Part 1

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U. S. Bureau Of Education Special Report On Public Libraries—Part II

RULES FOR A DICTIONARY CATALOGUE

by

CHARLES A. CUTTER

Librarian Of The Boston Athenæum

Third Edition With Corrections and Additions and an Alphabetical Index

Washington Government Printing Office 1891

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by Charles A. Cutter, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

{3}

PREFATORY NOTE.

There are plenty of treatises on classification, of which accounts may be found in Edwards’s Memoirs of Libraries and Petzholdt’s Bibliotheca Bibliographica. The classification of the St. Louis Public School Library Catalogue is briefly defended by W. T. Harris in the preface (which is reprinted, with some additions, from the Journal of Speculative Philosophy for 1870). Professor Abbot’s plan is explained in a pamphlet printed and in use at Harvard College Library, also in his “Statement respecting the New Catalogue” (part of the report of the examining committee of the library for 1863), and in the North American Review for January, 1869. The plan of Mr. Schwartz, librarian of the Apprentices’ Library, New York, is partially set forth in the preface to his catalogue; and a fuller explanation is preparing for publication. For an author-catalogue there are the famous 91 rules of the British Museum[1] (prefixed to the Catalogue of Printed Books, Vol. 1, 1841, or conveniently arranged in alphabetical order by Th. Nichols in his Handbook for Readers at the British Museum, 1866); Professor Jewett’s modification of them (Smithsonian Report on the Construction of Catalogues, 1852); Mr. F. B. Perkins’s further modification (in the American Publisher for 1869), and a chapter in the second volume of Edwards.[2] But for a dictionary-catalogue as a whole, and for most of its parts, there is no manual whatever. Nor have any of the above-mentioned works attempted to set forth the rules in a systematic way or to investigate what might be called the first principles of cataloguing. It is to be expected that a first attempt will be incomplete, and I shall be obliged to librarians for criticisms, objections, or new problems, with or without solutions. {4} With such assistance perhaps a second edition of these hints would deserve the title—Rules.[3]

[note] 1. Compiled by a committee of five, Panizzi, Th. Watts, J. Winter Jones, J. H. Parry, and E. Edwards, in several months of hard labor.[/note]

[note] 2. To these may now be added: Condensed rules for an author and title catalogue, prepared by the co-operation committee, A. L. A. (printed in the Appendix of the present Rules); F: B. Perkins’s San Francisco cataloguing (1884); C: Dziatzko’s Instruction für die Ordnung der Titel im alphabetischen Zettelkatalog der Univ. Bibliothek zu Breslau (1886), of which an adaptation by Mr. K. A: Linderfelt will shortly be published; Melvil Dewey’s Condensed rules for a card catalogue, with 36 sample cards (published in the _Library notes_, v. 1, no. 2, 1886, and reprinted as “Rules for author and classed catalogs;” with changes, additions, and a “Bibliography of catalog rules” by Mary Salome Cutler, Boston, 1888, and again as “Library School rules,” Boston, 1889); G. Fumagalli’s Cataloghi di biblioteche (1887); H: B. Wheatley’s How to catalogue a library (1889); and various discussions in the _Library journal_, the _Neuer Anzeiger_, and the _Centralblatt für Bibliothekswesen_.[/note]

[note] 3. In this second edition I have retained the discussions of principles of the first edition and added others, because it seems to me to be quite as important to teach cataloguers the theory, so that they can catalogue independently of rules, as to accustom them to refer constantly to hard and fast rules. The index, which will be published separately, has been enlarged so as to form an alphabetical or “dictionary” arrangement of the rules.[/note]

{5}

CONTENTS.

PREFATORY NOTE • 3

CONTENTS • 5

GENERAL REMARKS • 7 OBJECTS • 8 MEANS • 8 REASONS FOR CHOICE AMONG METHODS • 8 DEFINITIONS (with a note on classification) • 8

ENTRY (Where to enter) • 15 I. AUTHOR-ENTRY • 15 CATALOGUE • 15 A. AUTHORS • 16 (a.) Personal • 17 (i.) Who is to be considered author • 17 (ii.) What part of the name is to be used • 20 (iii.) What form of the name is to be used • 24 (b.) Corporate • 27 B. SUBSTITUTES FOR AUTHORS • 33 C. REFERENCES • 35 D. ECONOMIES • 37 II. TITLE-ENTRY • 38 CATALOGUE • 38 TITLES • 38 III. SUBJECT-ENTRY • 45 CATALOGUE • 45 SUBJECTS • 46 (a.) Entries considered separately • 49 (i.) Choice between different subjects • 49 (ii.) Choice between different names • 49 (b.) Entries considered as parts of a whole • 57 IV. FORM-ENTRY • 59 V. ANALYSIS • 60

STYLE (How to enter) • 61 CATALOGUE • 61 VI. STYLE • 62 A. HEADINGS • 63 B. TITLES (Abridgment, etc.) • 67 C. EDITIONS • 73 D. IMPRINTS • 74 E. CONTENTS AND NOTES • 78 F. REFERENCES • 79 G. LANGUAGE • 80 H. CAPITALS • 80 I. PUNCTUATION, etc. • 81 J. ARRANGEMENT • 83 (a.) Headings • 83 (b.) Titles • 88 (c.) Contents • 92 (d.) Subjects • 93 K. Etc. (Sets, Rare books, etc.) • 98

APPENDICES I. Condensed Rules for an Author and Title Catalog. A. American Library Association • 99 B. Library Association of the United Kingdom • 103 C. Bodleian • 104 D. Dewey’s Rules • 107 II. Transliteration. A. American Library Association • 108 B. Sanskrit • 112 C. Semitic • 113 D. Russian • 114 III. Book sizes (American Library Association) • 115 IV. Alphabetical Order (Edmands) • 116 V. Abbreviations • 119 VI. Other Catalogues for Librarians • 126 VII. Bibliographical aids in cataloguing • 128

INDEX • 135

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RULES

FOR A

DICTIONARY CATALOGUE.

No code of cataloguing could be adopted in all points by every one, because the libraries for study and the libraries for reading have different objects, and those which combine the two do so in different proportions. Again, the preparation of a catalogue must vary as it is to be manuscript or printed, and, if the latter, as it is to be merely an index to the library, giving in the shortest possible compass clues by which the public can find books, or is to attempt to furnish more information on various points, or finally is to be made with a certain regard to what may be called style. Without pretending to exactness, we may divide dictionary catalogues into short-title, medium-title, and full-title or bibliographic; typical examples of the three being, 1º, the Boston Mercantile (1869) or the Cincinnati Public (1871); 2º, the Boston Public (1861 and 1866), the Boston Athenæum (1874–82); 3º, the author-part of the Congress (1869) and the Surgeon-General’s (1872–74) or least abridged of any, the present card catalogue of the Boston Public Library. To avoid the constant repetition of such phrases as “the full catalogue of a large library” and “a concise finding list,” I shall use the three words Short, Medium, and Full as proper names, with the preliminary caution that the Short family are not all of the same size, that there is more than one Medium, and that Full may be Fuller and Fullest. Short, if single-columned, is generally a title-a-liner; if printed in double columns, it allows the title occasionally to exceed one line, but not, if possible, two; Medium does not limit itself in this way, but it seldom exceeds four lines, and gets many titles into a single line. Full usually fills three or four lines and often takes six or seven for a title.

The number of the following rules is not owing to any complexity of system, but to the number of cases to which a few simple principles have to be applied. They are especially designed for Medium, but may easily be adapted to Short by excision and marginal notes. The almost universal practice of printing the shelf-numbers or the class-numbers renders some of them unnecessary for town and city libraries. {8}

OBJECTS.[4]

1. To enable a person to find a book of which either

(A) the author, (B) the title, or (C) the subject is known.

2. To show what the library has

(D) by a given author (E) on a given subject (F) in a given kind of literature.

3. To assist in the choice of a book

(G) as to its edition (bibliographically). (H) as to its character (literary or topical).

MEANS.

1. Author-entry with the necessary references (for A and D). 2. Title-entry or title-reference (for B). 3. Subject-entry, cross-references, and classed subject-table (for C and E). 4. Form-entry[5] (for F). 5. Giving edition and imprint, with notes when necessary (for G). 6. Notes (for H).

[note] 4. _Note to second edition._ This statement of Objects and Means has been criticized; but as it has also been frequently quoted, usually without change or credit, in the prefaces of catalogues and elsewhere, I suppose it has on the whole been approved.[/note]

[note] 5. Here the whole is designated by its most important member. The full name would be form-and-language entry. Kind-entry would not suggest the right idea.[/note]

REASONS FOR CHOICE

among the several possible methods of attaining the OBJECTS.

Other things being equal, choose that entry

(1) That will probably be first looked under by the class of people who use the library;

(2) That is consistent with other entries, so that one principle can cover all;

(3) That will mass entries least in places where it is difficult to so arrange them that they can be readily found, as under names of nations and cities.

This applies very slightly to entries under first words, because it is easy and sufficient to arrange them by the alphabet.

DEFINITIONS.

There is such confusion in the use of terms in the various prefaces to catalogues—a confusion that at once springs from and leads to confusion of thought and practice—that it is worth while to propose a systematic nomenclature.

_Analysis._ See _Reference, Analytical_. {9}

_Anonymous_, published without the author’s name.

Strictly a book is not anonymous if the author’s name appears anywhere in it, but it is safest to treat it as anonymous if the author’s name does not appear in the title.

Note that the words are “in the title,” not “on the title-page.” Sometimes in Government publications the author’s name and the title of his work do not appear on the title-page but on a page immediately following. Such works are not anonymous.

_Asyndetic_, without cross-references. See _Syndetic_.

_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_). Bodies of men (societies, cities, legislative bodies, countries) are to be considered the authors of their memoirs, transactions, journals, debates, reports, etc.

_Class_, a collection of objects having characteristics in common.

Books are classified by bringing together those which have the same characteristics.[6] Of course any characteristics might be taken, as size, or binding, or publisher. But as nobody wants to know what books there are in the library in folio, or what quartos, or what books bound in russia or calf, or what published by John Smith, or by Brown, Jones, and Robinson, these bases of classification are left to the booksellers and auctioneers and trade sales. Still, in case of certain unusual or noted bindings, as human skin or Grolier’s, or early or famous publishers, as Aldus and Elzevir, a partial class-list is sometimes very properly made. But books are most commonly brought together in catalogues because they have the same authors, or the same subjects, or the same literary form, or are written in the same language, or were given by the same donor, or are designed for the same class of readers. When brought together because they are by the same author, they are not usually thought of as classified; they form the author-catalogue, and need no further mention here except in regard to arrangement. The classes, _i. e._, in this case the authors, might of course be further classified according to their nations, or their professions (as the subjects are in national or professional biographies), or by any other set of common characteristics, but for library purposes an alphabetical arrangement according to the spelling of their names is universally acknowledged to be the best.

The classification by language is not generally used in full. There are catalogues in which all the English books are separated from all the foreign; in others there are separate lists of French books or German books. The needs of each library must determine whether it is worth while to prepare such lists. It is undeniably useful in almost any library to make lists of the belles lettres in the different languages; which, though nominally a classification by language, is really a classification by literary form, the object being to bring together all the works with a certain national flavor—the French flavor, the German flavor, or it may be a classing by readers, the German books being catalogued together for a German population, the French for the French, and so on. Again, it is useful to give lists not of the belles lettres alone, but of all the works in the rarer languages, as the Bodleian and the British Museum have published separate lists of their Hebrew books. Here too the circumstances of each library must determine where it shall draw the line between those literatures which it will put by themselves and those which it will include and hide in the mass of its general catalogue. Note, however, that some of the difficulties of transliterating {10} names of modern Greek, Russian authors, etc., are removed by putting their original works in a separate catalogue, though translations still remain to puzzle us.

The catalogue by donors or original owners is usually partial (as those of the Dowse, Barton, Prince, and Ticknor libraries). The catalogues by classes of readers are also partial, hardly extending beyond «Juvenile literature» and «Sunday-school books». Of course many subject classes amount to the same thing, the class «Medicine» being especially useful to medical men, «Theology» to the theologians, and so on.

Classification by subject and classification by form are the most common. An example will best show the distinction between them. «Theology», which is itself a subject, is also a class, that is, it is extensive enough to have its parts, its chapters, so to speak (as «Future Life», «Holy Spirit», «Regeneration», «Sin», «Trinity»), treated separately, each when so treated (whether in books or only in thought) being itself a subject; all these together, inasmuch as they possess this in common, that they have to do with some part of the relations of God to man, form the class of subjects «Theology». Class, however, is applied to «Poetry» in a different sense. It then signifies not a collection of similar subjects, but a collection of books resembling one another in being composed in that form and with that spirit, whatever it is, which is called poetical. In the subject-catalogue class it is used in the first sense—collection of similar subjects; in the form-catalogue it is used in the second—list of similar books.

Most systems of classification are mixed, as the following analysis of one in actual use in a small library will show:

Art, science, and natural history. _Subj._ History and biography. _Subj._ Poetry. _Form_ (literary). Encyclopædias and books of reference. _Form_ (practical). Travels and adventures. _Subj._ (Has some similarity to a Form-class.) Railroads. _Subj._

Fiction. _Form._ (_Novels_, a subdivision of _Fiction_, is properly a Form-class; but the differentia of the more extensive class _Fiction_ is not its form, but its untruth; imaginary voyages and the like of course imitate the form of the works which they parody.) Relating to the rebellion. _Subj._ Magazines. _Form_ (practical). General literature, essays, and religious works. A mixture: 1. Hardly a class; that is to say, it probably is a collection of books having only this in common, that they will not fit into any of the other classes; 2. _Form_; 3. _Subj._

Confining ourselves now to classification by subjects, the word can be used in three senses:

1. Bringing books together which treat of the same subject specifically.

That is, books which each treat of the whole of the subject and not of a part only.

2. Bringing books together which treat of similar subjects.

Or, to express the same thing differently:

Bringing subjects together so as to form a class.

A catalogue so made is called a classed catalogue.

3. Bringing classes together so as to form a system.

A catalogue so made should be called a systematic catalogue.

The three steps are then

1. Classifying the books to make subject-lists. 2. Classifying the subject-lists to make classes. 3. Classifying the classes to make a systematic catalogue.

The dictionary stops in its entries at the first stage, in its cross-references at the second.

The alphabetico-classed catalogue stops at the second stage.

The systematic alone advances to the third.

Classification in the first sense, it is plain, is the same as “entry;” in the second {11} sense it is the same as “class-entry;” and in the third sense it is the same as the “logical arrangement” of the table on p. 12, under “Classed catalogue.”

It is worth while to ascertain the relation of subject and class in the subject-catalogue. _Subject_ is the matter on which the author is seeking to give or the reader to obtain information; _Class_ is, as said above, a grouping of subjects which have characteristics in common. A little reflection will show that the words so used partially overlap,[7] the general subjects being classes[8] and the classes being subjects,[9] but the individual subjects[10] never being classes.

[note] 6. This note has little direct bearing on practice, but by its insertion here some one interested in the theory of cataloguing may be saved the trouble of going over the same ground.[/note]

[note] 7. [Illustration: Form Subject General Individual Classes. Subjects.][/note]

[note] 8. The subjects «Animals», «Horses», «Plants» are classes, a fact which is perhaps more evident to the eye if we use the terms «Zoology», «Hippology», «Botany». The subdivisions of «Botany» and «Zoology» are obvious enough; the subdivisions of «Hippology» may be themselves classes, as «Shetland ponies», «Arabian coursers», «Barbs», or individual horses, as «Lady Suffolk», «Justin Morgan».[/note]

[note] 9. Not merely the concrete classes, «Natural history», «Geography», «Herpetology», «History», «Ichthyology», «Mineralogy», but the abstract ones, «Mathematics», «Philosophy», are plainly subjects. The fact that some books treat of the subject Philosophy and others of philosophical subjects, and that others treat in a philosophical manner subjects not usually considered philosophical, introduces confusion into the matter, and single examples may be brought up in which it seems as if the classification expressed the form (Crestadoro’s “nature”) or something which a friend calls the “essence” of the book and not its subject, so that we ought to speak of an “essence catalogue” which might require some special treatment; but the distinction can not be maintained. It might be said, for example, that “Geology a proof of revelation” would have for its _subject-matter_ «Geology» but for its _class_ «Theology»—which is true, not because class and subject are incompatible but because this book has two subjects, the first «Geology», the second one of the evidences of revealed religion, wherefore, as the «Evidences» are a subdivision of «Theology», the book belongs under that as a subject-class.[/note]

[note] 10. It is plain enough that «Mt. Jefferson», «John Milton», the «Warrior Iron-clad» are not classes. Countries, however, which for most purposes it is convenient to consider as individual, are in certain aspects classes; when by the word “England” we mean “the English” it is the name of a class.[/note]

_Class entry_, registering a book under the name of its class; in the subject-catalogue used in contradistinction to specific entry.

_E. g._, a book on repentance has class entry under «Theology»; its specific entry would be under «Repentance».

_Classed catalogues_ are made by class-entry, whether the classes so formed are arranged logically as in the Systematic kind or alphabetically as in the Alphabetico-classed.