Page:Library Administration, 1898.djvu/150

 This is a book with a great reputation, and was no doubt extensively inquired for a short time ago, at the time of its distinguished author's death, but its title conveys no manner of hint as to its contents, and hardly any two people who knew the book would assign it to the same heading in a class-list. The contest of the catalogues is hardly a fair one till it is decided what information they are required to provide, and we venture to doubt whether much difference in size will be found between the two varieties if the conditions are equal. The additions of annotations, claimed as a merit of the class-list, is certainly no new thing, being set down by Mr. Cutter as one of the chief means of attaining the objects of a dictionary-catalogue.

The partisans of this latter system have been justly wont to point out, as a finished specimen of the genre, the catalogue of the Surgeon-General's Library at Washington. From the recent report of the new National Library of Switzerland it appears that they will soon have another first-rate library to instance as a supporter.

MATERIAL SHAPE OF THE CATALOGUE

The theoretical construction of a catalogue being settled, there remains to be considered the material shape in which the conception is to be embodied so as to make it serve the needs of readers and librarians. The various devices known may be classed under two headings: (i) ,