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 CHAPTER III

CATALOGUING

treated of the location of books in libraries, we are next concerned with the means adopted for recording their existence and making them available to the reading public. The latter end is served to a small extent in every public library by allowing a certain portion of the books to be freely examined on the shelves and removed for use. In the Reading-room of the British Museum some 20,000 books, and in the Salle de Travail of the Bibliothèque Nationale some 12,000, are made available in this way. A movement is being eagerly pushed forward in this country, and already prevails extensively in the United States, to throw open the whole extent of popular libraries to the personal inspection of the reading public. This "Open Access System" is further discussed in Chapter V. Whatever the developments in this direction may be, the librarian and reader alike can never dispense with.

These may be divided into three main categories, according to their functions:—

I. The Author-Catalogue, where the books are arrayed in order under their authors' names in alphabetical succession. Books having no authors' name 78