... ... BOOK III. Chapter IV. To print, or, not to print? a printed cata logue. nuscript; but, if we had a printed Catalogue, it must be immediately interleaved. ... Then, with respect to persons at a distance; ... we did print a Catalogue thirty years ago. I know that many Public Libraries do Mr. Hallam on not possess it; it is not in the Athenæum Library; nor is it in the London Library.1... I think it will be found that very few copies have got into circulation. ..... As the Library is constantly increasing, negatively a printed Catalogue would be of little use; a man would not know, although a book was not in the printed Catalogue, that it was not in the British Museum. This, therefore, has induced me, in conformity with Mr. Panizzi's opinion, who is very decided upon the subject, and upon talking the matter over with him in the Library Committee, to come myself to the opinion that we must give up the idea of a printed Catalogue." ...... "On this point," said Lord Mahon (now Earl Stanhope,) it is with great deference and respect for Mr. Hallam ... that I feel myself bound to intimate a different opinion. I am of opinion that a printed Catalogue is a matter of first-rate importance. I think it most desirable to afford to the Public, in as short a time, and in as compendious a form as can be effected, a printed Catalogue.... A MS. Catalogue will not adequately fulfil the objects that are required, ... as regards the Reading-Room; or still less as regards the Public." Mr. Croker, after dilating on the advantages of full entries of the titles of books, proceeds to say that It may be worth while to remark that neither the Athenæum nor the London Library was in existence until many years after the publication of the Catalogue referred to. the printing of Catalogues. BOOK III. Chapter IV. To print, or, not to print? "there are two uses to be made of a catalogue,-one is for a Public Library which should lend out its works; for such a Library as that, no doubt, there ought to be a printed Catalogue; .. but for a Library like this, that does not lend, .. I cannot conceive what possible utility there can be, and, on the contrary, (sic) å great deal of disadvantage, in attempting to print it..... Why, if you had a printed catalogue dropped down from Heaven to you at this moment, perfect, this day twelvemonths your 20,000 interlineations would spoil the simplicity of that Catalogue." In the course of the same page, however, we find Mr. Croker modifying his previous expressions by saying: "I heartily wish it were possible to print, and to keep up a printed Catalogue. My objection to it is nothing but the impossibility of effectually doing it. ........ I only say 'MS. Catalogue,' because I think the other impossible. I should prefer a printed Catalogue as more legible and more handy." ..... Dr. Maitland objected to a general Catalogue of all the books in a great Library, that it must consist in a great degree of titles of books that every body would take for granted were there. Manifestly, this objection is irrelevant to the literary uses of a catalogue: nor will it bear examination, even as to the mere search for a particular book. An historian of Arithmetic might assuredly have "taken for granted" at any time during the last fifty years; that the British Museum possessed a copy of "Cocker;" but Mr. Croker has told us that until a very recent period it had none, adding that "when they did get it, it was the 'fiftieth edition."" ་ ་་ ON THE PRINTING OF CATALOGUES. 857 BOOK III. Chapter IV. not to print? Elsewhere he says: There has been a curious mistake, --not unimportant to the history of Gay and of Sir To print, or, Robert Walpole, as to the date at which The Beggar's Opera was played; and, in endeavouring to learn that fact, I found that the Museum possessed no separate or early copy of that opera."1 the printing of Catalogues. Mr. Panizzi's objections to the printing of general Mr. Panizzi on Catalogues of great Libraries seem to be summed up in the following sentences of his Letter to Lord Ellesmere: "Any one engaged in a work or pursuit of importance who feels the want of consulting a large Library, and who has the means and leisure of visiting the capital for that purpose, .... wants to consult more than one book; and these not all rare. He is sure that the great majority of them, at least, must be in the British Museum. He needs no printed Catalogue of the whole Library to be perfectly certain of that. The plea for printing the Catalogue of the whole of an enormous Library, like that of the British Museum, is the great advantage that it will confer on students, and I contend, my Lord, that.it confers scarcely any; certainly none commensurate with the expense. I contend also that if the Catalogue of a large increasing Public Library is to exist only in print, the Public will be injured by it; and that they would be infinitely more benefited by a good catalogue in manuscript, well kept up, than by one printed."2 Some of the principal arguments on the other side run thus:-Mr. Bolton Corney has "long felt that the 1 Minutes of Evidence, ut supra, 807, seqq. 2 Ibid., Appendix, 392, 393. BOOK III. Chapter IV. To print, or, not to print? 1 3 non-existence of a printed Catalogue is one of the greatest impediments ... that a student has to contend with." Mr. Craik considers a printed Catalogue essential "for the use of the readers," but thinks that Catalogue "might be a much less complicated one than is required for the use of the House."" Professor Owen says that until a good catalogue is published, the contents of the Library "on Natural History will continue comparatively useless to Naturalists." In a printed catalogue, argues Mr. Payne Collier, "the word which is made prominent strikes your eye at once, and saves a great deal of the difficulty that you have in examining a MS. Catalogue. ..... I do not propose that additions should be made in manuscript to the printed catalogue, propose that [the titles of] all works coming in after a certain date .. should be kept in MS. and, when they arose to a certain number and bulk, they should at once be put into print for the use of readers." "There ought to be," says Mr. Carlyle, "a general Catalogue of the Museum Library, "drawn up with the best skill possible;" but so important does he esteem the printing and circulation of Catalogues of some sort, as to add: "I should say that the worst catalogue that was ever drawn up by the hand of man was greatly preferable to no [printed] Catalogue at all."5 Much similar testimony might be adduced, could more be needed. I Minutes of Evidence, ut supra, 351. 2 Ibid., 385. 3 Ibid.. 575. 4 Ibid., 333. 5 Ibid., 315. MUSEUM COMMISSIONERS' REPORT ON PRINTING. 859 BOOK III. Chapter IV. not to print? When it became the duty of the Commissioners to sum up the inquiry, in its broad results, they entirely failed, To print, or, as it seems to me, to discriminate, as they should have done, between the main question and its accidents. Most of the witnesses who contended strongly for a Catalogue in print, found more or less of fault with the plan and character of the Catalogue which had been partially printed in 1841. For my own part, I concur with the Commissioners in their opinion that most of these objections had little weight or cogency, as respects the matter in hand; whatever may have been their validity, as objections against the principle of alphabetical cataloguing. But they do not touch the true question. "With us," say the Commissioners, "the opinion prevails that the principal advocates of a printed Catalogue have over-rated its utility, and under-rated its difficulties."..... The Commissioners (very fallaciously) regard the choice as lying necessarily between "a compendious printed catalogue, complete only down to a certain year, followed possibly by a series of supplemental volumes, on the one hand;" and "a full MS. Catalogue, in one continued series, embracing all the works which have been arranged for use on the shelves of the Library," on the other. ...... "We cannot," they proceed, "but attach great importance to a main ob 1 "We argue on the supposition of that work [the Catalogue], being hereafter completed in MS., with all its present essential features, down to the date specified of 1839, and we are convinced that the advantages to be expected from its entire publication will not then be considered such as to justify the expense which at the lowest possible estimate must attend the printing." Report, 15. |