How to Catalogue a Library

Sometimes a title-page not only gives no real indication of the contents of a book, but is positively misleading. In such a case the cataloguer will do well to give some indication of the true contents, either in a note or as an addition to the title within brackets. Both Mr. Cutter and Professor Otis Robinson refer, in the Special Report on Public Libraries in the United States, to the difficulties caused by these misleading titles. Professor Robinson gives some amusing instances of modern clap-trap titles which may well be added to Disraeli's Curiosities of Literature.

"Mr. Parker writes a series of biographical sketches, and calls it Morning Stars of the New World. Somebody prepares seven religious essays, binds them up in a book, and calls it Seven Stormy Sundays.... An editor, at intervals of business, indulges his true poetic taste for the pleasure of his friends, or the entertainment of an occasional audience. Then his book appears, entitled, not Miscellaneous Poems, but Asleep in the Sanctum, by A. A. Hopkins. Sometimes, not satisfied with one enigma, another is added. Here we have The Great Iron Wheel; or, Republicanism Backwards and Christianity Reversed, by J. R. Graves."

In cataloguing books it is very important to turn carefully over the leaves to see that a second book, which may have been bound up in the volume, is not overlooked. It was a frequent practice at one time to bind up thin books with thicker ones, to save the expense of binding; and very frequently these thin additions are overlooked altogether, and never catalogued.

Place of Publication

When we have finished with the title proper, we come to consider the imprint, the date, and the size. These are most commonly arranged thus, volumes, size, place, date; and this is the best order if this information is tabulated; but when it remains as a part of the title, it is better to place the volumes and size at the end, because this is added information not found in the title-page.

The name of the place of publication[27 - The names of places as they appear in a Latin form are frequently much disguised. A list of some of the most common of these names will be found in the Appendix.] should be given exactly as it occurs on the title-page, and in old and rare books the name of the printer or publisher may be added with advantage; not necessarily full as it appears there, but shortened and placed between parentheses. Sometimes several places are named on a title-page, but in these cases it is not necessary to notice more than the first.

Dates

The dates, which usually occur in Roman numerals on the title-pages of books, should be printed in the catalogue with Arabic numerals, except in case of very rare books, where it is thought expedient to copy the original title-page exactly. Every one knows the numerical power of the letters, and that M stands for 1,000, D = 500, C = 100, L = 50, X = 10, V, U, = 5, I = 1; but the old printers were fond of playing tricks with the letters, and they allowed themselves much latitude in the practice of reducing the numerical power of one letter by placing another before it. We are used to this in IV and IX; but the following dates, copied from books, show how varied were the arrangements formerly made use of:—

MIID. = 1498, MID. = 1499, MCDXCIX. = 1499, MDXXCV. = 1585, MDIC. = 1599, MDCVIV. = 1609, MIIDCC. = 1698.

In one book MVICXXI. was made to stand for 1621; but in this case the printer must have lacked a D, and replaced it by VI. In old books the M's and the D's are frequently built up thus,

I

, I

.

The date is one of the most important portions of a title, and the cataloguer must seek for it until he finds it. Sometimes it is to be found at the end of the preface or dedication, and sometimes it is on the title-page as a chronogram. Mr. James Hilton for years has searched over Europe for chronograms, and he has been highly successful in his search, as is evidenced by his two handsome volumes, Chronograms, 5,000 and more in Number (1882), and Chronograms Continued and Concluded (1885).

The following specimens are from Mr. Hilton's books:—

"Anagrammata regia in honorem maximi mansuetissimi regis Caroli conscripta."

Imprint:—

"LonDInI regIo prIVILegIo eXaratVM = 1626."

On the last page is:—

"eXtant Ista In æDIbVs gVLIeLMI stansbIe = 1626"

A curious little book (a chronographic imitation of Thomas à Kempis) is filled with chronograms, and contains two on the title-page:—

De spIrItaLI IMItatIone ChrIstI [1658] aDMonItIones saCræ et VtILes [1658] pIIs In LVCeM Datæ: [1658]."

"a R.P. Antonio Vanden Stock Societatis Jesu. Ruræmundæ apud Gasparem du Pree."

On the frontispiece is another chronogram:—

"chrIsto aDhærens non aMbVLat In tenebrIs."

Mr. Hilton has succeeded in finding several additions to the small store of chronograms in English, and has produced some new ones.

On the back of the title-page of the first book is this inscription:—

"An eXCeLLent neVV book of ChronograMs gathereD together & noVV set forth by I. hILton, F.S.A. = 1882."

On the second book:—

"Another qVIte neVV book of rIght eXCeLLent chronograMs IssVeD by I. hILton, F.S.A." = 1885.

More difficult than chronograms are Greek dates, because each letter in Greek has a numerical value, and the numbers do not follow in an uninterrupted series, because certain additional figures are introduced. It is therefore often necessary in cataloguing Greek books to refer to a table such as the following:—

It will be noticed that the top letters of each series spell "αιρ," which can be borne in mind. The irregularities in the series are final ςʹ for six, and the invented letters, for 90 and 900. The same series of letters, with the accent beneath instead of above, are used for thousands, as—

There is considerable difficulty in dating books published in France between September 1792, when the French Revolutionary Calendar was introduced, and December 1805, when the Gregorian mode of calculation was restored by Napoleon, because the Revolutionary year began with the autumn. It is impossible therefore, as the months are not usually given in the imprints of books, to tell whether a book dated an. 1 was published in 1792 or 1793. It is usual, however, to reckon from 1792, and to count an. 8, for instance, as 1800, by which means an approximate date is obtained.

Size-Notation

When we come to the last piece of description on our catalogue slip, we experience considerable difficulty in certain cases. The statement of the case of size-notation, which has caused so much discussion, and given rise to so many schemes, is so well put by the late Mr. Winter Jones, in his inaugural address at the Conference of Librarians held in London, October 1877, that I shall transfer it to these pages:—

"One of these points is the designation of the sizes of books. As regards modern books, the folding of the sheets of paper is generally received as the guide, but it is not a guide which speaks to the eye. Some duodecimos may be larger than some octavos, and some octavos may be larger than some folios, to say nothing of the uncertainty of the quartos. When we come to ancient books the matter is still worse. The early printers did not use large sheets of paper and fold them twice or more to form quartos, octavos, etc., but merely folded their paper once, thus making what is now understood by the terms folios or quartos, according to the size of the sheet of paper. Three or more of these sheets were laid one within another, and formed gatherings or quires, each sheet after the first in each gathering being called an inlay.[28 - It was this practice which confused a correspondent of the Athenæum, who published his discovery that the first folio of Shakespeare was not a folio at all.] This printing by gatherings was adopted for the convenience of binding. The consequence of this practice would be that the printer would either print one page at a time or two, but no more. If two, he would have to divide the matter to be printed into portions sufficient for eight, twelve, sixteen, or twenty pages, according to the number of inlays in each gathering, and then print, say the first and twelfth, then the second and the eleventh, and so on; and the result of this practice is occasionally seen in an inequality in the length of the pages, particularly in the centre inlay, which would be printed last, and would therefore have either too much or too little matter if the calculation of the quantity necessary for each page had not been exact. It has been suggested that the difficulty might be met by adopting the size of the printed page as the guide, but such a guide would certainly be fallacious. It would not indicate the size of the volume; it would not allow for the many cases of 'oceans of margins and rivers of text;' it would not speak to the eye without opening the book. The better plan would appear to be to adopt, to a certain extent, the system used by bookbinders. As they regulate their charges according to the size of the millboard required for binding their book, their scale is independent of the folding of the printed sheet. It contains twenty-nine divisions or designations of different sizes, of which twenty-six represent modifications of the five sizes of folio, 4to, 8vo, 12mo, and 18mo, a striking proof of the uncertainty of the sizes supposed to be indicated by these five terms. I speak, of course, of the measure used by English bookbinders. It would certainly be advisable that some rule should be laid down, which might apply to all countries, by which the general sizes of books might be designated, and minute subdivisions be avoided. Why should we designate sizes by paper marks, and talk of pot quartos and foolscap octavos? The pot and the foolscap are things of the past. It would surely be better to adopt some such rule as the following: To designate as 12mo all books not exceeding seven inches in height; as 8vo all those above seven and not exceeding ten inches in height; as 4to those above ten and not exceeding twelve inches in height; and as folio all above twelve inches. The folios might be further described, according to the fact, as large or super, in order to avoid the various subdivisions of crown, copy, demy, medium, royal, imperial, elephant, and columbier folio."

At the Exhibition of Library Appliances in connection with the London Conference, Mr. F. Weaklin submitted seven diagrams of eighty-two sizes given to books, from imperial 4to to demy 48mo, and the matter had already been under special consideration in the United States. Mr. Jewett suggested that after the description 8vo, 4to, etc., the exact height and width in inches and tenths of inches should be added between brackets. He measured print; but, as pointed out by Mr. Winter Jones in the above quotation, this measurement overlooks one of the most important points in respect to the character and value of a book, viz., the size of the margin. When the late Sir William Stirling Maxwell wished to adopt Mr. Jewett's suggestion, I recommended that the width and height of the actual page should be measured, and this was done in An Essay towards a Collection of Books relating to Proverbs, Emblems, Apophthegms, Epitaphs, and Ana, being a Catalogue of those at Keir (1860), which I edited for him.

This system of measurement is not needed in a small library, where the ordinary nomenclature is sufficient. The real difficulty underlying the whole subject was pointed out by Mr. Bradshaw in his paper at the Cambridge Meeting of the Library Association, "A Word on Size Notation as distinguished from Form Notation." He there states two facts often overlooked: "(1) That the terms folio, quarto, octavo, etc., represent strictly not size-notation, but form-notation; and (2) That the modern methods of making paper and of printing books combine to render any accurate application of form-notation to such books not so much difficult as impossible. The logical conclusion from these two facts is, of course, that the form-notation expressed by the terms folio, quarto, octavo, etc., should be given up in the case of modern books, to which it is wholly inapplicable; and that a size-notation which does represent an undoubted fact, should be adopted in its place. This logical conclusion was seen, accepted, and acted upon at Cambridge in the year 1854; and I confess that it is difficult to resist the conviction that this principle must sooner or later be accepted by others, though there will no doubt be differences of opinion as to the most advisable form of notation to adopt. A librarian cannot afford to be eccentric in this matter; whatever method is adopted, it must be adopted by all the great libraries, and it must commend itself to the general reader. Now I feel sure that I shall not be taxed with dogmatism or with any predilection for some crotchet of my own devising, if I say that the complicated and artificial systems recommended by the Committee and others, are such as cannot possibly become familiar, even if they become intelligible, to the general run of readers. In the old Cambridge size-notation of London 1856, 8 × 5 meaning eight inches high by five inches across, the second number denoting the breadth very soon fell out of use, except in writing, and for years we always spoke of books as eights, sevens, sixes, etc., meaning that they were eight, seven, or six inches high."

To this passage is added the following note:—

"The practice in use with us has been to measure the height of the book from the top to the bottom of the page, disregarding the cover. We compute inches as we compute a man's age; a book is eight inches until it is nine inches, only, seeing that bound books are so often cut not quite square, anything short of the number used in the size-notation by the eighth of an inch or less, we call by that number for ordinary purposes. I have said above that in our General Library Catalogue we have reverted to the common form-notation, 8vo, 12mo, etc., but pure size-notation is still retained in other departments, while in Trinity College Library it has never been given up since it was first adopted in 1856 or thereabouts."

The committee referred to by Mr. Bradshaw was the Size-Notation Committee of the Library Association, of which my brother, the late Mr. B. R. Wheatley, was a member. He took great interest in this subject, and drew up a scale of sizes which might be marked upon an ordinary two-foot rule. He was anxious that "a system should be adopted based on the well-known terms hitherto employed of folio, 4to, 8vo, 12mo, etc., and their qualifying varieties of imperial, royal, etc., with an approximate height and width in inches affixed to each size."

I think that Mr. Bradshaw's argument is convincing against making any arbitrary rule of this kind, and affixing a definite size to every variety of form-designation. But at the same time we must remember that the form-notation has very largely been used for a size-notation, and that bibliographers alone cannot make this change, because publishers, booksellers, and bookbinders all use the notation as well as cataloguers. After all I cannot help thinking that the difficulty has been very greatly exaggerated. Folio and quarto are almost entirely used as terms of form-notation, and they are usually found sufficient except in the case of atlas or elephant folios, which seem to require some distinguishing designation. Nowadays a large number of library books are in what is called demy octavo. This I would distinguish as octavo, and all below that size I would call small octavos, and all above large octavos. Very few modern books are styled duodecimos; therefore that form will not give the cataloguer much trouble. It is clearly useless for the latter to distinguish books by such meaningless terms as foolscap octavo, post octavo, etc., like the publisher. Of course there is the difference in size between old and new books. The ordinary octavo of the old books is a smaller size than the modern octavo, but this will be settled by the date, and among the old books there will be no difficulty in finding duodecimos.

Mr. Nicholson has entered very fully into this question of size-notation in his Bodleian Rules, where he gives two tables as guides for correct description. Rule 57 is: "The size of a book printed on water-marked paper is to be described in accordance with Table I., on unwater-marked paper with Table II."

Collation

In most catalogues the note of the size will finish the entry, but it is a very useful addition when the number of pages of all books in single volumes is given. Sometimes the pages of the book itself only are noted without reference to the preliminary matter, and sometimes the Roman numerals are added on to the Arabic numerals and given as one total; but this latter practice is not to be commended. The best plan is to set down the pages thus—pp. xv, 421 (some put this pp. xv + 421, but the plus sign is not necessary); or if the preliminary matter is not paged, thus—half-title, title, five preliminary leaves, pp. 467.

In the case of very rare and valuable works, a full collation becomes necessary, and such collation should be drawn up according to the plan accepted among bibliographers, which can be seen in the standard bibliographies of early printed books, and such a model bibliography as Upcott's Bibliographical Account of the Principal Works relating to English Topography (3 vols., 8vo, 1818).

Even when it is not thought necessary to give a collation, it will be well to notice if a book contains a portrait, or plates.

CHAPTER V.

REFERENCES AND SUBJECT INDEX

I suppose it may be conceded that in the abstract the most useful kind of catalogue is that which contains the titles and subject references in one alphabet; but in the particular case of a large library this system is not so convenient, because the subject references unnecessarily swell the size of the catalogue, and by their frequency confuse the title entries. For instance, it is something appalling to conjecture what would be the size of the British Museum Catalogue if subject references were included in the general alphabet. In the case of a large library it will be more convenient to have an index of subjects forming a separate alphabet by itself, and this cannot be made until the catalogue of authors is completed. Taking a somewhat arbitrary limit, it may be said that in libraries containing more than ten thousand volumes it will be found more useful to have a distinct index of subjects, while in catalogues of libraries below that number it will generally be advisable to include the subject references with the titles in one general alphabet.