Essays In Librarianship And Bibliography

ESSAYS IN LIBRARIANSHIP AND BIBLIOGRAPHY BY RICHARD GARNETT, C. B., LL. D. LATE KEEPER OF PRINTED BOOKS, BRITISH MUSEUM NEW YORK FRANCIS P. HARPER LONDON GEORGE ALLEN 1899 Heferance, v -, - A PREFACE THE essays collected in this volume are for the most part occasional and desultory, produced in compliance with requests of friends, or the appeals of editors of bibliographical journals or organisers of library congresses, to meet some special emergency, and treating of whatever appro priate matter came readiest to hand. The most important of them, however, though composed at considerable intervals, and devoid of any con scious relation to each other, are yet united by the presence of a pervading idea, which may be defined as the importance of scientific processes as auxiliaries to library management. It seems almost preposterous to speak of typo graphy as a scientific process, yet such it is in its relation to the graphic art which it superseded as an agent in the production of books It would be the merest surplusage to advocate the applica tion of printing to any class of manuscript books but one and that, strangely enough, is the book of books, the catalogue. When it is considered how few of the great libraries of Europe have as yet managed to get their catalogues printed, and V S4. M5 7 Vi PREFACE in how many the introduction of print is as yet resisted, or beset with impediments hitherto insur mountable, it is clear that the benefits of printing may even now be set forth with profit. Fortu nately, however, the question is but historical as regards the only library of which the present writer can presume to speak. Typography has now reigned at the British Museum for nearly twentyyears, and any discussion of its advantages or disadvantages contained in the following essays may be regarded as out of date. It is hoped, nevertheless, that the historical interest attaching to the subject may excuse the reproduction of these papers. Public Libraries and their Cata logues 1879 depicts the hesitations of a transition period when the subject was in the air, but when the precise manner in which the introduction of print would take place was as yet uncertain. The Printing of the British Museum Catalogue 1882 describes the results of nearly two years of actual work and The Past, Present, and Future of the British Museum Catalogue 1888 reviews the entire subject, both historically and with a view to the eventual republication of the catalogue-A fourth paper, contributed to the American Library Conference of 1885, has been withheld, to minimise the repetition which may be justly alleged as a defect in the essays now reprinted. The indulgent reader will consider that it was impossible to travel PREFACE Vll repeatedly over the same ground without frequent recurrence to the same facts and arguments and it has been thought better to tolerate an admitted literary blemish than to run any risk of impairing the documentary value of the articles. If the writer had once begun to alter, he might have been tempted to alter much. Readers of the pres ent day may feel surprise at the tentative character of some portions of the first essay in order of date, and at what seems almost a discouragement of the idea of a complete printed catalogue. The princi pal reason was the moderate expectation then enter tained of any substantial help from the Treasury. As a matter of fact, the annual grantbestowed in the first instance would have kept the catalogue forty years at press and, had a strictly alphabetical order of publication been adopted, it would after some years have been pointed out with derision that the great British Museum Catalogue was still in its ABC. The writer, therefore, exerted what influ ence he possessed to keep the idea of a complete printed catalogue in the background, and to en force that of the publication of single articles com plete in themselves which would be valuable as special bibliographies...