Page:The library a magazine of bibliography and library literature, Volume 6.djvu/81

 A Great Catalogue, being an Appreciation of the Catalogue of the Library of the Peabody In- stitute, Baltimore. 1 URING the last eight or nine years I have observed with great interest, with sincere admiration, and, I must con- fess, with a little envy, the progress of the catalogue of the Peabody Library at Baltimore. It chanced that the completing volume reached my hands just after I had received from Mr. MacAlister a letter urging me, as librarian of a Scottish library, to make some contribution to the proceedings of this meeting. My own work, though sufficiently engrossing, had not developed anything specially novel or notable, and as I was reluctant to return a negative to our Secretary's request I thought I might without impropriety engage the attention of the association for a few minutes in an appreciation of what may be truly called a great catalogue. I do not make any comparison or contrast between this and other important works of the same class ; and my purpose being appreciation in the conventional sense, and not criticism, I do not refer to features in the catalogue which personally one would have preferred to see differently treated. Happily, it is quite possible, while reserving judgment on this or that characteristic of a catalogue, to render a tribute of respectful admiration to the work as a whole. The establishment of the Peabody Institute at Baltimore is but one, and not the most impressive, of the great acts of benevolence which caused the name of its founder, before his death, to become famous throughout the Old World and the New, as suggestive of a liberality of the freest and largest kind, guided by a sound and discriminating judgment. The library was designed as one for scholars, for serious study and research, and consequently contains little of what is merely popular. It is important from the large proportion of works of permanent value and great cost which it contains. One does not care to assess the position of a library by the number of pounds or of dollars expended upon it, but in this case the high average character of the books is roughly shown by their cost, 1 Communicated to the Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the Library Association, Aberdeen, September, 1893. 6