RULES

FOR A PRINTeD

DICTIONARY CATALOGUE I

BY

CHARLES A? CUTTER
LIBRARIAN OF THE BOSTON ATHEN.EUM

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

CHARLES A. CUTTER,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
 296820
OCT 3 0 1325

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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 Phil
osophy for 1869). 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 Appren
tices' Library, New York, is partially set forth in the preface to his cata
logue; 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); Prof. 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.
With such assistance perhaps a second edition of these hints would
deserve the title — Rules. ■

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

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 CONTENTS.

General remarks.
Objects.
Means.
Definitions (witli a note on classification).

A. Entry. (Where to enter.)

1. Author-catalogue 17
A. Authors.
1. Personal.
a. Who is to be considered author.
b. What part of the name is to be used.
c. What form of the name is to be used.
2. Corporate.
B. Substitutes for authors,
c. References.
D. Economies.
2. Title-catalogue.. 32
3. Subject-catalogue 37
A. Entries considered separately.
1. Choice between different subjects.

2. Choice between different names.

b. Entries considered as parts of a whole.
4. Form-catalogue 49
5. Analysis 52

B. Style. (How to enter.). 52

1. Headings.
2. Titles. (Abridgement, etc.)
3. Editions.
4. Imprints.
5. Contents and notes.
6. References.
7. Capitals.
8. Punctuation, etc.
a. Headings.
b. Titles.
c. Editions.
d. Imprints.
9. Arrangement.
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 RULES
FOR A

DICTIONARY CATALOGUE.

code of cataloguing could be adopted in all points/by everyone,

because the libraries for study and the libraries for reading have differ
ent objects, and those which combine the two do so in different propor
tions. 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 dic
tionary catalogues into short-title, medium-title, and full title or biblio
graphic; typical examples of the three being, 1°, the Boston Mercantile
(1869) or the Cincinnati Public (1871); 2°, the Boston Public (1801 and
I860) or the Boston Athenaeum (1872); 3°, the author-part of the Con
gress (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 univer
sal practice of printing the shelf-numbers renders some of them unneces
sary for town and city libraries.

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10 Public Libraries in the United States.

OBJECTS.
1. To enable a person to find a book of which either
(a) the author"]
(B) the title ). is known.
, (c) the subject J
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.
Author-entry with the necessary references (for A and D).
Title-entry or title-reference (for B).
Subject-entry, cross-references, and classed subject table (for o and e).
Forui-entry* (for F).
Giving edition and imprint, with notes when necessary (for G).
Notes {for H).

DEFINITIONS.
There is such confusion in the use of terms in the various prefaces to catalogues, — a confu
sion 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.
Anonymous, published without the author's name.
Strictly a book is not anonymous if the author's name appears
it,

anywhere in but
is
it

safest to treat as anonymous the author's name does not appear in the title.
if
it

Asyndetic, without cross references. See Syndetic.

Autlior, in the narrower sense, is the person who writes book in wider
a

a
;

sense may be applied to him who is the cause of the book's existence
it

by putting together the writings of several authors (usually called the

editor, more properly to be called the collector). Bodies of men (so
cieties, cities, legislative bodies, countries) are to be considered the
authors of their memoirs, transactions, journals, debates, reports, &c.
Class, collection of objects having characteristics in common.
a

Books are classified by bringing together those which have the same characteristics. Of
t

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 hy Brown, Jones, and Robinson,
these bases of classification are left to the booksellers and auctioneers and trade sales. Still, in
* Here the whole is designatedby its mostimportantmember. The full namewould bo form-and-language
entry. Kind-entry would not suggestthe right idea.
tThis notehas grown out of someepistolary controversy. It has little direct bearing on practice,but by its
insertion here some one interestedin the theory of cataloguing may be savedthe trouble of going over the
sameground.