Henry Wheatley - How to Catalogue a Library

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 pronoun. 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.

October, 1889.

Before we can answer the question implied in the title 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 classified 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 title 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 damned hard reading" was applicable to the work produced under these circumstances. 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 title-page; but now the opposite extreme of writing out the whole title, however long, is more common. It should be remembered that in the judicious compression of a title-page the art of the cataloguer is brought into play, for any one can copy out the whole of a long title. 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 class Bibliography; but we understand also by the word "bibliography" a collection of titles 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 titles, 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 titles in a catalogue and be at the cost of printing them when the title 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.