of a classed catalogue has already been laid by a simple
process. As fast as the titles have been transcribed for insertion in
the three copies of the catalogue by a manifold writer, a fourth copy
has been taken, and this copy is arranged in the order of the books on
the shelves. As the various subjects are kept together in the library,
such an arrangement is practically equivalent to a rough classed
catalogue, which could be digested into order with comparative facility.
The publication of such a classified index, reduced to the utmost
possible brevity, offers, as it seems to us, the best solution of the
vexed question of the publication of the Museum Catalogue. On this point
much remains to be said. Meanwhile, before quitting the subject of
cataloguing methods, a tribute is due to Mr. Cutter's important
contribution to the subject, in his rules for his Dictionary Catalogue.
Next after the settlement of the Museum rules in 1839, these form the
most important epoch in the history of cataloguing. Agreeing with the
latter rules in the main, and when differing, generally, as we must
think, not differing for the better, they nevertheless contain a most
valuable body of acute reasoning and apt illustration, which it did not
fall within the province of the Museum authorities to provide; they
bring unusual experience and ability to bear upon the intricate subject
of classification, and are further reinforced by most ingenious remarks
on the economy and manipulation of print, making the mere variations of
type instructive.
Assuming the catalogue to be completed, the question remains for
decision whether it shall be printed. In most cases this question is
easily determined with reference to the circumstances of the individual
library; but in one instance the nation claims a voice in the matter. It
is hardly necessary to say that we refer to the Catalogue of the British
Museum, the theme of forty years' controversy. Every one will admit the
intrinsic superiority of a catalogue in print over a catalogue in MS.
The question is, whether the advantage may not be bought too dear. To
form a sound opinion on this point it is necessary to have an
approximate estimate of the extent of the Museum Catalogue, and of the
expenditure and the time involved in the undertaking to print it. Some
statistics may accordingly be useful. The printed volume of the
catalogue containing letter A, published in 1841, has about 20,000
entries. It forms about a twentieth part of the catalogue as it now
exists, which would accordingly comprise about 2,000,000 entries, in
about 100 folio volumes. In addition, however, to these titles now
existing in the catalogue, there are about 200,000 titles and
cross-references awaiting final revision, and which, unless the present
state of this revision is very considerably accelerated, will not be
ready for several years. During all this period, titles for new
acquisitions will keep pouring in at the rate of 40,000 per annum. All
the time that the catalogue is at press, somewhere between a decade and
a generation, they will continue to pour in, and will have to be
included as far as possible. We must consequently expect to have to deal
with from 3,000,000 to 4,000,000 titles, occupying from 150 to 200
volumes folio. It is clear that no private individual could afford
either to purchase or to store such a catalogue. It would, therefore,
only be useful to such institutions as might buy it or receive it as a
gift. Unlike the newspapers we have mentioned, its usefulness would
diminish in the ratio of its antiquity, and it could only be kept up to
the mark by a succession of supplements. The total cost of providing it,
minus these supplements, may be roughly estimated at £100,000. We
scarcely think that Government will incur such an expenditure for such a
purpose.
We should ourselves have little hesitation in pronouncing it undesirable
to print the Museum Catalogue as it stands, merely for the convenience
of the public. It is quite another question whether a recourse to print
may not be desirable in the interests of the Museum itself, and from
this point of view the answer must be widely different. It is desirable,
and will shortly become imperative. The reason is prosaic, but
unanswerable: the MS. catalogue cannot be much longer accommodated in
the Reading Room. Partly from necessity, partly from oversights, the
Museum Catalogue is most extravagant in the matter of space. To preserve
the alphabetical order of the entries, the titles are necessarily
movable, pasted, therefore, on each side of the catalogue leaf, thus
trebling the thickness of the latter. It is equally indispensable that
wide spaces should be left between the entries when a volume is first
laid down, and that when these become insufficient from the number of
additions, as is continually happening, the over-charged volume should
be divided into three or four. These inconveniences are unavoidable. It
can only be regretted that part of the available space of every slip is
lost in transcription; that scarcely a single transcriber appears to
have studied the art of packing; and that the catalogue is over-run with
practically duplicate entries of slightly differing editions,
transcribed at full length while they might have been expressed in a
single line. From all these causes the Museum Catalogue is rapidly
becoming unmanageable, and the time is approaching when the Reading Room
will contain it no longer. Something might no doubt be done to postpone
the evil day by excluding the map and music catalogues from the room;
but apart from its inconvenience, such a measure is obviously a mere
temporary palliative and ultimate aggravation of a difficulty which
acquires strength not _eundo_, but by standing still. The bulk of the
catalogue must be reduced, and we are not aware that any method has been
suggested, or exists, except a recourse to print. It is unfortunate that
this purely administrative measure, founded on no preference for print
over manuscript as such, but the simple dictate of an economic
necessity, should be so constantly confounded with the totally different
proposition to print and publish the catalogue like any other book, on
the expense and inutility of which we have already commented.
Publication is not in question: it is simply for the authorities to
consider whether the bulk of the MS. catalogue will not some day shut
out the public from access to it; and if this is found to be the case to
lose no time in averting the evil. We do not believe that the present
Principal Librarian, or his predecessor, entertains any doubt upon the
subject; the ultimate decision, however, rests neither with the
Principal Librarian nor the Trustees, but with the Treasury. From the
Treasury's point of view, it is to be observed that the present system
is financially justifiable only on condition of its being persisted in
to the end of time. If a resort to print will one day be compulsory,
existing arrangements are the climax of inconsiderate wastefulness. That
transcribing is cheaper than printing may be admitted, though it has
hardly been demonstrated. But to print is manifestly cheaper than to
print and transcribe also. Yet this is just what the Museum is doing if
the catalogue is ever to be printed at all. There are about 250,000
titles for the new catalogue still remaining to be transcribed. To
transcribe these at the present rate of progression would occupy about
fifteen years, but let us say ten. During this period titles for new
acquisitions would be coming in at the rate of 40,000 a year. These
would also be transcribed. The total number of transcripts would thus be
650,000. Now it seems to be seriously contemplated by the advocates of a
complete printed catalogue that all this enormous mass of careful copy
shall in a few years be completely superseded by print, and rendered
absolutely useless. After paying, let us say, threepence a slip to do
its work, the nation is to pay fourpence a slip more to undo it, and is
to be charged altogether twice as much as it need have been if it had
known what it wanted from the first. It is, indeed, high time for the
representatives of the nation in these matters to determine once and for
ever whether the catalogue is to be in print or manuscript. If MS., let
the idea of print be authoritatively discountenanced; but if print, let
the ruinous system be abandoned of paying highly for work performed only
to be undone.
The solution of these perplexities will be found, we think, in a strict
adherence to the principle that administrative arrangements must
primarily have respect to the advantage of the institution, which will
in the long run prove to be the advantage of the public. The Museum is
not bound to undertake the publication of an enormous printed catalogue
merely for the convenience of persons at a distance; but it will
introduce print in so far as print tends to economise its own funds, and
to obviate confusion and encumbrance in its own rooms. The two vital
points are to stop the waste incurred by transcribing what must
ultimately be printed, and to put an effectual check upon the portentous
growth of the catalogue. The first object may be attained by simply
resorting to print for the future, and pasting the printed slips into
the catalogue as the MS. slips are pasted now. The second can best be
accomplished by tolerating the mixture of printed and MS. slips in each
volume of the catalogue, until the volume has arrived from constant
accessions at such a bulk as to require breaking up, then printing the
MS. entries in that volume, and profiting by the economy in space of
print over MS. to rearrange the contents in double columns, which would
afford room for additions for an indefinite period. In this manner the
cost of printing would be spread over a long series of years, and the
catalogue would insensibly be transformed into a printed one by much the
same process as that by which Sir John Cutler's worsted stockings became
silk. Any requisite number of printed slips might be produced, and
offered by subscription to public institutions and private individuals.
The former might thus in process of time acquire the whole catalogue
without any violent strain upon their resources; the latter might
procure what they wanted without being compelled to take what they did
not want. It would at the same time be beneficial to the Museum and to
literature, if some of the most important articles were printed entire
and brought out as soon as possible for the sake of relieving the
pressure upon the catalogue. Such articles as Bible, Shakespeare,
Luther, Homer, embracing nearly complete bibliographies of the
respective subjects, would probably command a fair sale, and effect
something towards diminishing the inevitable cost of print.