PRESS-MARK,

BOOK III.

Chapter III.
Difficulties,
Rules, and
Details.

The use of

printed forms for writing titles

By printing such forms on paper of a different colour for each principal Class of the Catalogue, a portion of the preliminary work of sorting becomes simply mechanical. And by including an index-form with that intended for the body of the Catalogue both text and index will proceed simultaneously. But on the preparation of Indexes further details will have to be considered hereafter. I pass now to the important question of Printing Catalogues for public use.

CHAPTER IV.

TO PRINT, OR, NOT TO PRINT?

The want of a printed Catalogue of the books in the
British Museum Library is an immense evil.
I can conceive that a man may spend his whole
existence, and that the existence of innumerable men
might be spent, in cataloguing to perfection the works
in such a Library as this. But it is like any other
mass of confusion which a man has to put in order,
he must be satisfied with a certain degree of accuracy.

THOMAS CARLYLE (Minutes of Evidence before the Com-
missioners on the British Museum, 1849, Q. 5026-5029,
315, 316).

BOOK III.

Chapter IV.

not to print?

WHEN the plan and principal details of the chief Catalogue of a great Library have been at length settled, To print, or, ther ecomes the question-Shall it be left in Manuscript or be sent to the Press? Than this, no question in the whole economy of Libraries is more important.

BOOK III.

Chapter IV. To print, or, not to print?

How this question was dis

The cost of printing an extensive Catalogue is formidable; but were this the chief difficulty, it would seldom, I think, have much weight, in the scale, against the obvious advantages of print as compared with manuscript. It must be evident, at the first glance, that the printed catalogue is of easy use, and easily to be replaced when worn out; that it offers facilities to an indefinite number of students at the same moment; and may be rendering good service (as a help to literary history,) in India or in Australia, whilst it is subserving the duties of the Officers, and the researches of the Public, in the Library at home.

Not the cost, but the anticipated deterioration of the Catalogue of a rapidly growing Library has been the prevailing obstacle to printing. Here lies the pith of a much controverted question, which has nowhere received such thorough discussion as was obtained for it in the course of the Inquiry into the affairs of the British Museum, in 1848-49. Such an attempt to epitomize that discussion as I may be able to make will, I believe, bring out both sides of the question with more fairness and fulness than would be likely to result from any other course of mine in regard to it.

It must, however, be premised that the discussion recussed in the ferred to was unavoidably hampered by three extraneous British Museum circumstances, the elimination of which (as far as possible.

Inquiry on the

is the indispensable condition of a truthful estimate of its results. The first of these was the fact, that the Catalogue immediately under view, (the printing of which had been suspended,) was an alphabetical one, in which author's names and the headings of anonymous books.

were mixed up in a medley; the second, that this Catalogue had also been thrown (so to speak) into an artificial arrear, by expressly excluding from any portion of it, however long it might be in passing through the press, all books of later acquisition than an assigned date prior to the commencement of the task,-over and above that other arrear which would have accrued inevitably; and the third, that it had also been framed, by a Resolution of the Trustees, upon the basis of an arbitrary and insufficient examination of the books, carried on simultaneously with the actual printing of the Catalogue, instead of having proceeded, (as Mr. Panizzi had recommended) upon a thorough, preliminary, and completed review of them, shelf by shelf, from one end of the Library to the other.

It will be obvious, therefore, on the one hand, that if the balance of evidence should seem to throw doubt on the wisdom of printing the Catalogue immediately in question, it will not follow, conclusively, that the same testimony would condemn the printing of a Catalogue from which those accidental disadvantages had been excluded.

And it will also be obvious, on the other hand, that if the balance of evidence shall plainly incline in favour of printing the Catalogue, even with those disadvantages cleaving to it, that evidence will have still greater force in favour of printing another Catalogue, which, to the acknowledged merits of this one, should add those of simpler plan and surer execution.

BOOK III.

Chapter IV. To print, or, not to print?