Henry B. Wheatley

“ To Sir Anthony Panizzi we owe rules for the making of catalogues: perhaps it would be more proper to say the codification of rules, for sound rules must have been in the mind of the compilers of good catalogues before his time. When one person makes a catalogue, he usually acts upon principles which are known to himself, although he may not have committed them to writing. ”

“ 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] ”

“ Hence every one of the Memoirs or papers in the acts of academies; every one of the articles in scientific journals or collections, whatever they may be, should have its separate place in the catalogue. Thus, for instance, all the letters in Hanschius' Collection should be entered in their proper places under the writers' names. It is only by carrying this principle to the fullest extent that a catalogue can be called complete, and a library, more particularly of books relating to science, made as useful as it is capable of being. ”

“ 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 [3] 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. ”

“ Jewett, in forming his rules, felt bound to place Arouet le jeune and Poquelin under the only names by which they are known, viz., Voltaire and Molière; and to cover his departure from rules he was following, he made this note: "The family name of an individual is to be considered that which he has or adopts for himself and his descendants rather than that which he received from his ancestors—his family name, not his father's." This, to a great extent, covers the case; for we are bound to take for our catalogue the name by which an author decides to be known, and by which he always is known. ”

“ 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 [6] 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. ”

“ If we settle that all anonymous works shall be entered under the authors' names when known, the question has still to be answered, What is to be done with those which remain unknown? Some cataloguers have objected to the insertion of subject-headings in the same alphabet with authors' names, and in the old catalogue of the Royal Society Library the plan was adopted of placing all anonymous titles under the useless heading of "Anonymous." ”

“ Cutter's remark, already referred to, that he who is the cause of a book's existence should be treated as the author, is a perfectly just one. Thus we are in the habit of using the word "editor" rather loosely. According to the work done by the so-called editor, we shall arrange the book under his name or not. If a man takes a book which already exists and edits it with notes, he establishes no right to have its title placed under his name. For instance, if the original book has an author, it goes under his name ”

“ The late Professor De Morgan made the following pertinent remarks on this point:—
[9]
"A classed 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 classed catalogue, and fall to work upon some author because he was therein set down? ”

“ The advantages of a printed catalogue he states under five heads: " (1) that it is in less danger of partial or total destruction than a manuscript volume or drawers of cards;" " (2) that it can be consulted out of the library;" " (3) that it can be consulted in other libraries;" " (4) that it is easier to read than the best manuscript volume, and very much easier to consult. A card presents to the eye only one title at a time, whereas a printed catalogue generally [55] has all an author's works on a single page. ”

“ It is necessary to bear in mind that catalogues are not really books, and to make them follow rules adapted for true books is only confusing, and leads to no useful end. One great advantage of bringing them under the heading of "Catalogues" is that they can be tabulated and the titles condensed. It becomes needless to repeat such formulæ as "to be sold by auction," or "forming the stock of," etc.
The title of a true book is an individual entity, the outcome of an author's mind; but this is not the case with a catalogue. ”

“ Besides the agnomen [102] some men had a cognomen, or strictly personal name, and some had two prenomens; so that it is not safe to take the middle of three names as the nomen for certain. In some cases the prenomens of authors have been lost, and others have come down to us without agnomens.
Having dealt with the chief difficulties connected with the arrangement of the name of an author when there is no doubt about who the author is, we must now pass on to those cases where there is some difficulty in deciding as to the authorship of a book. Many titles are purposely misleading. ”

“ Entering these only under the form-heading Catalogues belongs to the dark ages of cataloguing. Put the catalogue of a library under the library's name."
I cannot understand why a system of arranging catalogues under a general heading, where they are most likely to be sought for, should be stigmatized as belonging to the dark ages. It is impossible [126] to imagine a worse heading for an auction catalogue than the name of the auctioneer. His name is seldom quoted, and more often forgotten. ”

“ Again, Bohemian societies have both a German and a Bohemian title, and the cataloguer must choose which he will take.
It cannot be said that by arranging the societies under the names of the places [222] where they meet all difficulties are overcome, but it may safely be said that they are found with much greater ease by the consulter of the catalogue, than if they were spread about in the alphabet under the first words of their titles (not an article) , and this, I think, is the greatest advantage that can be claimed for any cataloguing scheme. ”

“ As a manuscript catalogue was one of the greatest advantages to a library, so a printed catalogue must of course be of a hundred times greater advantage" (p. 207) .
[18] I find that the merits of this plan are not so self-evident as I thought, for my friend, Mr. J. B. Bailey, Librarian of the Royal College of Surgeons, who has had experience of a double columned catalogue, prefers a single column with the verso of each page left for additions. I allow that there may be advantages in the latter, but as an octavo page of print is very narrow it is wasteful of space to have only one column. ”

“ The subject index which can be referred to in the MS. room is a work of the greatest value, and he who turns over a few pages of a few of the volumes of which this subject catalogue consists will obtain a more vivid idea of the exceeding richness of the MS. Department of the British Museum than by any other means. This classified catalogue we owe to Mr. Bond, formerly Keeper of the MSS., and late Principal Librarian, and every scholar must feel deep gratitude to him for this great gift of knowledge. ”

“ A pseudonym is an entity—a false name under cover of which an author chooses to write; but an anonymous book has a title from which an important something is omitted, viz., the author's name. You cannot express a negation such as this by a distinctive term like "anonym." ”

“ When titles are quoted pretty fully and accurately, it is seldom that the initials on a title are quoted; and if these initials are only at the end of the preface, they are never likely to be remembered. Thus by placing the title in the catalogue under the initials (in whatever order they may be taken) , it is buried entirely out of sight, and is practically useless. ”

“ Dr. Gray in his pamphlet (Letter to the Earl of Ellesmere, 1849) makes this extraordinary statement: "The works with authors' names, or with false names, should be arranged alphabetically, according to the names of the authors, taking care that the names used should be those that are on the title-pages; and, if an author have changed his or her name, that the work published under [38] the different names should be in different places in the alphabet" (p. 5) .
Mr. Parry gave much sensible evidence, and this point was submitted to him. ”

“ On the other hand, if a man collects together various pieces, and forms an entirely new and substantive work, he should be treated as the author, because without his initiative the book would have no existence. ”

“ When several assistants are employed to make a catalogue, it is positively necessary that the compiler in chief, who will be responsible for the whole work, should give directions to his assistants, so that they may all work on the same plan.
The famous code of ninety-one rules which was given to the world in 1841 (Catalogue of Printed Books in the British [26] Museum, vol. i., Letter A) had for its foundation a small number of rules originally devised by Mr. Baber [11] (the predecessor of Mr. Panizzi as Keeper of the Printed Books) . ”

“ For the purposes of the library, it is quite unnecessary to reprint or consolidate your supplements, because your library copy of the catalogue will always be kept up to date. If the library is a lending one, the subscribers will probably insist upon having new catalogues, as the supplements become too numerous; but this is only an additional instance of the advantages of a printed catalogue.
A printed catalogue should never be added to in manuscript, as this causes the greatest confusion; and, moreover, it is not necessary. It is quite possible to keep up a catalogue in print for many years ”

“ With the title-page of the book to be catalogued before us, our first care is to find the author's name. If there is no author's name, we must put the book aside for consideration later on. First of all, therefore, it is necessary to answer the question, What is an author?
Mr. Cutter's definition is as follows: "Author, in the narrower sense, is the person who writes a book; in a wider sense, it may be applied to him who is the cause of the book's existence, by putting together the writings of several authors (usually called the editor, more properly to be called the collector) . ”

“ 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. ”

“ If the author is consistent in using one name on all his or her works, there is no need to seek out a name which he or she does not use. The cataloguer's difficulty arises when different names are used at different periods of life; and, as his main duty is to bring all the works of an author under one heading, he must decide which of the different names he is to choose as a heading.
Mr. Cutter's rule is:—
"Married women, using the surname of the last husband, or if divorced, the name then assumed. ”

“ The word Academy is entirely foreign to our habits, and most of those academies which exist here are institutions quite distinct from societies which publish transactions. Almost the only exception to this rule is the Royal Irish Academy. Even abroad, societies are more numerous than academies. [32] With respect to the heading Periodical Publications, it may be said that transactions would logically come as properly under it as journals and magazines, because all are published periodically.
This subject of the arrangement of periodicals has not been treated of so exhaustively as it deserves. ”

“ For an author-catalogue this might be the best plan, but in a dictionary catalogue we have to deal with such people not merely as writers of books, but as subjects of biographies or parties in trials, and in such cases it seems proper to use their legal names. ”