Page images
PDF
EPUB
[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]
[blocks in formation]

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by

CHARLES A. CUTTER,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

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* (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. 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.

[ocr errors]

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

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.

3

« PreviousContinue »