Library edition

“ There is but one way of obtaining a perfect index to the condition of the national library at a given time: the catalogue must be reprinted along with the numerous accessions which have been accumulating while the first edition has been going through the press—a national undertaking which will commend itself to men of letters more readily than to ministers of finance. ”

“ A good edition for a library is the most desirable, and those committees are unwise which sacrifice quality for quantity. On the other hand, it is unfortunate that a more suitable arrangement cannot exist, whereby the artistic books, which, by reason of their decorative character, are perforce expensive, could be offered at less exorbitant rates to an institution of such social importance as a library. ”

“ If he has a doubt as to the title or edition, he will then refer to the Catalogue. But in my case, when I had copied both the Title and the Press-mark, I could not obtain the book, and you justify the neglect.
I entirely deny that your system causes a quicker delivery of books. On the contrary, I declare from experience that the delay is now much greater than it was before you introduced your scheme. A Reader is still, sometimes, told that a book is not in the Library, though he may have used it only a few days before. ”

“ No library, either public or private, can be complete without having in it a complete sett of the works of this, the greatest of all living authors. Every family should possess a sett of one of the editions. The cheap edition is complete in Twelve Volumes, paper cover ”

“ The Uniform Library will bring out a cheap edition for the people, first, of all his hitherto published works, to which will gradually be added his unpublished works as fast as they can be produced, that the British Public may be made familiar with all that he has written. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The chained tome in its medieval prison cell has been supplanted by the handy volume freely sent from the hospitable public library to the homes of the common people. The humblest citizen, today, has at his command books in number and in kind which royal treasuries could not have purchased five hundred years ago. In the sixteenth century, it took a flock of sheep to furnish the vellum for one edition of a book, and the product was for the very few; in the twentieth, a forest is felled to supply the paper for an edition, and the output goes to many hundred thousand readers. ”

“ There are only a few publishing houses who employ them who would not supply their books through the regular channels of trade. “Editions de luxe” are now generally understood to be for looks only, and “library editions” are frequently so called because they are for the private and not for the 24 public library, being put up in a way not warranted to withstand wear and tear.
Accession Book.—The accession book, which corresponds to the invoice book of a business house, is the first of all records to be made of a book after it has been acquired by a library. ”

“ Those of class 1 constitute the “board of direction,” which is presided over by the librarian, and meets from time to time to consider important measures connected with the administration of the library. Each library is to possess, alike for books and MSS., a general inventory, an accessions register, an alphabetical author-catalogue and a subject-catalogue. When they are ready, catalogues of the special collections are to be compiled, and these the government intends to print. A general catalogue of the MSS. was in 1910 being issued together with catalogues of oriental codices and incunabula. ”

“ Users should keep the following points in mind:
A work can be located only by author, title for an anonymous publication, or (sometimes) editor for an anthology or collection; WorldCat (E225) , Library of Congress Shelflist (E260a) , and LC Subject Catalog (E260a) provide subject access to some entries, and WorldCat and Cumulative Title Index to the Library of Congress Shelflist (E260a) offer title access. There are numerous errors and ghosts, particularly because a card that includes even a minor variation is frequently treated as representing an “edition.” ”

“ Imp. 8vo.
[17] A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, founded mainly on the materials collected by the Philological Society. Edited by James A.H. Murray, LL.D., with the assistance of many Scholars and Men of Science. Oxford, Clarendon Press. Royal 4to.
[18] A second edition appeared in 1871-72.
[Pg 141]
CHAPTER V. GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHIES.
A good collection of bibliographies is indispensable for a public library, and will also be of great use in a private library when its possessor is a true lover of books. ”

“ I. BOOKS
*American catalog of books in print from 1876–1896, 5v. with annual supplement. The Publishers' weekly, N.Y. Several of the volumes are out of print. All are expensive. They are not needed by the very small library. The recent years of the annual volumes are essential.
Card catalog rules; accessions-book rules; shelf-list rules; Library Bureau, 1899, $1.25. These are called the Library school rules.
Catalog of A.L.A. library; 5000v. for a popular library, selected by the American Library Association, and shown at the World's Columbian exhibition, Washington, 1893. ”

“ The publishers will be pleased to send, upon request, an illustrated catalogue setting forth the purposes and ideals of The Modern Library, and describing in detail each volume in the series. Every reader of books will find titles he has been looking for, attractively printed, and at an unusually low price. ”

“ Ordinary books can be reserved at the seat: manuscripts and valuable printed books are given up each day, and kept for re-issue. Free access to the shelves is not possible in so large a library, but arrangements are made to suit reasonable requirements: the Reference books are numerous, and the Subject Catalogue and lists of Accessions are provided. A Manual for Readers, giving further detail, can be obtained on application, without payment, as well as the Rules for Cataloguing and lists of the numerous collections, both manuscript and printed. ”

“ If the number of periodicals taken is quite large the display space needed for them is quite out of proportion to the use made of them. Recent back numbers of most journals, as well as the last numbers, should be made accessible to readers, and for this there is no provision in the vertical file arrangement. There seems no better reason for exposing to the casual reader of the reading room the full fronts of all the journals the library takes than there is for making a similar display of all the books the library buys. ”

“ Reference work in libraries large and small has for its first rule: Meet the inquirer more than half way. To the stranger a library is often an oppressive place, an awesome place—in his imagination. He comes in shyly; everyone appears busy, his question suddenly seems to him trivial; he won't trouble these wise and busy people with it—and goes out. ”

“ You will readily see, therefore, that in order to select a new library it is necessary to have forty or fifty approved and unassigned books to choose from, and never is a set made up with its fairy tales, pictures of sweet domestic life, stories of adventure, simple history and biography, short stories, long stories, fact and fancy, humor and pathos—never is a set made up, preliminary to starting out upon its first visit, without my mouth watering to read them all myself. ”

“ It shall be the duty of the librarian to cause to be printed, at as early a date as practicable, a full and accurate catalogue of all books, maps, globes, charts, papers, apparatus, and valuable specimens in any way belonging to said library ”

“ It occupies no less than thirty-eight treble-columned folio pages, and contains the titles of more than three thousand works. To attempt to convey to the reader an idea of this curious and sumptuous library, without transcribing a large proportion of its catalogue, I am afraid will be a futile labor; but as that would occupy too much space, and to many of my readers be, after all, dry and uninteresting, I shall merely give the names of some of the most conspicuous. Years indeed it must have required to have amassed a collection so brilliant and superb in those days of book scarcity. ”

“ There are relics of the age before circulating libraries, there are fragments of the lettered store of some scholarly great-grandfather, and these, with a few odd numbers of magazines, a few primers and manuals, some sermons and novels, make up the ordinary library of an English household. But the amateur, whom we have in our thoughts, can never be satisfied with these commonplace supplies. He has a taste for books more or less rare, and for books neatly bound; in short, for books, in the fabrication of which art has not been absent. ”

“ This is an age of books of reference, and as knowledge increases, and the books which impart it to readers become unwieldy from their multitude, there are sure to be forthcoming those who will reduce the facts into a handy form. I have gathered in the following pages the titles of some of the best books of reference which are to be obtained. Many, if not all of these, are to be found in that magnificent library of reference—the Reading Room of the British Museum. In some cases where the books are constantly being reprinted, dates have been omitted. ”

“ Figures such as we have presented are really no guide to the worth of an individual library, or of a library system, to the people. That can be learned only by the comparison of experiences by the men who have charge of the books and their distribution, but the elements for such an analysis are wanting. The yearly use of books in 742 libraries in 1875 was 8,879,869 volumes, or from two to two and a half times the number of volumes on the shelves of the reporting libraries. ”

“ Nevertheless, it is a very practical one, covering the popular side of most subjects, and including a body of imaginative literature which no household need be ashamed to possess. The bulk of the works are those which enjoy great and continuous popularity in Public Libraries, many of them are classics, a few are included because of their historical value, and every book is interesting. From this series of suggestions, any householder can gradually build up his Home Library, varying the selection to meet his own views or tastes, and omitting anything which may seem unsuitable. ”

“ Most librarians in libraries of several years’ standing have been confronted with the difficulty of obtaining copies of certain books which have been allowed to go out of print by their publishers. The number of such books is rapidly increasing, and among them are works which have taken a recognized place in English literature, as well as many others which have obtained a certain value by being enshrined in the catalogues of hundreds of public and other libraries. ”

“ Where on the shelves of the library is a certain book to be found, if it is not in use by a reader?
To answer these questions certain “entries”, or records, are made in the catalog, called the author, title, subject and series entries. Question 6, which is asked in connection with all the other questions, is answered by the call number, which appears on every entry.
The most general book of reference is the dictionary. Every one is more or less familiar with its arrangement. ”

“ Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen—There are those who maintain that there is no such thing as a special library in a class of its own, but that what we call a special library is simply a general reference library which by the needs of its patrons has become somewhat specialized in its methods and in its equipment. ”

“ Some libraries require a sponsor or guarantor for each one drawing books, but this is going out of favor and only an identification is demanded. When the library is small or the patronage is large it is customary to limit the number of volumes a person can have out at one time to two, one volume of fiction and one non-fiction. ”

“ The moral to be pointed out is that the catalog must be good as a first requisite to a library. In the words of the old comparison, the catalog is the key to the otherwise hidden material buried in books. In a library of any size, the best desk attendant in the world is almost helpless, or at best constantly handicapped, without a convenient and rational classification of the volumes of the collection and the bibliographical aid of a catalogue. The born bibliographer is as rare as the born teacher or poet. ”

“ In the past librarians have hesitated to discard any book which has once been placed on the shelves. They have believed that all printed matter has value and that a book which belongs to the library is sacred and must on [Pg 132] no account be destroyed. It is difficult to defend such an attitude. If we admit for the time being that the librarian never makes mistakes in acquiring books, still it is sure to happen that many books will outlive their usefulness, except as a part of the history or bibliography of the subject. ”

“ It is, of course, entirely practicable to publish a complete and satisfactory catalogue of a library which is stationary. But most public libraries are constantly and rapidly increasing. This circumstance, so gratifying on every other account, is the source of the difficulties alluded to. ”