Page:Library Administration, 1898.djvu/121

 Anonymous books include those published under initials. This decision will be a boon to the compilers of the catalogue, and has been avowedly arrived at partly in consequence of the enormous bulk attained by entries of this sort in the British Museum catalogue. (Letter B is instanced, there being 191 printed folio columns of entries under initials ending with that letter.)

BODLEIAN LIBRARY

The " Compendious Cataloguing Rules for the Author-Catalogue of the Bodleian Library," as affecting a collection of books among the largest in the world after the two preceding, calls for comparison.

The selection of headings, in certain respects, proceeds upon unusual lines. "Books are to be entered under the surnames of authors, when stated on the title-page or otherwise certainly known." This appears to cover all cases of books published at first anonymously and bearing their authors' names in a subsequent edition. It is somewhat hard on the person consulting the catalogue that he must find in a bibliography the name of the author of any anonymous book he desires to see before he can get it.

Anonymous books are to be catalogued " under the first striking word or words of the title, with a . . . cross-reference, where advisable, from any other noticeable word or catch-title." The great latitude of this rule will probably make many books easily