The question of the catalogues of public libraries is one that has been much debated of late years both in England and France. A portion was issued in 1811, of an alphabetical catalogue of the library of the British Museum, in a folio volume, comprising the letter A ; and a portion of a classed catalogue of the Imperial Library of Paris has been published since 1855, in six quarto volumes, comprising the history of Fmnce, and a part of the division of Medicine. These are the two largest libraries of which it has been attempted to publish a catalogue, and that of the Museum has not been carried further in print, though it is now advancing rapidly in manuscript, and will pro bably, in the course of 1362, be brought to a conclusion, that is, it will then be completed, in manuscript, on a level with the time. The immense acquisitions of the library throughout the period during which it has been carried on, have rendered it necessary to catalogue almost 400,000 volumes which were not in the Museum at the time that a commencement was made of printing. When the catalogue of snore than 600,000 volumes is completed in manuscript, the question will again present itself whether it is to remain in inauuseript or to be printed ; and if printed, whether in a classed or alphabetical arrangement.
It seems to be generally assumed that the title-slip, or title-card, for a book, when once written, is for some particular form of eataloguc—that it must necessarily be arranged in the order indicated by the heading, and no other. A moment's examination of the question will show that this opinion is by no means well founded.
Take, for instance, the following—a specimen of one of the Museum "title-slips," or written "billets," describing a book :— The mysterious" 593 i." to the left is what is called the "press-mark," —that is, the indication of the locality in which the book stands : which, in this instance, is in the press or book-case marked 593, and in the ninth shelf from the top of that press, the successive shelves being marked tby the letters of the alphabet, a, b, c, &e., in regular order. The use for which this title-slip was originally written was that it might be placed in the alphabetical order of the author's name, "Lingard," and thus form a component part of the great alphabetical catalogue of the authors' names. But iu addition to such a catalogue as this, the interior management of a large library imperatively requires another, which ie generally termed a hand-catalogue, but might more appropriately be called a shelf-catalogue—a list which in dicates all the books of the library in the order in which they stand on the shelves, so that if a volume be missing there may be the means of ascertaining what it is. In most cases this hand-catalogue is
made up quite separately, and to make it is a serious business. At the Museum, where four identical copies of every title-slip are now produced simultaneously by writing with a sort of stylus on prepared paper, it was proposed by one of the officers that one of these copies should be arranged in the order, not of the author's name, but of the press-marks, by which, ipso facto, a shelf-catalogue would at once be produced with the minimum of trouble. Directions were given to do so, and a hand-catalogue was and is produced accordingly without the application of a particle of skilled labour more than is requisite to read the letters and figures. In the recent part of the Museum building, a shelf-catalogue presents another advantage of some moment. As, by an arrangement which will be described a little further on, the books are classed on the shelves, those who consult the shelf catalogue of the presses which are assigned to the history of Spain, the topography of Switzerland, the science of pneumatics, or any other subject, find assembled the titles of all the books on that subject of recent acquisition which the Museum possesses,—they find, in fact, in the shelf-catalogue, a sort of rough classed catalogue. The success of the new arrangement led the officer who proposed it, Mr. Watts, to suggest, in 1855, a further extension of the principle. The name of a book is often remembered without remembering the name of the author. This is so often the case with regard to plays and novels, that in the catalogues of circulating libraries intended for practical use the name of the book is generally taken by preference. To meet this want, Mr. Watts proposed to arrange a copy of the title-slips in the alphabetical order of the words which immediately follow the author's name. Thus, the Rejected Addresses' of Horace and James Smith would be found in oue catalogue in the order of the word " Rejected," while in the other they would figure under the name of the Smiths. To search for anything in the present Museum catalogue amid the names of the multitudinous Smiths,.is in itself so tedious a task that the book would certainly be in general looked out with much more ease under its own title ; and it may be added that as some of the editions were published with the authors' names and some without, the proposed catalogue would have the advantage of assembling them all under ' Rejected Addresses,' au advantage which would be extended to all books in the same semi-anonymous predicament. All ' Histories of England,' all' Strangers in London,' &c., would be brought together, whatever might be the names of the authors.