College and Research Libraries


ff 

. ., 

HELEN W. TUTTLE 

From Cutter to Computer: Technical 

Services in Academic and 

Research Libraries, 1876-1976 

To GAIN AN IMPRESSION of the technical 
services in academic libraries in 1876, 
one can do so no more pleasantly. than 
by reading "A Librarian's Work," an 
article written by John Fiske, assistant 
librarian of Harvard, which appeared 
in the October 1876 issue of the Atlan-
tic Monthly. It's a longish essay. It takes 
the reader through the complete process-
ing of a book "from the time of its de-
livery by the express-man to the time 
when it is ready for public use," paus-
ing to discuss the whys of procedures 
followed and records produced in the 
Harvard University Library, then, as 
now, the largest academic library in the 
country. 1 

Today's librarian may be struck by 
the intimate involvement of Fiske in 
the details of processing, but anyone 
who has worked in a very small library 
will recognize the pattern. Indeed, it 
illustrates the point that the technical 
services carry their histories with them, 
as heads of small libraries continue 'to-
day to do the things which the heads of 
the larger ones did back in 1876. The 
isolation of the technical services in a 
separate division is a function of size 
more than a change in attitude toward 
the services-first a separate unit is es-
tablished to handle cataloging, then one 

for acquisitions, later ser!als, and final-
ly all of them together as a separate di-
vision with its specialist head. The re-
view that follows, then, consists of a 
look at the vanguard of growing li-
braries as size forced changes in prac-
tices and in organizational structure. 
Academic and research libraries have 
tended to dominate change and codifica-
tion in this area of library work, as 
much in 1876 as in 1976. 

Library heads in 1876 were not only 
involved in the operations of technical 
services; they were shaping the tools of 
cataloging and guiding decisions related 
to the technical services at a time when 
decisions were being made which still 
guide us today. It was as well, then, that 
they knew so precisely the functions 
which they were shaping. The impor-
tance of generally accepted codes for 
the cataloging of books was readily ap-
parent to the 1876 leaders who met ·in 
Philadelphia, and the importance which 
they attached to cataloging is repeated-
ly made clear. Utley, in writing of the 
1853 conference of librarians, states 
that there is little doubt that Jewett's ex-
planation of his proposal to make a 
general catalog through the use of ster-
eotype plates, a catalog which could be 
adapted for the use of other libraries, 

I 421 



422 I College & Research Libraries • September 1976 

was of first importance for those at-
tending.2 

When, during the 1876 conference, 
Lloyd Smith insisted that Melvil Dewey 
explain the system of cataloging and 
classification which he had developed at 
Amherst, Smith noted that the one idea 
of special value which he had carried 
away from the 1853 convention had 
been that of Mr. Folsom's . card catalog 
and that he felt the most valuable idea 
which he might carry away from the 
present conference would be that of the 
Dewey system.3 A library committee, 
reporting in the mid 1940s, justifies the 
concern of the 1876 library leaders with 
the details of processing, as follows: 

The organizing of books for use 
through cataloging and classification 
has perhaps received more thought 
and attention from librarians through-
out the years since 1876 than any oth-
er phase of library work. This is as it 
should be because good cataloging and 
classification are at the root of all effi-
cient librarianship. It is here, too, more 
than in any other portion of library 
work, that we are restrained and in 
varying degree held to conformance 
with decisions, policies and routines 
long since made and sometimes seri-
ously outmoded. 4 

Two new publications of prime and 
lasting importance were available in 
1876 and were discussed by those attend-
ing. They were Dewey's A Classification 
and Subject Index for Cataloguing and 
Arranging the Books and Pamphlets of 
a Library!/5 which was the foundation 
of the Dewey Decimal Classification, 
and the "Rules for a Printed Dictionary 
Catalogue," by Charles Cutter, librarian 
of the Boston Athenaeum. 6 

Of the latter, Paul Dunkin has writ-
ten that "A wide-ranging, creative, open 
mind is at work on every page of Cut-
ter's Rules. Above all, a modern mind. 
Cutter did not anticipate our jargon, 
but he did anticipate many of the prob-
lems we describe with that jargon . . Prob-

ably his is the only book of rules for 
cataloging which is fascinating read-
ing.''7 The "Rules" were not invented 
by Cutter; they were, rather, a drawing 
together of his study and observations 
of the experiences of other libraries 
and of his own in producing the Boston 
Athenaeum catalog, a monumental com-
pilation of catalog records made accord-
ing to the high standards acceptable to 
Cutter. 

Cutter's name appears frequently in 
the records of library activities during 
the quarter of a century before his 
death in 1903, as a voice from the con-
ference floor, as a productive committee 
member, and as a writer on library con-
cerns. His counsels were sensible and 
showed careful analysis of library prob-
lems. In contrast to the aggressive 
Dewey, Cutter seems a quieter, but 
equally productive, librarian, the re-
spected colleague who worked unselfish-
ly for the good of the profession. The 
name of Cutter, like that of Dewey, 
must appear frequently in a history of 
library technical services, for they are 
its first significant codifiers and among 
its liveliest intelligences. 

Cataloging, which required so large 
a portion of the librarian's time, was 
the first function to draw away from 
the chief librarian's direct participa-
tion. Fiske mentions that of twenty as-
sistants, seventeen were occupied chiefly 
with cataloging, 8 but that was Harvard, 
of course. Other academic libraries were 
growing more slowly. George Little's 
paper prepared for the international li-
brary conference held in Chicago in 
1893 (generally referred to as the 
World's Library Congress ) included the 
information that: 

Of 450 institutions of higher learning 
in the United States only 200 have 
collections of books large enough to 
be ranked as college libraries. Of these 
200 only a third have professional li-
brarians. Of this third a smaller frac-
tion are well endowed and organized. 9 



l 

ALA's survey of libraries in the U.S. 
during the mid-1920s revealed that 
among thirty-three college and univer-
sity libraries of more thai)· 100,000 vol-
umes, thirty-one had a cataloging de-
partment, and six had a classification de-
partment in addition.lO 

In their 1936 Principles of College Li-
brary Administration, .Randall and 
Goodrich assumed order and catalog de-
partments in a large library and in 

H smaller libraries at least one librarian 
beyond the head to be primarily con-
cerned with book acquisition and prep-
arations.11 In the university libraries by 
this date, order and catalog departments 
were taken for granted. 

7 

EMERGENCE OF THE 

TECHNICAL SERVICES UNIT 

The technical services are as old as li-
braries; the technical service unit is a 
development of . the .past forty years. 
Donald Coney, presenting a paper to the 
University of Chicago library institute 
in 1938, is credited with the first pub-
lished examination of the unit organi-
zation of the technical processes, as he 
labeled them. 12 And, indeed, his refer-
ences to other works do not reveal any 
prior discussion, as he leans on business 
and government for his authorities. 
Coney discussed briefly the alternatives 
of divisional versus departmental ad-
ministration for the acquisition and 
processing functions, the decision 
whether to interpose a divisional head 
between the chief librarian and the de-
partment heads and singled out size of 
the operation as the most important 
consideration, a judgment which has not 
been revised.13 

By 1947 the technical service division 
was sufficiently accepted to be attacked 
by Raynard Swank in a presentation be-
fore the Cataloging and Classification 
Division during the ALA San Francisco 
Conference.14 For the 1948 Atlantic 
City Conference, the division sponsored 
a symposium on "The Technical Ser-

From Cutter to Computer· I 423 

vices Division in Libraries."15 Cohen's 
introduction to the symposium cited 
some incomplete evidence to show a 
trend toward such a division, 16 but each 
of the five speakers tended to report 
experience in a single library, speaking 
mostly of recent developments. That li-
brarians understood the difficulty of re-
alizing the full value of the change is 
evidenced by Margaret Brown's observa-
tion, "The success of the reorganization-
a! plan . . . depends, to a considerable 
extent, on the cooperation and under-
standing of every member of the staff. 
It is the habits and thinking of the 
staff that require reorganization as much 
as any procedural details. It is our habits 
and thinking, of course, that are the 
more difficult to reorganize."17 Logsdon's 
summary of the presentations noted 
that the new units ranged from "mere 
holding companies bringing related de-
partments under . a single administrator 
primarily for the purpose of reducing 
the span of control of the chief librar-
ian" to "organizational units striving 
toward completely integrated divisions." 
He favored the latter one.18 

Edwin Colburn argued "The Value 
to the Modern Library of a Technical 
Services Department" in the January 
1950 issue of College & Research Li-
braries, and in 1952 Arthur McAnally 
reported the wide acceptance of the 
technical services divisional plan in 
large academic libraries.19 In 1954 Tau-
ber brought out the first textbook de-
voted exclusively to the technical ser-
vices,20 and in 1956, in an admirable ex-
hibition of wisdom, the acquisition and 
catalog librarians voted to join in a sin-
gle Resources and Technical Services 
Division to represent their interests in 
the reorganized ALA. The new division 
promptly replaced the earlier Serial 
Slants and the Journal of Cataloging 
and Classification with Library Re-
sources & Technical Services~ its first is-
sue dated winter 1957.21 The voters seem 
to have convinced even Library Litera-



424 I College & Research Libraries • September 1976 

ture, which had continued to use "Tech-
nical processes" as its heading until the 
1958-60 cumulation when it accepted the 
inevitable with "Technical processes, 
See Technical services." 

How different the symposium present-
ed during the 1961 Cleveland Confer-
ence was from that in 19491 A short doz-
en years later the topics were "A Brief 
History of the Technical Services in ~i­
braries" and "The Present State and Fu- · 
ture Development of Technical Ser-
vices," followed by two papers on the 
teaching of the technical services.22 

For approximately the first two dec--
ades of the divisional structure of tech-
nical services, the only serious suggestion 
for a different alignment of functions 
was made, as noted above, by Swank. 
His 1944 article, "Subject Catalogs, Clas-
sifications, or Bibliographies?" showed 
his serious consideration of an old con-
troversy.23 His paper recounted "the im-
portant critical discussions from 1876 
to 1942 in which subject cataloging and 
classification, as contrasted with bibliog-
raphy, were challenged and defended," 
and it summarized the principal argu-
ments on both sides of the question. 24 
Swank's presentation during the San 
Francisco Conference25 separated the 
professional and clerical aspects of ac-
quisitions and cataloging and laid the 
basis for recommending that cataloging 
and bibliography would be the natural 
partners in a unit. While agreeing 
strongly with the weaknesses of subject 
analysis as provided in libraries and its 
crippling cost, librarians did not take up 
the suggestion. But Swank's thesis was 
not dead. It was to reappear under very 
different auspices. 

Academic libraries began to use sur-
veys in the late 1930s, seeking to im-
prove their operations and services. 
Erickson identifies the 1938 survey at the 
University of Georgia Library as the 
first one cited in Library Literature 
which was made by outside experts.26 
Shaw, in his editor's introduction to the 

January 1954 Library Trends issue on 
"Scientific Management in Libraries," 
reported "a trend toward the applica-
tion of scientific management to li-
braries-and indeed a rapid one. Such 
an issue [i.e., of Library Trends] would 
have been quite impossible twenty years 
ago."27 These trends influenced the tech-
nical services. In 1952 the Committee on 
Administration of the ALA Division of 
Cataloging and Classification began a 
study of technical services practices in 
large American libraries, resulting in the 
Shachtman report. 28 A follow-up study 
was instituted by the ALA Resources 
and Technical Services Division in 1964, 
resulting in the 1967 Dougherty i'e-
port.29 

The Association of Research Librar-
ies has been responsible for underlining 
and strengthening the interest of aca-
demic librarians in management con-
sciousness. Its Office of University Li-
brary Management Studies, established 
in 1970, joined with Booz, Allen & Ham-
ilton in a detailed investigation of the 
organization and staffing of the libraries 
of Columbia University during 197{}-71.30 
(Are you listening, Professor Swank?) 
The result was a study which analyzed 
the basic elements of university library 
service. Among the five major organiza-
tional units which it recommended were a 
resources group (responsible for collec-
tion development, in-depth reference 
service, and original cataloging) and a 
support group (responsible for acquisi-
tions, all cataloging activities except 
original cataloging, photographic ser-
vices, and fiscal and security control).31 
The Columbia Libraries published a de-
tailed description of its new organiza-
tion growing out of the report, includ-
ing a resources group and a technical 
support group.32 To other academic li-
braries it represents a significant experi-
ment in progress. 

John Dawson, the .historian of. the 
technical services for the 1961 symposi-
um, reported that the announcement of 



the program had brought an inquiry to 
the program chairperson as to what were 
to be considered the technical services 
in libraries. 33 The answer to that ques-
tion was and still is that the specific li-

. brary or situation dictates the answer, 
and that's a convenient way to leave it. 
Randall tried for an answer based on 
analysis and logic by considering "the 
things which are done in libraries in the 
attempt to give service to patrons by 
means of books."34 His efforts did not 
have too much influence on the prac-
tical situation within the library. Acqui-
sitions and cataloging certainly belong, 
and serials when it is created as a sep-
arate unit. Binding tends to join, since 
one of its largest responsibilities is to 
bind the periodical volumes which the 
serials unit has acquired, and - catalog 
records are involved. Tauber's inclusion 
of circulation in Technical Services in 
Libraries did not result in drawing the 
function under the technical services 
umbrella. Other activities which are 
sometimes placed in the division-pho-
tographic services, internal mail deliv-
eries, control of book funds, circulation 
of current periodical issues, and auto-
mation-seem to be there only because 
they lack a place elsewhere and, in a 
larger library, would more properly be 
gathered together in an administrative 
services unit. Collection development, 
once it ceased to be selection, has floated 
cheerfully between the technical and 
reader services, sometimes attaining the 
dignity of an independent unit of its 
own. For the purposes of this paper, we 
shall discuss acquisitions, cataloging, 
serials, and binding. · 

ACQUISITIONS 

The acquisition operation has always 
been less tied to the past than catalog-
ing. Once the title is acquired, how it 
was acquired is of minimal significance. 
Tracing the acquisition function through 
the records of the past hundred years 
shows a gradual withdrawal of the head 

From Cutter to Computer I 425 

librarian from the acquisition operation, 
a simplification of records kept to control 
the procedures, and a broadening of the 
kinds of materials acquired and their 
sources. 

Book ordering is thoroughly treated 
in Fiske's "A Librarian's Work," in the 
early volumes of the Library ] ournal~, 
and in the U.S. Bureau of Education's 
1876 special report, Public Libraries in 
the United States of America~ hereafter 
referred to as the 1876 Report. Changes 
made by the turn of the century and 
shortly thereafter were recorded in the 
1896 World's Library Congress papers; 
C. W. Andrews' 1903 article, "The Ac-
quisition of Books"; a 1906 symposium 
on "Methods of Book Buying"; "Some 
Notes on the Principles and Practice of 
Bookbuying for Libraries," a lecture 
delivered by Isabel Ely Lord before the 
New York State Library School in 1906; 
and in the various reports of the ALA 
Committee on Bookbuying and on Re-
lations with the Book Trade, which 
were faithfully reported in the Library 
]ournal.35-38 In 1930 the first textbook 
on acquisitions appeared, Drury's Order 
Work for Libraries~ followed at a great 
distance by Wulfekoetter' s Acquisition 
Work in 1961, and Stephen Ford's The 
Acquisition of Library Materials in 
1973. These texts, supplemented by 
chapters in Tauber's Technical Services 
in Libraries ( 1954) and such general 
texts on college and university libraries 
as Randall and Goodrich's Principles of 
College Library Administration ( 1936), 
Wilson and Tauber's The University Li-
brary ( 1945), the several editions · of 
Lyle's The Administration of the Col-
lege Library (latest, 197 4), and Rogers 
and Weber's University Library Admin-
istration ( 1971), permit the reader to 
follow changes in the accepted acquisi-
tion practices of the past century. 

The early writings show the head li-
brarian very much in the midst of the 
order operations. Reporting to the 
World's Library Congress in 1893, Jones 



426 I College & Research Libraries • September 1976 

expressed the opinion that "buying 
should be in the hands of one per-
son, preferably the librarian."39 Lord 
( 1907) underlined the importance of 
the head librarian's knowledge of the 
sources of books, since "a certain 
amount of his time and energy must be 
devoted to this question."40 In a small 
library, Drury ( 1930) assigned the 
searching of orders to the librarian. 41 
Randall and Goodrich ( 1936) retained 
only the bill handling in the college li-
brarian's hands, leaving the rest of the 
order work to assistants.42 Lyle (1974) 
summed up practice for the college li-
brary today as follows: 

In the small college library the librari-
an will handle acquisitions work in 
addition to his administrative and book 
selection duties. In the medium-sized 
college library he may have an acqui-
sitions librarian or at least a clerical as-
sistant to help him. In the large col-
lege library there will probably be an 
acquisitions department, headed by a 
librarian, and several clerical assist-
ants in addition to part-time student 
help.43 

In the generally larger university li-
braries, this work had already been dele-
gated. Peterson reported of the Univer-
sity of California Library at Berkeley 
that: "Before · 1900, when the library 
staff numbered only a few persons and 
there was no formal organization into 
departments, the work of acquisition 
was carried on mainly by Librarian 
Rowell himself. An Order Department 
was established . . . in November 
1902."44 

Obviously, the librarian's commit-
ment to acquisitions is a function of 
size. Before 1900, the generally small 
collections and smaller annual book 
budgets made a part-time commitment 
to acquisitions a reasonable assignment. 
The involvement no . doubt had some 
benefits for the library and its users, 
providing a closely coordinated total 
service. 

This early involvement seems to have 
been more concerned with tight con-
trol than with saving staff time. In an 
appendix to his 1876 Rules, Cutter list-
ed eight catalogs, in card, sheet, or book 
form, which were needed for acquisi-
tion and control of the library's collec-
tion in addition to the public catalog. 
These included catalogs of accessions, 
books missing, duplicates to be sold, and 
duplicates sold or exchanged. He judged 
his system to be economical, pointing 
out that it could answer such questions 
as: 

Has this book been proposed to the 
Book Committee? Has it been ap-
proved? Ordered? When? From 
whom? Who is responsible for the er-
ror if it turns out a duplicate? When 
was it received? Where is it entered 
in the Accessions-catalogue (that we 
may ascertain its price and condition)? 
Where was it Brst located?45 

During the 1906 symposium on 
"Methods of Book Buying," one partici-
pant questioned the use of the head li-
brarian's time in "studying bargain lists 
and hunting auction sales," when that 
time has so many service demands on 
it.46 However, Lord ( 1907) suggested 
keeping files for five categories of de-
siderata and described "the most perfect 
system" for keeping a record of books 
on order, one which involved filing in 
the official catalog records of books 
wanted, whether they were to be active-
ly sought or only accepted as gifts.47 

College and University Library Prob-
lems ( 1927), the report of a study made 
by George Works for the Association of 
American Universities, discussed the 
touchy matter of speed versus economy 
in book acquisition. 48 In 1946, the ALA/ 
ACRL College and University Postwar 
Planning Committee recorded its suspi-
cion that .the procedures and routines 
of bookbuying .could be simplified and 
recommended that every library reex-
amine its order routines.49 The age of 
recognition that good management is 

' i 

j 

j 



essential had arrived. Today' s acquiSI-
tion librarian takes the risk that Cut-
ter's questions cannot be answered. 

Ordering Procedures 

Sheet orders were the rule of the day 
in 1876. Poole, writing for the 1876 Re-
port, stated as a matter of course, "Sep-
arate lists must be prepared of the 
American and foreign orders; and each, 
for convenience of consultation, should 
be arranged in alphabetical order under 
the names of authors."50 Lord's advice 
in 1907 on this matter sounds a bit 

· quaint to today's ears: 

It may not be amiss to say that it is 
courteous and wise to consult the deal-
er as to the form in which he prefers 
orders. Not all dealers have the same 
methods, and if the library conforms 
to that of a particular dealer, the re-
sult is better service, as well as a pleas-
ant rehition.5I 

Drury ( 1930) assumed an order sheet 
as did Randall and Goodrich ( 1936), 
and Wilson and Tauber ( 1945) pre-
scribed the order letter for university 
libraries 152--64 

Multiple order forms are first men-
tioned as library forms in a 1933 article 
by Nelson McCombs, who reports a con-
tinuous strip of intercarboned forms 
developed by the New York University 
Library and adopted by Yale and the 
University of Rochester.55 Their spread 
was slow, but with the growing interest 
in scientific management following 
World War II they became more com-

. mon. Library supply houses began to of-
fer them as standard forms useful in 
the small operation, and large libraries 
found it cost effective to design multi-
function fanfolds. The next and on-
going revolution in order forms began 
with the application of computers to 
the repetitive tasks of the order unit. 
Interestingly, it can combine multiple 
and . list forms in its swift sophistica-
tion. 

The complexity and consequent cost 

From Cutter to Computer /427 

of the preorder search of titles recom-
mended for acquisition is in direct ra-
tio to the size of the library collection. 
For that reason it was little dealt with 
in the early days. Cutter ( 1876) de-
scribed searching but made no mention 
of verification-the completing of the 
bibliographic information-and prob-
ably took it for granted. 56 Twenty years 
later, Jones specified that in the Har-
vard procedures, "an assistant verifies 
and completes details of title, edition, 
publishers, etc., and sees if the book is 
already in the library or ordered,''57 By 
1930 Drury's textbook devoted three 
pages to preorder searching and two to 
verification, noting that the work is usu-
ally done in a large library by an as-
sistant, in a small library by the librari-
an. 58 Randall and Goodrich agree with 
Drury,59 emphasizing that "even with a 
fair-sized staff, the librarian will have 
to do much of the important work of 
checking book orders with the library's 
catalog to avoid duplication."so Wulfe-
koetter ( 1961) expanded the directions 
for bibliographic searching by discuss-
ing various categories of titles to be ac-
quired and introduced a new element 
by suggesting that the searching be used 
as preliminary cataloging. 6I Ford ( 1973) 
emphasized the importance of coordi-
nating work among the technical service 
units so that it is not repeated, 62 but it 
is clear from his discussion of precata-
loging that this reasonable dictum is by 
no means universally accepted. ss 

Auctions 

Perhaps the most startling aspect of 
early sources for acquiring books was 
the regular reliance on auctions. Poole, 
writing in the 1876 Report of the acqui-
sition of out-of-print books, warned of 
high prices charged by secondhand deal-
ers and recommends the use of the book 
auction with suitable detail: 

These books are constantly appearing 
in the auction sales in New York and 
other cities. The auctioneers will send 



428 f. College & Research Libraries • September 1976 

their sale catalogues to any library 
which makes the request for them in 
season to send orders. There are re-
sponsible men who make it a business 
in the large cities to attend these sales 
and buy books, charging a commission 
of five per cent on the amount of the 
purchases, and giving the library the 
benefit of their experience as to prices, 
editions, condition of copies, etc. The 
books bought will be billed and 
shipped by the auctioneer direct to the 
library. As auction sales are for cash, 
it is necessary that prompt re.mittance 
should be made. There are a few auc-
tioneers of such established reputa-
tion for integrity that it is safe to send 
orders direct to them, and they will 
bid honestly and charge no commis-
sions; but as a rule, it is better to em-
ploy an agent, limiting the bids in 
some instances, and in others authoriz-
ing him to use his discretion. An appli-
cation to any experienced librarian will 
give the needful information as to re-
sponsible agents in New York and 
elsewhere. 64 

Poole's distrust of secondhand dealers 
of the day was shared. Jones, writing in 
1896, stated, "A leading New York sec-
ondhand bookseller used to say that the 
secret of cataloging is to enter the same 
book in half a dozen different places in 
the same catalog in such a manner that 
the reader shall never discover it."65 
Jones put auction buying into perspec-
tive in terms of use. He reported a sur-
vey of 155 libraries, in which it was 
found that only a third used auctions, 
while two-thirds ordered from the of-
ferings of secondhand dealers. 66 

References to auction buying as an 
accepted source persisted in the litera-
ture. Lord ( 1907) recommended auc-
tions as a source for expensive illustrat-
ed and art books, advising that "it is not 
worth while to spend much time on auc-
tion catalogs for books published at a 
low price."67 Drury ( 1930) described 
auction buying in his textbook, but ex-
plained that "catalogs from auction 

houses no longer offer the bargains of 
years gone by, for it does not pay the 
seller to list the cheaper books."68 Wul-
fekoetter and Ford treated auction buy-
ing as a minor part of acquisitions, and 
their explanations show the situation has 
not changed much since 1930. 69• 70 

Use of Booksellers 

Libraries ge:r;1erally bought domestic 
books through booksellers rather than 
from publishers in 1876, and this prac-
tice has persisted. The ALA Co-opera-
tion Committee referred in its 1877 re-
port to frequent inquiries as to whether 
the committee would be willing to ob-
tain books for libraries as part of its 
duties. The committee's response was a 
firm referral to the bookseller. 71 Whit-
more ( 1906) recommended the use of 
a single firm, explaining that there 
would be little variation in prices 
among booksellers, the possibility of 
confusion in orders was reduced, there 
was a saving in carriage charges, and the 
dealer would develop a useful knowl-
edge of the library's needs. 72 Lord 
( 1907) affirmed the judgment, pointing 
out that: 

There is no advantage whatever in or-
dering direct from the publisher, un-
less one needs a special book at once 
that one is sure of getting quicker that 
way. For net books, the same discount 
is given by a local dealer, and perhaps 
in ordering from the publisher the cost 
of transportation must be added. The 
scattering of bills is also a great waste 
of time and temper. It may be safely 
said that nobody orders direct from 
the different publishers in these days. 73 

Drury ( 1930) confirmed the practice 
of using publishers only under special 
circumstances and pointed out . the pros 
and cons of using the local dealer versus 
the metropolitan jobber, strongly rec-
ommending the latter as able to give the 
best service and discounts.7' As befits the 
first textbook on order work, Drury em-



phasized formal agreements with agents 
relating to all aspects of the transac-
tions.75 Wulfekoetter's much longer 
treatment of agent selection 76 confirmed 
the greater range of materials and 
sources which had gradually become 
available to librarians since Drury 
wrote, a range confirmed by Ford. 

The amount of the American book-
sellers' discount to library customers was 
the burning issue of the early years, the 
copyright issue of the day, driving apart 
librarians and booksellers, natural allies 
in the provision of books to people. 
During a summer convention at Put-in-
Bay in 187 4, the booksellers entered into 
an agreement by which the discount to 
libraries was cut back to 20 percent. 77 
Lord brought together the history of 
the next three decades, beginning with 
the 1876 conference, which passed 
Poole's resolution: 

Resolved. That the discrimination 
against libraries in the rules of the 
American Booksellers' Association, . 
which forbids the trade from supplying 
libraries with books at a greater dis-
count than twenty per cent, is unjust 
and impolitic, and is a rule which no 
librarian is bound to respect. 78 

A committee appointed to deal with the 
publishers reported the following year 
that the 20 percent agreement had 
broken down, and free enterprise 
reigned until1901. 

In 1901 the newly organized Amer-
ican Publishers' Association and Amer-
ican Booksellers' Association adopted 
the "net price rule," which fixed dis-
counts to libraries at 10 percent for 
each book during the first year after 
publication, after which discounts could 
be negotiated. The ALA Committee on 
Relations of Libraries to the Booktrade 
was established in 1901, its name 
changed to Committee on Bookbuying 
in 1904. This first ALA committee on 
relations with the booktrade was unable 
to change the net price rule, but it did 

From Cutter to Computer I 429 

publish a series of bulletins helpful to 
librarians on the practical aspects of 
bookbuying'. The net price rule was fi-
nally settled in 1907, when the Amer-
ican Publishers' Association repealed all 
existing rules on book prices as the re-
sult of judicial decisions against com-
binations in restraint of trade. 79 

For the next several years the ALA 
committee worked to better relations 
with the booktrade, duly . reporting its 
lack of spectacular results at the annual 
conferences. Today's RTSD Bookdeal-
er-Library Relations Committee, estab-
lished in its present form in 1961, and 
the Association of American Publishers/ 
RTSD Joint Committee, approved by 
the ALA Council in 1966, have the same 
amiable purpose. 

Acquisitions from Abroad 

Advice throughout the century has re-
ferred the small library to import book-
sellers for the acquisition of foreign 
imprints, but even in 1876 the large li-
braries found it useful to establish re-
lations with agencies in foreign coun-
tries. Poole ( 1876) advised: 

As a rule, it is best to make all pur-
chases of English books in London, 
and of French and German books in 
those countries, because better edi-
tions can there be procured, and at 
cheaper rates, than in this country. 
The binding, also, can be done in a 
better and more durable style abroad 
than in this country, and at half the 
cost. By the revenue laws of the Unit-
ed States, books for public libraries 
can be imported duty free.so 

A short history of this country's prog-
ress toward duty-free books for libraries 
is included in the 1876 Report and in-
dicates the complications which clear-
ance through customs can offer.81 .Poole's 
precise reasons for shopping in Europe 
no longer hold, but large libraries have 
continued to find direct buying from 
the country of publication both faster 
and less expensive. 



430 I College & Research Libraries • September 1976 

Collating and Accessioning 

Receipt procedures have changed re-
markably during the past century in re-
lation to collating and accessioning. 
Both were generally accepted parts of 
the receipt procedure in 1876. Poole 
notes that new books must be collated 
to ascertain if they be complete copies 
and that no signatures be missing or 
transposed .... 

The books must then be entered in the 
"accession catalogue," which is usually 
a folio volume with printed headings 
and ruled especially for the purpose. 
This record furnishes a perpetual his-
tory of every book that comes into the 
library, and gives the date, accession 
number, author, title, place where 
published, date when published, num-
ber of volumes, size, number of pages, 
binding, of whom procured, and 
cost.s2 

Fiske, speaking to the layman in his At-
lantic Monthly article, explains the li-
brary sense of "collate," describing a 
pretty thorough examination: 

To collate a book is simply to examine 
it carefully from beginning to end, to 
see whether every page is in its proper 
place and properly numbered, whether 
any maps or plates are missing or mis-
placed, whether the book is correctly 
lettered, or whether any leaves are so 
badly tom or defaced as to need re-
placing.sa 

He volunteered the information that 
English books rarely have serious de-
fects, while in French and German 
books "the grossest blunders . are only 
too common."84 Collation was discussed 
during the sixth session of the 1876 con-
ference, and those who spoke to the 
matter showed that some daring excep-
tions were being made to the full colla-
tion advised. Some were already follow-
ing the · practice. common later, that of 
collating only expensive books, the defi-
nition of ~~expensive" increasing with 
the years.85 

The accession book gave way slowly. 
In 1878 Harvard librarian Justin Win-
sor, representing the large library, advo-
cated the shelflist for use as the acces-
sion record.86 A 1908 survey by the ALA 
Committee on Library Administration 
showed that the accession book was not 
"Qsed by the leading libraries, but that 
of 183 libraries of varying sizes, 162 
kept an accession book, while twenty-
one used other methods of accession-
mg. 87 ALA's Survey af Libraries in the 
United States ( 1927) discovered a trend 
away from the accession book to a less 
expensive substitute, with more use in 
smaller libraries than in larger. 88 The 
Library I oumal made a survey of ac-
cession and inventory · practices in 1959, 
sending a questionnaire to 1,102 librar-
ies of various kinds. The survey showed 
that most academic libraries had aban-
doned the accession book and kept such 
information only on the shelflist card 
or some other readily available record 
maintained for other purposes.89 At the 
present time probably no fair-sized aca-
demic library still maintains the acces-
sion book. 

Gifts 

Today's demanding user of academic 
libraries is struck by the smallness of 
the library collections in 1876 and, per-
haps worse, the fact that the great ma-
jority of · the titles in the collections 
were obtained as gifts. Said the editors 
of _ the 1876 Report, ••Few colleges have 
possessed funds to build up libraries on 
a scientific plan. Their collections con-
sist largely of the voluntary gifts of 
many individuals, and hence are usually , 
of a miscellaneous character .''90 

Jones (1896) reported that some li-
braries included want lists in their an-
nual reports and thus attracted needed 
gifts.91 He pointed out that: 

It is not necessary that all gifts be add-
ed to the library, and they should be 
received with the understapding that 

.j. .. 



they may be sold or exchanged if du-
plicates or unsuitable. It costs money 
to catalog and store books, and those 
outside the library's field should be 
rigidly excluded. . . . It is undesirable 
that gifts of miscellaneous books 
should be shelved by themselves. They 
should be distributed through the li-
brary with their respective subjects. 92 
Andrews ( 1903) specified the keeping 
of a list of books which would not be 
bought, but would be accepted as 
gifts, but expressed concern about ac-
cepting gift collections with restric-
tions which would seriously affect their 
value to the users.93 It was his sugges-
tion that the librarian requesting a gift 
never use a printed form or send a 
typewritten letter, but always send ~n 
autograph letterl94 

Wyer's manual ( 1929) on The Col-
lege and University Library sounded a 
contemporary note in this area. He 
urged that only those gift items be kept 
which "accord with a carefully worked 
out plan of the library's scope," and ap-
plauded those libraries with enough for-
titude to decline gifts offered with "con-
ditions attached which involve inordi-
nate labor and cost for maintenance or 
administration .... There is a consid-
erable class of material," he concluded, 
"that can be bought for less than it 
would cost in time, trouble, postage and 
follow-ups to get it free."95 Drury 
( 1930) 96 and the later writers on gifts 
agreed with Wyer, with a strengthening 
of the more independent attitude to-
ward gifts. 

Exchanges 
Predictably, the exchange of dupli-

cates among libraries, an effort to invest 
staff time to acquire books without fi-
nancial outlay, was a topic of interest 
in 1876, and concern about practical 
ways of exchanging duplicates appeared 
frequently · in the literature thereafter. 
The best use of duplicates was a topic 
discussed on the floor during the Phila-
delphia Conference. Ever the innova-

From Cutter to Computer /431 

tor, Dewey suggested then that "the best 
method, if it were practicable, would 
be to tum all duplicates into a common 
depository, and then contributors could 
draw from that source, the manager of 
the depository giving credit for all 
books sent in, and charging all drawn 
out."97 

In 1896, Adolf Hepner, editor of the 
St. Louis T ageblatt, sent an open letter 
to ALA advocating the establishment of 
an American libraries' clearinghouse to 
be administered by the U.S. Commis-
sioner of Education and to be the cen-
ter for distribution to American librar-
ies of "such books and pamphlets as are 
put free of charge at its disposal." Hep-
ner envisioned the stock of the clearing-
house as coming from items published 
by their authors and left on their 
hands.98 Jones discussed the problem 
and the clearinghouse proposal but 
came to the conclusion that it could not 
be self-supporting and that "the State 
or National Government has hardly 
reached the point of undertaking this 
work at the expense of the taxpay-
ers."99 

In 1937 the H. W. Wilson Company 
offered to serve as a clearinghouse de-
signed to aid libraries in completing 
their fragmentary serial sets. The ser-
vice operated at a loss and was with-
drawn after a few months. More suc-
cessful, perhaps because it was and is 
operated by those concerned, has been 
the Duplicates Exchange Union. It was 
formed in 1940 as a periodicals dupli-
cate exchange, broadening its scope in 
1944 to include other duplicates. The 
union is still active under the sponsor-
ship of the ALA Serials Section, its 
membership composed of small librar-
ies.too 

The old wish for a common deposi-
tory to facilitate exchanges among li-
braries has come closest to realization 
with the United States Book Exchange, 
recently renamed the Universal Serials 



432 f College & Research Libraries • September 1976 

and Book Exchange. It succeeded the 
American Book Center for War-Devas-
tated Libraries, organized to send pub-
lications to Europe at the end of World 
War II. The exchange was organized in 
1948, supported by a Rockefeller Foun-
dation grant, fees paid by participating 
libraries for materials obtained, and 
contracts with the State Department for 
services performed for foreign librar-
ies. As it has had to raise fees for han-
dling materials and as federal support 
for foreign libraries has ceased, the ex-
change has reviewed its services and 
sought other functions which it could 
fulfill. 

The exchange of an institution's own 
publications for those of another was 
a well-established activity at the time of 
the 1876 conference. The 1876 Report 
includes an article by Theodore Gill on 
"The Smithsonian System of Ex-
changes,"101 explaining its services as a 
medium of exchange between institu-
tions here and in Europe. The first pack-
ages had been sent abroad in 1851, and 
by 1876 the institution was maintaining 
an impressive operation and has con-
tinued to handle shipments from gov-
ernment agencies and private institu-
tions which go to exchang~ bureaus in 
other countries for distribution. New 
support for international exchanges 
came with the establishment of Unesco 
and the decision taken by its first gen-
eral conference in 1947 to be the main 
center for promoting direct exchanges 
between institutions throughout the 
world. It has done just this, for academ-
ic libraries as well as others, by means 
of its Handbook on the International 
Exchange of Publications, first pub-
lished in 1950, and through informa-
tion appearing in its monthly Unesco 
Bulletin for Libraries. 

Direct exchanges among libraries in 
this country have prospered as libraries 
and their institutions have published 
series suitable for exchange. Methods 
of est~blishing them and records which 

should be kept to control them have 
been regular parts of textbooks on ac-
quisitions, and Erickson's study of col-
lege and university library surveys made 
during 1938-52 reported as the "most 
frequently mentioned among these rec-
ommendations [for the development 
of gift and exchange programs] was 
the need for maximum utilization of 
the University's publications in the de-
velopment of such a program."1Q.2 Not 
many years after this study these pro-
grams began to suffer with the reduction 
in number of titles published by univer-
sities and the number made freely avail-
able for exchange purposes. 

CATALOGING 

In the years before 1876, individual-
ity in cataloging had been a regrettable 
necessity. As Holley points out in his es-
say on the events leading up to the 1876 
conference, the librarians attending it 
"wanted many topics discussed, but they 
especially wanted to know what to do 
about cataloging and classification. . . . 
Classification was far from narrowing 
down to two basic schemes nor was there 
anything like agreement on cataloging 
rules."103 That general agreement was 
needed was clearly recognized. As James 
G. Barnwell of the Philadelphia Mer-
cantile Library put it to the conference 
on the opening day, "I think it is of the 
first importance . . . that a code of rules 
be formed by a conference of bibliog-
raphers, and then adhered to with the 
most slavish servility; for entire uni-
formity, next to accuracy of descrip-
tion, is the most essential element of a 
useful catalogue."104 

The 1876 Report formed a solid 
background to the proceedings. During 
the morning session on October 5, Secre-
tary Dewey announced that Warren, one 
of the two editors of the Report, 

had arrived from Washington, after 
travelling all night, in order to supply 
copies of the Government Report on 
libraries for the use of the Conference. 
Copies were at the table and could be 



) ' 

used in the .room. The enthusiasm with 
which this announcement was received 
showed how well the Conference ap-
preciated the great service done the 
libraries of the country by this publica-
tion of the Bureau of Education, and 
for a short time prevented the transac-
tion of further business.l05 

Many of the contributors to the Re-
port were in attendance at the confer-
ence, including Otis H. Robinson, au-
thor of "College Library Administra-
tion." Writing of classification, he stat-
ed bluntly, "There are objections to all 
plans," and warned against changing 
plans too lightly. "A slightly imperfect 
plan strictly followed is far better than 
two plans at once."106 There were two 
chapters of the Report dealing solely 
with cataloging, "Library Catalogues," 
by Charles Cutter, and a four-part "Cat-
alogues and Cataloguing."107· 108 Part I 
of the latter presented "A Decimal Clas-
sification and Subject Index," Melvil 
Dewey's twenty-six-page explanation of 
the plan which he had developed in the 
Amherst College library during the pre-
vious three years, conceived by him in 
1873 while he was yet an undergraduate 
library assistant of twenty-one.1o9 

Cutter's thorough report on "Library 
Catalogues," covering nearly a hundred 
pages, drew the following appraisal 
from one of his contemporaries: 

Mr. Cutter has an elaborate and ex-
haustive article that would seem to 
cover every point that could arise .... 
He defines the conflicting systems, 
shows their merits and demerits, and 
points out the circumstances under 
which one is preferable to another. 
The tables are a monument of pains-
taking elaboration, furnishing not only 
a complete classification of the differ-
ept catalogue systems, but also their 
comparative usefulness and general 
adoption, the cost of printing, the ne-
cessity of printing (rather than their 
use in MS.), with an additional tabula-
tion of the printed catalogues of pub-
lic libraries in the United States (and 
their data), to the number of one 

From Cutter to Computer I 433 

Boston Athenaeum 
Charles A. Cutter 

thousand and ten. Of these twelve ta-
bles four are the compiled answers to 
circulars sent out by Mr. Cutter in 
1875 to seventy-five libraries that had 
lately printed catalogues. The minute-
ness and thoroughness distinguishing 
all of Mr. Cutter's work has never had 
better illustra tion.uo 

Cutter's article showed his commitment 
to the problem of the catalog and illus-
trated the solid foundation on which 
he based his writing of the "Rules for 
a Printed Dictionary Catalogue." Dun-
kin said of the latter, "Cataloging in 
the United States derives from Cutter. 
A study of the theory and principles of 
American cataloging is largely a study 
of the theory and principles of Cutter 
and what we have done with them."111 

In the years following the notable 
contributions of Dewey and Cutter to 
cataloging, as tools and standards were 
developed, it was largely the academic 
and research librarians who furnished 
the interest, suggestions, and experimen-
tation; and thus it was that academic 
and research libraries largely took over 



434 I College & Research Libraries • September 1976 

control of cataloging in this country 
and have held it since. 

The nature of cataloging is such that 
once done, it is expensive to change. So 
decisions made during the past century 
have been important to libraries, as they 
have been lasting constraints to change. 
The distribution of LC catalog cards, 
begun in 1901, was itself an influence 
in turning codes and practice toward the 
large research libraries and in fixing 
catalog arrangement in the dictionary 
card form, since the LC cards were de-
signed for such an arrangement and 
were tailored for the largest research li-
brary in the country. 

Codes 

The cataloging code, a set of rules 
for the guidance of catalogers in select-
ing and preparing entries for catalog 
records, is necessary to provide consist-
ent records in a single catalog and to 
make cooperation in cataloging possible. 
For a pleasant journey through code de-
velopment during the century following 
Cutter, the reader should see Dunkin's 
interpretative Cataloging U.S.A. For ~ 
broader sweep through cataloging his-
tory, Hanson and Daily's sixty-four-
page, encyclopedic "Catalogs and Cata-
loging" provides a grid upon which to 
place the specialized histories. 112 

As has been pointed out, Dunkin em-
phasized the importance of. Cutter, and 
anyone reading contemporary accounts 
and later references back to Cutter's 
work comes to agree. His Rules covered 
all aspects of the dictionary catalog ex-
cept classification. Its clear and concise 
statement (in fifty-nine words) of the 
objectives sought in providing a diction-
ary catalog, and the means for obtain-
ing them, 113 its author's stated intention 
to "set forth the rules in a systematic 
way" and "to investigate what might be 
called the first principles of catalogu-
ing"114 bring an illumination to the sub-
ject which could not fail to have im-
mense influence. Indeed, Hanson and 

Daily point out that Cutter's objectives 
of the catalog were restated in the so-
called Paris Principles by the 1961 In-
ternational Conference on Cataloguing 
PrinciplesJ which laid the foundation 
for an international catalog code.n5 

Following the 1876 conference, ALA 
provided a continuing forum for the 
discussion of cataloging, and with the 
Library Journal serving as its official 
journal, a wide audience of librarians 
could be reached. In 1896 William Lane 
reported a survey of the state of cata-
loging to the World's Library Con-
gress.116 He noted that of the several 
available codes Cutter's Rules was the 
one most generally followed, but his 
summary of points of agreement and 
disagreement among fifty -eight leading 
libraries showed continuing wide differ-
ences in cataloging practices. 

The 1901 agreement between ALA 
and the Library of Congress that LC 
would begin to supply printed cards to 
libraries for current books focused at-
tention on LC's rules for cataloging. 
This step and a 1904 invitation from 
the Library Association to issue a joint 
code resulted in the 1908 Anglo-Amer-
ican code, Catalog Rules; Author and 
Title Entries, published in both English 
and American editions with the few 
points of difference explained. This was 
the first international code, and it was 
narrower than Cutter, dropping the 
rules for subject headings.ll 7 

The following decades of code pro-
duction, mingling ALA, LC, and Li-
brary Association efforts, and including 
the Vatican Code, have a fascinating 
history but one too detailed for this sur-
vey. The period was enriched by An-
drew D. Osborn's "The Crisis in Cata-
loging,"118 with its appreciated cry for 
a return to basic principles. The next 
twin peaks in the process were the 1949 
publication of the complementary 
Rules for Descriptive Cataloging in the 
Library of Congress; Adopted by the 
American · Library Association, pub-

rl..l 

l 



lished by LC, and the A.L.A. Catalog 
Rules; Author and Title Entries, second 
edition, published by ALA. The LC de-
scriptive rules were greatly simplified 
and led to the hope that those for entry 
and heading might also be improved. 

The steps which followed have been 
recently reported by Wyllis Wright, who 
participated prominently in them. 119 

American and English cooperation in 
developing a common code, which had 
been interrupted by World War II, was 
begun again. Seymour Lubetzky's Cata-
loging Rules and Principles, published 
by LC in 1953, pressed again for logic 
and simplicity in establishing author 
and title entries. He was strongly influ-
ential in the deliberations of the IFLA 
International Conference on Catalogu-
ing Principles, Paris, 1961, which result-
ed in the Paris Principles mentioned 
above. 

The Anglo-American Cataloging 
Rules, developed under the aegis of 
American, Canadian, and British li-
brarians, and published in separate 
American and British 'editions in 1967, 
include rules governing entry and head-
ing, descriptive cataloging of mono-
graphs and serials, and cover some non-
book materials. The Rules represent 
compromises with the Paris Principles, 
compromises urged by the realities of 
cost and the cataloging product of the 
past. One hundred years after Cutter, 
catalogers of the three nations are work-
ing on a second edition of the Anglo-
Amer·ican Cataloging Rules. Whether 
they can make progress toward simplici-
ty and internationalization remains to 
be seen. 

Subject Analysis-Subject Headings 

The provision of the subject ap-
proach to a library's holdings, whether 
made up of the subject entries in the 
dictionary catalog or a separate catalog, 
was still a subject of some disagreement 
during the early years of ALA's first 
century. By 1876 card catalogs had al-

From Cutter to Computer I 435 

ready been opened to the public for 
use, and subject entries had been based 
on the content of the publication rather 
than the earlier practice of basing them 
on the wording of the title.120 As the Li-
brarian of Bowdoin College put it in 
1893, "The subject catalog, in its devel-
opment and almost universal use, is pe-
culiarly American."121 During the pro-
ceedings of the English conference of 
1877, with its large delegation of Amer-
ican librarians, Cutter took the floor to 
speak of the matter: 

My English friends seem to consider 
a subject-catalogue as something very 
excellent, to be sure, but utopian-im-
practicable. With us, on the contrary, 
a library that has no subject-catalogue 
is regarded as little better than one 
which has none at all. As to the diffi-
culties of classification and the liability 
to mistakes in dealing with subjects 
with which one is unacquainted 
(which has been rather despairingly 
insisted upon) , in all the works upon 
library economy you will find that the 
first qualification of the librarian is 
universal knowledge. Of course if this 
requirement is fulfilled, the objection 
is removed, and if it is not, Carlyle's 
dictum may profitably be applied 
here: "After all, the worst catalogue 
is none at all," or, it is expressed in an 
old proverb, very worthy to be taken 
to heart by librarians, "Half a loaf is 
better than no bread."122 

Cutter had been involved in a discus-
sion on the same subject outside library 
circles earlier in the year. Fiske's Atlan-
tic Monthly article provoked a letter 
from Harvard Professor H. A. Hagen 
to the Nation, published in the January 
18, 1877, issue. 123 Dr. Hagen, no doubt 
speaking from the background of his 
German education, argued for the man-
uscript book catalog, providing only an 
alphabetical listing of library holdings. 
His main point was the great cost of the 
subject listing, for which he felt pub-
lished bibliographies to be perfectly 
good substitutes. Cutter came to Fiske's 



436 I College & Research Libraries • September 1976 

defense with a letter published in the 
Nation of February 8, answering Hagen 
on every point.124 In the matter of the 
subject catalog, he swept Hagen's sug-
gestion from the field: 

The objections to giving up subject-
catalogues in libraries and substituting 
bibliographies are, first, the non-exis-
tence of the bibliographies; second, 
the incompleteness of such bibliogra-
phies as there are; third, the fact that 
bibliographies "begin to be imperfect 
even before they are published;" and 
fourth, the inconveniences of using 
them even if complete and brought 
down to date.125 

Other librarians joined the conten-
tion, 126 and the subject approach con-
tinued to be considered necessary, in 
spite of its cost, in American libraries. 

Cutter provided the only American 
code for ·subject headings.127 In the first 
edition of his Rules, he stated the two 
objectives for the subject catalog, name-
ly, to enable a person to find a book of 
which the subject is known, and to show 
what the library has on a given subject 
and in a given kind of literature.128 

It is interesting that so major a tool 
as the subject catalog has not evoked a 
later code. Following Cutter, there have 
been only lists of subject headings and 
attempts to "arrange inherited practice 
into some sort of system."129 Lyle's ad-
vice to the college library is to have both 
class numbers and subject headings pro-
vided by the same person and to pro-
vide as essential tools for that person 
the official record of the subjects used 
in the library and the standard pub-
lished lists.1 30 The two basic published 
lists used in this country are the Library 
of Congress list, meeting the needs of 
research libraries, and the Sears list for 
smaller libraries. 

The strongest ally of the catalogers 
in their loyalty to the subject catalog 
has been the reference librarian. Dur-
ing the fifty-sixth ALA Annual Confer-" 
ence, Columbia's respected reference li-

brarian, Isadore Mudge, rose to its de-
fense. She characterized the catalog as 
the most important reference tool in 
the library and pointed out that "it con-
tains almost the only reference work 
done in that library which is at all per-
manent in character ."131 She made clear 
the disadvantage of realizing savings in 
the cataloger's time by reducing subject 
analysis and thus increasing the cost in 
the time of reference librarians and 
users. 

Subject Analysis-Classification 

The written evidence which we have 
about libraries shows that classification 
as we know it today had not been 
thought of in 1876. The use of the call 
number both to assign a work to its pri-
mary and fairly specific subject area and 
to place it on the shelves in a position 
relative to other titles of its class had 
not been conceived. Libraries with siza-
ble collections placed them on shelves 
in areas assigned by broad subjects, if 
at all, and controlled them by fixed lo-
cation. Fiske's description of processing 
at Harvard suggests that not even broad 
subjects were assigned. Instead, the as-
signment of an alc~>Ve number and a 
shelf number within the alcove fol-
lowed after collation and the recording 
of source information in the volume 
during the receipt process. Each alcove 
had a "shelf-catalogue." As Fiske put it, 
"When the book is duly entered on this 
shelf-catalogue, and has its cornerpiece 
[i.e., label inside the front cover] 
marked, it is at last ready to be 'cata-
logued.' "132 

Robinson, librarian of the University 
of Rochester, reported that his princi-
ple of classification for college librar-
ies was that "the division of books 
should correspond on the whole to that 
division of the instruction which is best 
suited to the aims and purposes of the 
institution.''133 Certainly, this was a 
user-orientated plan, encouraging the 
teacher to examine his class of books, 

~ 

• 
\ 

, J., 

I 



• 

Columbia University Libraries 

M elvil Dewey . 

watch its growth, and "add its full 
force to the means of instruction in his 
department," while helping the student 
to "enter upon the use of it with very 

.little difficulty." To the librarian ·"per-
plexed with books which belong in no 
class in particular," Robinson's advice was 
"to ignore the title, examine the book in 
detail, and put it into that department in 
which it is likely to be most extensively 
used."134 In his discussion of the ar-
rangement of books within the library 
(general and reference works together, 
followed by the various classes), Robin-
son makes it clear that each subject class 
is assigned a specific area of shelving 
and that volumes are shelved and found 
through the assignment of class mark 
and !Shelf number. 

Dewey's A Classification and Subject 
Index, heard of before the 1876 con-
ference, described there by Dewey on 
demand, 135 and explained in the 1876 
Report, obviously filled a need. In the 
1876 Report, Dewey wrote with what 
seemed to be pleased surprise: "Though 
the system was devised for cataloguing 
and indexing purposes, it was found on 

From Cutter to Computer I 437 

trial to be very valuable for numbering 
and arranging books and pamphlets on 
the shelves."136 

The Dewey I Amherst scheme was in-
deed a giant step forward, and the 
Dewey Decimal Classification went on 
to sweep the country, first being used 
for the classified catalog and later pri-
marily as a shelf arrangement for the 
dictionary catalog.137 In spite of many 
other interests and activities, Dewey con-
tinued to control the development of 
the Decimal Classification until the end 
of his life, the thirteenth edition being 
published as a memorial edition in 
1932, the year after his death. There-
after, the Lake Placid Club Education 
Foundation continued to keep it up to 
date and to promote its use. Since 1930 
an office at LC has added DDC numbers 
to some of the LC cards, and later the 
DDC editorial office was moved to LC. 
Today more libraries in the country use 

. the Decimal Classification than any oth-
er scheme, as well as libraries in many 
countries around the world. 

Although classification was the aspect 
of cataloging which Cutter omitted 
from his Rules, he was to make two las~­
ing contributions to it. Cutter had been 
working on the problem of classifica-

. tion since 1873 without finding a solu- . 
tion which he wanted. He was attracted 
to the Amherst decimal plan ·but found 
that it did not give the close classifica- · 
tion which he was seeking.138 Eventual-
ly, his efforts led to his Expansive Classi-
fication, a scheme in a series of sched-
ules of increasing (i.e., expanded) full-
ness. The first was elementary and in-
tended for small collections; the sev-
enth, not yet completed when he died 
in 1903, was designed to be adequate 
for a library of ten million volumes.139 
Just as he had provided for short-title, 
medium-title, and full-title dictionary 
catalogs to suit the needs of different li-
braries, 140 so he offered classification 
schedules of varying degrees of fullness 
to fill different needs. A survey made re-



438 1 College & Research Libraries • September 1976 

cently showed that nine libraries in this 
country and three in Canada were con-
tinuing to classify the majority of their 
new acquisitions in the Cutter classifica-
tion scheme.141 

In connection with his Expansive 
Classification, Cutter devised a system 
of arranging individual books alpha-
betically by author within classes, these 
so-called book numbers consisting of 
the initial of the author's surname fol-
lowed by decimal numbers. Cutter de-
veloped tables of numbers using two fig-
ures to arrange the authors alphabetical-
ly on the shelves; Kate Sanborn later de-
veloped the Cutter-Sanborn three-figure 
table.l 42 

Cutter's lasting contributions appear 
in the two principal classifications of to-
day. His Cutter numbers regularly form 
the second element of call numbers de-
rived from the Decimal Classification; 
both his Expansive Classification and his 
book numbers had a strong influence on 
the LC Classification. 

The development of the Library of 
Congress Classification, appropriately 
for a national library and one which 
was to provide cataloging copy for 
many libraries throughout the country, 
was a team effort. Not only did several 
staff members work on it, but as plans 
emerged, they were taken to leading li-
brarians of the country for opinions. 
The final decision on the general plan 
was made late in 1900. Development was 
begun immediately and is still not com-
plete.l43 The story of its genesis is an in-
teresting one and can be found in La-
Montagne's American Library Classifica-
tion. 

During the development of the two 
classification systems which came to 
dominate the American scene, librarians 
were still making independent judg-
ments about classification and develop-
ing individual systems. In spite of the 
first appearance nationally of the Deci-
mal Classification in 1876, George Little 
reported to the World's Library Con-

gress in 1893 general agreement among 
college librarians that books should be 
arranged by subject but a wide differ-
ence of opinion as to the system of 
classification to be adopted.144 Horace 
Kephart, librarian of the St. Louis 
Mercantile Library, reported to the 
same Congress (with an admirable bib-
liography on classification) the results 
of a survey he had made on the subject, 
which confirmed Little's generalizations. 
Kephart had sent a "circular of in-
quiry" to every U.S. library of 25,000 
volumes or more, a mailing of 183 cir-
culars. Of the 127 usable replies re-
turned, it was shown that half of the 
libraries were using classification systems 
of their own and one-third were using 
Dewey in whole or in part. Mr. Cutter's 
system (so he said!) was rapidly growing ' 
in favor. 145 

McMullen reports that when J. C. M. 
Hanson left LC and joined the Univer-
sity of Chicago Libraries in 1910, he 
found half of the books not classified 
and the rest classified according to about 
fifteen different systems, the dominant 
system being Dewey' s.146 During the 
ALA 1911 Pasadena Conference, a sym-
posium on classification gave equal time 
to the Expansive Classification (in a pa-
per written by William Parker Cutter, 
a nephew of C. A. Cutter), the Decimal 
Classification, and the Library of Con-
gress Classification. 147 In 1927, Works re-
ported that "classification presents a dif-
ficulty that is almost if not actually in-
superable." His recommendation was 
that each library staff study the needs of 
the library users and adjust the classifi-
cation as far as possible to meet such 
needs, and he pointed out that classifi-
cation needs a high quality of person-
nel!148 

In a 1975 survey of Dewey Decimal 
Classification use in the U.S. and Can-
ada, Comaromi, Michael, and Bloom 
found that about two-thirds of the sam-
pling of college and university libraries 
counted were using the LC Classifica-

' 

,. 



tion, but there was a striking difference 
between college and university use. Of 
the college libraries, forty-four em-
ployed LC and thirty-eight used Dewey. 
Of the university libraries, thirty-six 
used LC and one used Dewey. 149 Consid-
er~ng only libraries holding 500,000 or 
more volumes, 107 reported the use of 
LC and only fourteen of Dewey.150 

Seeking to assay the "Trend to LC" in 
college and university libraries, Robert 
Mowery studied 1,160 accredited four-
year colleges and universities and found 
that more than half were using the LC 
system. However, counts made in 1968 
and 1971 showed that the move to LC 
had lost momentum.151 

Given the past history of classifica-
tion and the present lack of consensus 
among academic libraries, it is not sur-
prising that today' s textbooks maintain 
a careful neutrality between the two 
prevailing systems .152 

Catalog Format 

How did today's traditional diction-
ary ( as opposed to classed) card ( as op-
posed to book) catalog become the dom-
inant format in American libraries? 
Card catalogs were used in libraries for 
some time before they were opened to 
the public in 1857, when Lloyd P. Smith 
introduced such a tool in the Philadel-
phia Library Company. Four years later 
Ezra Abbot, assisted by Cutter, provided 
one for Harvard, which became a model 
for other libraries.153 

According to Ranz, the ,final quarter 
of the nineteenth century witnessed the 
decline of the printed book catalog in 
American libraries. His excellent The 
Printed Book Catalogue in American Li-
braries: 1723-1900, covering the years 
of the printed book catalog's predom-
inance, sets the stage for 1876.154 An ex-
ample of the attitude of that time is 
offered by Robinson, who initiated the 
University of Rochester's first card cata-
log, a manuscript dictionary catalog, in 
1870 at a cost of $329 in labor and rna-

From Cutter to Computer I 439 

terials for holdings of 9,560 volumes. 
He did so over many objections: "It 
presents to the eye only one title at a 
time; time and patience are lost in turn-
ing over the cards; it cannot be carried 
about, but must be used at the library, 
and only one person can consult a given 
part of it at a time."15s 

In spite of objections, Robinson 
could report in 1876 that: 

in some of the largest libraries of the 
country the card system has been ex- · 
elusively adopted. Several of them 
have no intention of printing any more 
catalogues in book form. In others, 
cards are adopted for current acces-
sions, with the expectation of printing 
supplements from them, from time to 
time. I think the tendency of the 
smaller libraries is to adopt the former 
plan, keeping a manuscript card cata-
logue of books as they are added, 
without a thought of printing.156 

Classed catalogs were never highly fa-
vored in the U.S. Early prevailing opin-
ion of classed catalogs is summarized in 
an 1880 discussion of C allege Libraries 
as Aids of Instruction. Justin Winsor 
states: "For the skilled and habitual 
user, classed catalogues, especially those 
in which related subjects stand in close 
propinquity, may be more satisfactory; 
but such users are always rare."157 Rob-
inson agrees, "Classed catalogues are 
good for experienced readers, but for 
the student with little or no experience 
we believe every obstacle should be re-
moved."158 

The single decision which locked in 
the dictionary card catalog as the pre-
dominant standard was the decision by 
the Library of Congress to sell its print-
ed cards. The LC printed unit cards 
were designed for the dictionary rather 
than the classed catalog, and their avail-
ability was too great an advantage to be 
ignored. 

These and other decisions which re-
sulted in the predominance of the dic-
tionary card catalog were based on li-



440 I College & Research Libraries • September 1976 

brarians' opinions for the most part, 
opinions growing out of experience and 
theorizing. Formal efforts to ascertain 
the users' points of view and to base 

. conclusions on facts rather than general 
impressions came long after the basic 
decisions had been made. 

Krikelas' survey of catalog use studies 
in 1972 lists fifty-four studies, the earli-
est made in 1931. Krikelas finds an in-
creasing effectiveness of the later studies 
over the earlier ones but still notes dif-
ficulties in producing useful studies. He 
suggests that maybe the general finding 
that between 70 and 80 percent of all 
catalog searches are successful to the ex-
tent that the user is able to identify 
some relevant document should be inter-
preted to mean that librarians have 
been able to develop a rather sophisti-
cated tool. 159 

Cooperative and Centralized Cataloging 

The twin dreams of cooperative and 
centralized cataloging very much con-
cerned. the librarians who met in 1876. 
Included in the first ALA constitution 
was a provision for the establishment 
of a Co-operation Committee.160 An 
editorial appearing in the same issue of 
the American Library Journal which 
printed the constitution offered the 
opinion: "Of the standing com~~ittees, 
that on Co-operation will probably 
prove the most important organ of the 
Association, as most of the practical 
work will fall to its share or to that of 
its sub-committees. The Poole's Index, 
Size, and Co-operative Cataloging mat-
ters, now in special hands, are only a 
portion of the work to· be done."161 Sev-
eral months later, in the August 31 - is-
sue, Dewey wrote: 

Co-operation has become among li-
brarians a household word during the 
past year .... While we have so much 
with which to be satisfied, there has 
been less progress in what S«;lemed the 
main question-co-operative catalogu-
ing. Here the greatest need was felt, 
and to this most of the profession look 

for the greatest benefit. The Septem-
ber meeting [the New York Confer-
ence of 1877] will probably remove 
the first difficulties, by agreeing upon 
a code of rules by which the titles in 
any system shall be made. This de-
cided, we are ready for the question, 
Who shall prepare the titles of new 
books as published? The Library of 
Congress or its copyright department? 
The publishers themselves? A cata-
loguing bureau, established and main-
tained by the libraries of the country? 
An individual or firm, as a commercial 
venture? There are arguments for and 
against each one of them.162 

Progress was not as fast as the im-
petuous Dewey predicted. There were 
to be many steps between the dream and 
today's MARC tapes. Of basic impor-
tance was the standardization of de-
scriptive cataloging and subject analysis, 
if the centralized product was to be of 
maximum use. Once there were common 
cataloging practices and a central pro-
ducer, distribution was the next prob-
lem, solved by LC' s card distribution 
service and by the printing of its cata-
logs and, later, the National Union Cat-
alog. Much of the history of these ef-
forts can be found in the early volumes 
of the Library Journal, and it has been 
summarized by Dawson and given in 
more detail in two master's theses by 
Vivian D. Palmer and Velva J. Os-
born.163-65 

The product that has evolved over the 
past hundred years, namely, LC catalog 
copy, has laid more stress on centralized 
cataloging. However, it has included co-
operative cataloging in varying degrees 
through the use of cataloging done by 
selected libraries, especially those receiv-
ing books under the Cooperative Ac-
quisitions Program and later those par-
ticipating in the Farmington Plan for 
the acquisition of foreign titles.166 The 
whole effort received a tremendous boost 
with the inclusion of Title IIC in the 
Higher Education Act of 1965. LC re-
sponded handsomely to this mandate to 

t-



' ,, 

~ I 

acquire and catalog all currently pub-
lished titles of scholarly value, as John 
Cronin's report to the New York ALA 
Conference in 1966 promised167 and as 
LC has since expanded the resulting 
National Program for Acquisitions and 
Cataloging and its Shared Cataloging 
Program. 

Another dream of the early ALA 
years was that of providing cataloging 
copy with each new book published in 
this country. The editors of the 1876 
Report noted a suggestion from Winsor 
that publishers might send with each 
book a card providing a bibliographical 
description which would be suitable to 
be inserted in the library catalog.1ss 
During the past thirty years, the Library 
of Congress has taken a number of 
steps to make cataloging copy for do-
mestic books more easily available, as 
follows: 

1. In 1947, LC and the Publishers' 
Weekly arranged to include LC 
card numbers with the listings of 
new books in the "Weekly Record" 
section. 

2. In 1951, publishers began to coop-
erate in a program to print LC 
card numbers in their books. 

3. In 1953, the LC "All-the-Books" 
program was begun, a program to 
secure early copies of new books 
for early cataloging.169 

4. In 1958, LC undertook the Catalog-
ing-in-Source experiment. While it 
failed, much to the disappoint-
ment of librarians, it provided in-
formation useful for a later try_170 

5. In 1961, LC began through its 
Cards-with-Books-Program to en-
courage publishers and book 
wholesalers to supply printed cards 
with the books they sold. 171 

6. In 1971, LC started the successful 
and continuing Cataloging in Pub-
lication program. 

In the first volume of the American 
Library Journal, Dewey asked: "Is it 
practicable for the Library of Congress 

--

From Cutter to Computer I 441 

to catalogue for the whole country?" A 
hundred years later, the answer is still 
not, "Yes!" but is has become "Maybe!" 

SERIALS 

Historically, serials have been rather 
on the edge of things in technical ser-
vices. The librarians who gathered in 
Philadelphia talked a great deal about 
indexing periodicals, suggesting coop-
erative measures for updating Poole's 
1853 Index .to Periodical Literature, but 
they did not discuss the cataloging of 
periodicals as offering different problems 
from monographs. There was healthy 
respect for periodical literature, as they 
called the whole range of serials, and 
Spofford, who wrote in the 1876 Report 
on "Periodical Literature and Society 
Publications," dwelt on the importance 
of collecting and preserving complete 
files of such titles.172 

Cutter's Rules covered periodicals. He 
used the term without defining it in the 
first edition of his Rules; by 1904, in 
the last edition, he defined both period-
ical and serial. The latter, he wrote, was 
"a publtcation issued in successive parts, 
usually at regular intervals, and contin-
ued indefinitely,"173 not so very different 
from the definition provided in the An-
glo-American Cataloging Rules of 1967. 

Cutter's entry rule for periodicals 
scarcely changed throughout his four 
editions. Rule number 54 in the first 
edition is "Periodicals are to be treated 
as anonymous and entered under the 
first word."174 The fourth edition adds 
to this the phrase "not an article or se-
rial number."175 He listed four char-
acteristics of a periodical and by means 
of them decreed that society memoirs, 
proceedings, and transactions were not 
periodicals. Thus, they could be entered 
under the name of . the society, since 
they were the work of the society acting 
through its members. This issue of cor-
porate entry versus title entry continues 
as a problem for serials catalogers and 
has been the subject of discussion with-



442 I College & Research Libraries • September 1976 

out full agreement in the current proj-
ect to revise the 1967 Anglo-American 
Cataloging Rules. 

The Works study of College and Uni-
versity Library Problems in 1927 noted 
eight definitions of the term periodical 
used by academic libraries. The mean-
ingful differences were in the categories 
of publications included under the vari-
ous definitions and the resulting differ-
ences in treatment among libraries.176 

Drury ( 1930), with his businesslike ap-
proach to library ordering, gave firm 
definitions of serials as the overall term 
for publications issued indefinitely in 
successive parts, periodicals as publica-
tions issued at regular intervals of less 
than a year, and continuations as all 
other serials. These differentiations pro-
vide a generally firm basis on which to 
set up the ·appropriate records for or-
dering and receiving titles, but are too 
simplistic for the requirements of cata-
loging.177 

Reading through the literature of the 
last hundred years makes it clear that, 
in addition to the problems of catalog-
ing, serials offer much the same prob-
lems to the technical services which they 
always have-missing issues; the need 
to make n,ew issues available as quickly 
as possible, frequent changes in title, 
format, and content; the increasing 
number of serials available for acquisi-
tion; increasing costs, and how to fit this 
function into the traditional acquisi-
tion/ cataloging format. 

Within the past quarter century, the 
serials identity within the technical ser-
vices has become stronger with size. An-
drew Osborn's Serial Publications, pub-
lished by ALA in 1955, gave serials li-
brarians their first general text and an 
excellent one. They had already 
achieved their own periodical, Serial 
Slants, beginning in 1950, submerging 
its identity in Library Resources & Tech-
nical Services in 1957, when the ALA re-
organization created the Resources and 
Technical Services Division. There has 

been a separate serials unit within ALA 
since the formation of the Round Ta-
ble on Periodicals in 1926. In 1974, be-
cause of the interest of serials librar-
ians, RTSD set up the Organization 
Study Committee to explore the possi-
bility of organizing the division accord-
ing to form rather than function. The 
committee recommended a continuation 
of the present sectional organization, 
which combines form and function. 

BINDING 

Binding was a concern of the librar-
ians gathered in Philadelphia and was 
discussed on the conference floor. Win-
sor's advice was sought on the advisabil-
ity of maintaining a bindery in the li-
brary, and opinions were expressed 
about the cause of binding deteriora-
tion-was it gas lights, heat, or impure 
air?178 The Co-operation Committee, 
with Cutter as its first chairperson, re-
ported the willingness of some publish-
ers to furnish bindings specifically for 
libraries, and the committee listed the 
specifications it had drawn up for such 
a program. 179 

During the 1877 conference, binding 
and preservation were again discussed, 
including treatment for water damage 
following a fire, the replacing of leaves 
by heliotyping, and the restoration of 
rare books. Later in the proceedings, 
President Jus tin Winsor mentioned a 
new material for binding books, which 
he had noticed in an English newspaper. 
He had obtained some sheets from Mr. 
Nicholson of the London Library and 
had tried them with good results. The 
new material? Buckram! Mr. Dewey rose 
to state that "it was the impression of 
the committee that buckram was to be 
the coming binding, but that a little 
more experience was needed before rec-
ommending it; that for the present goat 
instead of this buckram would have to 
be recommended for binding."180 Well, 
it wasn't his discovery. 

During the English Conference in 

~· 

k . 



1877, a number of papers were given on 
binding and labeling books, including 
one by the same Edward Nicholson, "On 
Buckram as a . Binding-Material."ISI 
Nicholson strongly recommended the 
use of buckram, finding it durable and 
not too expensive, and predicted that it 
would largely diminish binding costs. 

Binding, as a separate topic, was treat-
ed by Librarian of Congress Spofford 
in the 1876 Report. 182 He provided six 
pages of well-informed, practical advice 
on all aspects of the subject, emphasiz-
ing the librarian's duty to go carefully 
and frequently through the collection 
to select those volumes requiring repairs 
or rebinding and to arrange for all 
books returned to receive the same scru-
tiny. In Spofford's opinion, "Next to the 
selection and utilization of books, there 
is no subject more important in the ad-
ministration of a public library than 
the binding and preservation of the vol-
umes."183 Both Spofford and Winsor, as 
well as Poole, 184 emphasized the impor-
tance of good workmanship and materi-
als in binding, and the reason for main-
taining a bindery in the library was the 
poor binding which might be expected 
under commercial contract. Another 
common opinion of the time was the 
better binding value to be obtained by 
ordering books abroad to be bound be-
fore they were supplied. 

The citations of literature on the care 
and preservation of books .in Cannons' 
Bibliography of Library Economy, cov-
ering 1876 through 1920, give an idea 
of the details discussed. In addition · to 
the topics above, there are such subjects 
as: how to open a bo9k, methods of in-
ducing care of books, book dusting, 
methods of keeping books clean, and di-
rections for mending. The World's Li-
brary Congress volume included a ten-
page paper on the "Elements of Library 
Binding" by D. V. R. Johnston, the 
New York State reference librarian.I85 

He cautioned against the false economy 
of cheap binding, recommended bind-

From Cutter to Computer I 443 

ing abroad for cost and durability, 
warned that only larger libraries could 
save money by maintaining their own 
binderies, and, surprisingly, gave a rath-
er negative report on buckram. 

ALA set up a Bookbinding Commit-
tee in 1905, which answered the mem-
bers' questions, maintained relations 
with publishers, worked for library 
binding of books commonly bought by 
libraries, and reported annually to the 
membership through the ALA Bulletin 
and conference pro'ceedings. The ALA 
survey report in the mid-1920s included 
a chapter on "Binding and Repair," re-
porting library practice relating to what 
were evidently of current interest, 
namely, treatment of new books, dust-
ing, inspection after circulation, wash-
ing and shellacking volumes, marking, 
care of leather bindings, duplication of 
missing pages ( the usual method was to 
type them), collation before binding, 
costs, binding contracts, staffing of li-
brary binderies, sewing methods, 
strengthening devices, and hanaling of 
music. Buckram was definitely in as the 
best-wearing and best-bargain material 
for binding. 

Works ( 1929) mentioned binding 
only as a problem of minor importance 
and singled out complaints of faculty 
relating to the inaccessibility of period-
icals during the binding process.I86 The 
placing of service above cost was defi-
nitely in! When the College and Univer-
sity Postwar Planning Committee of 
ALA and ACRL dealt with the "Poor 
Quality of Many Books," it referred to 
the low esteem in which the writing it-
self was held, particularly in the aca-
demic field. However, one paragraph 
was given to the problem of the future, 
namely, the need for preservation and 
duplication of fragile materials. 18'7 

The early concern about shoddy com-
mercial binding was resolved by a series 
of binding standards developed jointly 
by the Library Binding Institute, a trade 
association organized in 1935, and its 



444 I College & Research Libraries • September 1976 

predecessors with the American Library 
Association. Even before that time, the 
binders were working with librarians to 
provide specifications for acceptable li-
brary bindings. The results are today's 
binding standards, which are periodical-
ly revised. 188 

In the 1960s the ALA Library Tech-
nology Project reported the results of 
its program on the Development of Per-
formance Standards for Library Bind-
ing.189 The project developed standards 
based on performance rather than the 
materials and methods on which the in-
stitute's standards are based. The diffi-
culty of monitoring the newer standards 
has kept them from becoming a force. 

Under the protection of standards, 
librarians have transferred their major 
concern from the quality of binding to 
the preservation ·of library materials. 
Programs to meet this concern are not 
yet history. 

THE COMPUTER 

And so we come from Cutter to the 
computer, from Cutter's clear statement 
of what cataloging should be as a basis 
for uniformity of practice to the com-
puter as ' a tool for implementing coop-
erative and centralized cataloging with 
all that implies for library service. The 
academic library director has stepped 
out of the workroom into the office; the 
technical services have been accepted as 
a major division of the library's organi-
zation; acquisition records have been 
simplified and designed to furnish the 
first step in cataloging; descriptive cata-
loging has been codified, and classifica-
tion has been reduced to two generally 
accepted systems; the catalog itself is a 
dictionary catalog, usually in card form, 
except for some pioneering computer-
produced book catalogs; the Library of 
Congress is providing leadership for 
centralized and cooperative cataloging; 
serial users have accepted indexing for 
control of periodical literature, thus 
easing demands on the catalogers, which 

the latter could not hope to meet; and 
commercial binding has been standard-
ized so that libraries can get what they 
pay for and can concentrate on the 
problems of preservation. 

In the late 1930s Fremont Rider plot-
ted the growth rate of American re-
search libraries and found that their 
collections doubled every sixteen years. 
Taking Yale University Library as an 
example, he calculated that by the year 
2040, Yale would have an alarming total 
of 200 million volumes with a card cat-
alog occupying nearly three-quarters of 
a million catalog drawers spread out 
over not less than eight acres of floor 
space.190 But the computer is not easily 
alarmed, and by 2040, it will be able to 
handle such magnitude with ease. It 
may even store many of the texts in or-
der to reduce the 6,000 miles of shelv-
ing which Rider calculated as needed.191 

The potential of the computer for 
recording catalog records, making them 
readily available to many libraries, and 
providing a record of libraries' re-
sources is assumed but not yet fully re-
alized. Baumol and Marcus in 1973 saw 
computers moving toward greater use 
in academic libraries as a practical de-
velopment of the future: 

To date, the majority of successful 
data processing applications in librar-
ies have involved mechanization of 
nonprofessional tasks such as circula-
tion control and typing of biblio-
graphic aids. At the same time, there 
are trends in process which may in the 
next two decades change the range of 
innovation that is economically feasi-
ble. These are: ( 1) the .achievement 
of a standard format for bibliographic 
records in machine-readable form and 
the associated production at the Li-
brary of Congress and elsewhere of a 
sizable data base of such records; ( 2) 
a continuing sharp decrease in the cost 
of certain components of electronic 
data processing systems; ( 3) continu-
ing increases in the capacity and re-
liability of electric communications 



channels with concomitant decreases 
in the unit costs of the channels; and 
( 4) the creation of evolving modular, 
computer-based library systems, which 
take advantage of the three other 
changes just mentioned.l92 

Based on D. R. Swanson's predictions, 
Hanson and Daily describe the most ad-
vanced form of the catalog of the fu-
ture as a computerized catalog with 
eleven performance goals: 

User dialogues (programmed interro-
gation), aids to browsing, user-indexed 
library, access to in-depth information, 
wheat and chaff identification, national 
"network" of libraries, national net-
work of bibliographic tools, instant in-
formation, remote interrogation and 
delivery, active dissemination, and 
quality control over library services 
(improved feedback) ,193 

The Library of Congress leadership 
in developing machine-readable catalog-
ing (MARC) with its potential for pro-
viding instant availability of standard-
ized cataloging coupled with the .loca-
tion of specific copies of texts makes 
networking possible. And networking is 
today's dream and tomorrow's reality. 

During the 1876 conference, Barnwell 
spoke urgently on "A Universal Cata-
logue: Its Necessity and Practicability." 
Such a catalog "to include the literary 
stores of every existing or possible li-
brary" could be used in place of the sin-
gle library's catalog. "A marginal mark 
could be made opposite the titles of 
such books as the library contained, and 
thus the deficiencies would also be ascer-
tainable at a glance."194 Is Barnwell de-
scribing the computerized system called 
OCLC (which stands for Ohio College 
Library Center, a name long since out-
grown by this bibliographic data ex-
change system)? Isn't OCLC, in its pres-
ent form, an incipient universal (main-
entry, on-line) catalog for those library 
members which enter their full hold-
ings in its immense data bank? And, of 
course, when it adds serials control, or-

From Cutter to Computer I 445 

der records, and whatever other ideas 
Fred Kilgour pulls from his far-ranging 
imagination, it will be much, much 
more. 195 

There is · still a long, fascinating trail 
to travel. Full exploitation of com~ 
puters has been handicapped by our 
thinking in traditional terms. Network-
ing tends to be thought of as an exten-
sion of present services rather than re-
thought as a new concept with new po-
tential. The fact that the new machines 
impose new conditions . on their users is 
another reason why the traditional con-
ceptions must be rethought. 

It has been said that as the specialists 
took over the technical services, the user 
was lost to view. The chief librarian in 
1876, checking over an incoming ship-
ment of books to assign them to subject 
alcoves, might be interrupted to answer 
a query from a student. Thus, the user 
was securely embedded in the librari-
an's decisions without conscious effort 
and without the need to communicate 
with other staff to discover the users' 
concerns. Harassed by Hoods of ma-
terials and pressures to reduce process-
ing costs and arrearages simultaneously, 
the technical services staff may indeed 
lose track of the ultimate customer, an 
oversight which must receive more at-
tention in the future. 

The large academic libraries, which 
provide much of the cataloging leader-
ship, tend to ignore multimedia. In 
1976, we stand in relation to nonprint 
materials in much the same relationship 
as librarians of 1876 did to the book, al-
though the latter at least had a deep re-
spect for the educational importance of 
the book. These materials should be 
fully accepted as resources and given 
appropriate controls. 

Uniformity of practice should be the 
lesson which cataloging teaches to the 
other library functions. "'Uniformity 
of practice" is one way of describing 
standardization, the foundation on 
which networking can be built. IIideed, 



446 I College & Research Libraries • September 1976 

standardization may be more important 
than logic in drawing up the rules to 
which, as Barnwell said on the opening 
day of the 1876 conference, we are to 
adhere "with the most slavish servili-
ty."196 A hundred years after librarians 
organized for cooperative action, the 
technical services still have not agreed 
upon terminology to provide a means 
of gathering comparable statistics for 
sound comparison. 

The role of the library heads is cru-
cial to the technical services. As librar-
ies became larger and the heads could 
no longer be so intimately involved in 
acquisition and cataloging operations, 
their concern did not become less. As 
ALA became involved in much larger 
issues-research, management, person-
nel, social issues, library school accredi-
tation, and simply the difficulties of 
communication among an enlarged mem-
bership-the attention of the leaders was 
necessarily distracted from the technical 
services, which were left to the spe-
cialists. The difficulties in providing the 
technical services remained, but the chief 
librarian's interest turned from the details 
to the costs. 

Turning from the greatly enlarged 
ALA, the chiefs found a way to contin-
ue their important dialogues within the 
restricted membership of the Associa-
tion of Research Libraries. There, 
backed by the authority to provide sup-
portive activity within their own li-
braries, they continued their cooperative 
exploration of common concerns, and 
they were able to do so on a much 
grander scale than was possible for their 
predecessors. 

According to McGowan, the principal 
interests of ARL after its formation in 
1932 were to develop and increase by co-
operative effort the resources and use-
fulness of the research collections in 
American libraries. 197 These, of course, 
are basically the technical service con-
cerns of acquisitions and cataloging. 
The programs and projects for which 
ARL has been responsible in these areas 
culminated in the addition to the High-
er Education Act of 1965 of the provi-
sion which developed as the National 
Program for Acquisitions and Catalog-
ing. 

It could be argued that this activity 
without the early intimate knowledge 
of the technical service operations has 
resulted in some miscalculations. For ex-
ample, the cooperative cataloging aspect 
of the Farmington Plan simply broke 
down as the cataloging demands of the 
participating libraries overrode the di-
rectors' commitment to providing early 
cataloging for receipts. But, on balance, 
the value of the ARL aid to technical 
services has been of decisive importance 
to whatever progress has been made, and 
will doubtless continue to be so. 

In reviewing 1876, one senses an ex-
cited gathering of librarians' concerns 
and an exciting move toward coopera-
tion in dealing with them. The need for 
cooperation today is at once grimmer 
than in 1876 and easier because of new 
technological support. In 1976, one feels 
a similar shimmer of excitement on the 
edge of new areas of cooperation and, 
again, librarians approaching them will-
ing to face the hazards to each library's 
autonomy which the changes will bring. 

REFERENCES 

1. John Fiske, "A Librarian's Work," Atlantic 
Monthly 38:480 (Oct. 1876). 

2. George B. Utley, The Librarians' Confer-
ence of 1853 ( Chicago: American Library 
Assn., 1951), p.65. 

3. Lloyd P. Smith, ''Proceedings," American 

Library Jourruil1:141 (Nov. 30, 1876). 
4. College and University Postwar Planning 

Committee of the American Library Asso-
ciation and the Association of College and 
Reference Libraries, College and Univer-
sity Libraries and Librarians hip ( Plan-



)I 

ning for Libraries, no.6 [Chicago: Amer-
ican Library Assn., 1946] ), p.40. 

5. [Melvil Dewey] A Classification and Sub-
ject Index for Cataloguing and Arranging 
the Books and Pamphlets of a Library 
(Amherst, Mass.: 1876). 

6. Charles A. Cutter, "Rules for a Printed 
Dictionary Catalogue," in Department of 
the Interior, Bureau of Education, Public 
Libraries in the United States of America: 
Their History, Condition, and Manage-
ment (Special Report, Part II [Washing-
ton, D.C.: Govt. Print. Off., 1876]). 
Hereafter cited as 1876 Report. 

7. Paul S. Dunkin, Cataloging U.S.A. (Chi-
cago: American Library Assn., 1969), p.l. 

- 8. Fiske, "A Librarian's Work," p.480. 
9. George T. Little, "School and College Li-

braries," in Melvil Dewey, ed., Papers 
Prepared for the World's Library Con-
gress Read at the Columbian Exposition 
(Washington, D.C.: Govt. Print. Off., 
1896), "Reprint of Chapter IX of Part II 
of the Report of the Commissioner of Ed-
ucation for 1892-93," p.930. Hereafter 
cited as World's Library Congress in notes 
and in the text. 

10. American Library Association, A Survey 
of Libraries in the United States, v.4 
(Chicago: American Library Assn., 1926-
27), p.196- 98. 

11. William M. Randall and Francis L. D. 
Goodrich, Principles of College Library 
Administration ( Chicago: American Li-
brary Assn. and the Univ. of Chicago Pr., 
1936), p.94-99. 

12. Donald Coney, "The Administration of 
Technical Processes," in Carleton B. Joec-
kel, ed., Current Issues in Library Admin-
istration: Papers Presented Before the Li-
brary Institute at the University of Chi-
cago, August 1-12, 1938 (Chicago: 
Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1939 ), p.163-80. 

13. Ibid., p.176. 
14. Raynard C. Swank, "The Catalog Depart-

ment in the Library Organization," Li-
brary Quarterly 18:24-32 (Jan. 1948). 

15. "The Technical Services Division in Li-
braries: A Symposium," College & Re-
search Libraries 10:46-68 (Jan. 1949). 

16. Joseph L. Cohen, "A General Considera-
tion of the Technical Services Division in 
Libraries," in "The Technical Services Di-
vision in Libraries," p.47. 

17. Margaret C. Brown, "The Small Public 
Library," in "The Technical Services Di-
vision in Libraries," p.55. 

18. Richard H. Logsdon, "Summary," in "The 
Technical Services Division in Libraries," 
p.67. 

From Cutter to Computer I 447 

19. Arthur M. McAnally, "Organization of 
College and University Libraries," Library 
Trends 1:25 (July 1952). 

20. Maurice F. Tauber and Associates, Tech-
nical Services in Libraries: Acquisitions, 
Cataloging, Clas~ification, Binding, Photo-
graphic Reproduction, and Circulation 
Operat·ions (New York: Columbia Univ. 
Pr., 1954). 

21. Esther J. Piercy, "Introducing LRTS," 
Library Resources & Technical Services 
1:3-4 (Winter 1957). 

22. John M. Dawson, "A Brief History of the 
Technical Services in Libraries," Library 
Resources & Technical Services 6:197-204 
(Summer 1962); James E. Skipper, "The 
Present State and Future Development 
of Technical Services," Library Resources 
& Technical Services 6:205-9 (Summer 
1962). 

23. Raynard C. Swank, "Subject Catalogs, 
Classifications, or Bibliographies? A Re-
view of Critical Discussions, 1876-1942," 
Library Quarterly 14:316- 32 (Oct. 
1944). 

24. Ibid., p.316. 
25. Swank, "The Catalog Department," p.24-

32. 
26. E. Walfred Erickson, College and Univer-

sity Library Surveys, 1938- 1952 ( ACRL 
Monographs, no.25 [Chicago: American 
Library Assn., 1961]), p.3. 

27. Ralph E. Shaw, "Introduction," in Shaw, 
ed., "Scientific Management in . Libraries," 
Library Trends 2:359 (Jan. 1954). 

28. Bella E. Shachtman, ed., "Technical Ser-
vices: .Policy, Organization, and Coordina-
tion," Journal of Cataloging and Classifi-
cation 11:59-114 ( April1955). 

29. Richard M. Dougherty, Robert W. Wads-
worth, 'and D. H. Axford, Policies and 
Programs Designed to Improve Coopera-
tion and Coordination among Technical 
Service Operating Units (Occasional Pa-
pers, no.86 [Urbana: Univ. of Illinois 
Graduate School of Library Science, 
1967] ). 

30. Booz, Allen & Hamilton, Inc., Organiza-
tion and StaRing of the Libraries of Co-
lumbia University (Westport, Conn.: 
Redgrave Information Resources Corp., 
1973), p.xvi. 

31. Ibid., p.55-57. 
32. Columbia University Libraries, The Ad-

ministrative Organization of the Libraries 
of Columbia University: A Detailed De-
scription (New York: Columbia Univ. Li-
braries, 1973). 

33. Dawson, "A Brief History of the Tech-
nical Services," p.127. 



448 I College & Research Libraries • September 1976 

34. William M. Randall, "The Technical Pro-
cesses and Library Service," in Randall, 
ed., The Acquisition and Cataloging of 
Books; Papers Presented Before the Li-
brary Institute at the ·university of Chi-
cago, July 29 to August 9, 1940 (Chi-
cago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1940 ), p.6. 

35. World's Library Congress, p.809-26, 916-
33. 

36. C. W. Andrews, "The Acquisition of 
Books," Public Libraries 8:195-202 (May 
1903). 

37. "Methods of Book Buying," Library Jour-
nal31:14-17 (Jan. 1906). 

38. Isabel E. Lord, "Some Notes on the Prin-
ciples and Practice of Bookbuying for Li-
braries," Library Journal 32:3-64 (Jan. 
1907). 

39. Gardner M. Jones, "Accession Depart-
ment," World's Library Congress, p.814. 

40. Lord, "Some Notes," p.64. 
41. Francis K. W. Drury, Order Work for Li-

braries ( Chicago: American Library 
Assn., 1930), p.69. 

42. Randall and Goodrich, Principles of Col-
lege Library Administration, p.131. 

43. Guy R. Lyle, The Administrat-ion of the 
College Library (4th ed.; New York: Wil-
son, 1974), p.194. 

44. Kenneth G. Peterson, The University of 
California Library at Berkeley, 1900-
1945 (University of California Publica-
tions in Librarianships, no. 8 [Berkeley: 
Univ. of California Pr., 1970] ), p.20. 

45. Cutter, "Rules," p.82. 
46. "Methods of Book Buying," p.17. 
47. Lord, "Some Notes," p.9. 
48. George A. Works, College and University 

Library Problems: A Study of a Selected 
Group of Institutions Prepared for the 
Association of American Universities 
(Chicago: American Library Assn., 
1927), p.104. 

49. College and University Postwar Planning 
Committee, College and University Li-
braries, p.39-40. 

50. William F. Poole, "The Organization and 
Management of Public Libraries," in 
1876 Report, p.482. 

51. Lord, "Some Notes," p.60. 
52. Drury, Order Work, p.74-78. 
53. Randall and Goodrich, Principles of Col-

lege Library Administration, p.93. 
54. Louis R. Wilson and Maurice F. Tauber, 

The University Library: Its Organization, 
Administration, and Functions (Chicago: 
Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1945), p.145. 

55. Nelson W. McCombs, "Correlated Order 
Forms," Library Journal 58:285-89 
(April 1, 1933). 

56. Cutter, "Rules," p.82. 
57. Jones, "Accession Department," p.817. 
58. Drury, Order Work, p.67-71. 
59. Randall and Goodrich, Principles of Col-

lege Library Administration, p. 92, 
60. Ibid., p.131. 
61. Gertrude Wulfekoetter, Acquisition Work: 

Processes Involved in Building Library 
Collections (Seattle: Univ. of Washington 
Pr., 1961), p.45-51. 

62. Stephen Ford, The Acquisition of Library 
Materials ( Chicago: American Library 
Assn., 1973 ), p.23. 

63. Ibid., p.38-39. 
64. Poole, "The Organization and Manage-

ment," p.483. 
65. Jones, "Accession Department," p.816. 
66. Ibid., p.816-17. 
67. Lord, "Some Notes," p.61. 
68. Drury, Order Work, p.49. 
69. Wulfekoetter, Acquisition Work, p.64-65. 
70. Ford, The Acquisition of Library Materi-

als, p.104-5. 
71. American Library Association, Co-opera-

tion Committee, ''Sixth Report," Library 
Journal2:221 (Nov.-Dec. 1877). 

72. "Methods of Book Buying," p.16. 
73. Lord, "Some Notes," p.58. 
74. Drury, Order Work, p.12-13. 
75. Ibid., p.23-33. 
76. Wulfekoetter, Acquisition Work, p.52-69. 
77. Poole, "The Organization and Manage-

ment," p.482. 
78. William F. Poole, "Proceedings," Amer-

ican Library Journal 1:134 (Nov. 30, 
1876). 

79. Lord, "Some Notes," p.3-8. 
80. Poole, "The Organization and Manage-

ment," p.481. 
81. "Legislation Respecting Duties on Books 

Imported for Public Use," 1876 Report, 
p.290-91. 

82. Poole, ''The Organization and Manage-
ment," p.489. 

83. Fiske, "A Librarian's Work," p.481.. 
84. Ibid. 
85. "Proceedings," American Library Journal 

1:133-34 (Nov. 30, 1876). 
86. Justin Winsor, "Shelf Lists vs. Accession 

Catalogues," Library Journal 3:247-48 
(Sept. 1878). 

87. American Library Association, Committee 
on Library Administration, "Report [on 
Accessioning]" in "Papers and Proceed-
ings," ALA Bulletin 2:223-25 (Sept. 
1908). 

88. American Library Association, A Survey, 
v.4, p.57-65. 

89. "LJ's Survey of Accession and Inventory 



Practices;~ Library Journal 84:104~52 
(April!, 1959). 

90. "College Libraries," 1876 Report, p.62. 
91. Jones, "Accession Department," p.816. 
92. Ibid., p.819. 
93. Andrews, "The Acquisition of Books," 

. p.l97-98. 
94. Ibid., p.201. 
95. J. I. Wyer, The College and University 

Library (Manual of Library Economy, IV 
[3d ed. rev.; Chicago: American Library 
Assn., 1928]), p.28-29. 

96. Drury, Order Work, p.l28-40. 
97. Melvil Dewey, "Proceedings," American 

Library Joumall:l31 (Nov. 30, 1876). 
98. Adolf Hepner, . "A Proposition for an 

American Libraries' Clearinghouse," in 
"Cleveland Conference Proceedings," Li-
brary Journal 21 :C67 (Sept. 1896). 

99. Jones, "Accession Department," p.818-
19. 

100. Helen W. Welch, "Publications Ex-
change," Library Trends 3:425 (April 
1955). . 

101. Theodore Gill, . "The Smithsonian System 
of Exchanges," 1876 Report, p.285-90. 

102. Erickson, College and University Library 
. Surveys, pAl. 

103. Edward G. Holley, Raking the Historic 
Goals; The A.L.A. Scrapbook of 1876 
(Beta Phi Mu Chapbook no.B [Beta Phi 
Mu, 1967] ), p.l2-13. 

104. James G. Barnwell, "A Universal Cata-
logue-Its Necessity and Practicability," 
American Library Journal 1:57-58 (Nov. 
30, 1876). 

105. "Proceedings," American Library Journal 
1:112 (Nov. 30, 1876). 

106. Otis H. Robinson, "College Library Ad-
ministration," 1876 Report, p.509. 

107. Charles A. Cutter, "Library Catalogues," 
1876 Report, p.526-622. 

108. "Catalogues and Cataloguing," 1876 Re-
port, p.623-62. 

109. Dunkin, Cataloging U.S.A., p.99. 
110. L. E. Jones, ''The Government Library 

Report," American Library Journal 1:9 
(Sept. 30, 1876). 

Ill. Dunkin, Cataloging U.S.A., p.viii. 
112. Eugene R. Hanson and Jay E. Daily, 

"Catalogs and Cataloging," in Encyclo-
pedia of Library and Information Science, 
V.4 (New York: Dekker, 1968), p.242-
305. 

113. Cutter, "Rules," p.10. 
114. Ibid., p.5. 
115. Hanson and Daily, "Catalogs and Catalog-

ing," p.245. 
116. William C. Lane, "Cataloging," World's 

Library Congress, p.835-49. 

From Cutter to Computer I -44.9 

117. Dunkin, Cataloging U.S.A., p.9-10. 
118. Andrew D. Osborn, "The Crisis in Cata-

loging," Library Quarterly 11:393-411 
(Oct. 1941). 

119. Wyllis E. Wright, "The Anglo-American 
Cataloging Rules: A Historical Perspec-
tive," Library Resources & Technical Ser-
vices 20:36-47 (Winter 1976). 

120. Jim Ranz, The Printed Book Catalogue 
in American Libraries: 1723-1900 (ACRL 
Monographs no.26 [Chicago, American Li-
brary Assn., 1964]), p.70. 

121. Little, "School and College Libraries," 
p.928. 

122. Charles A. Cutter, "Proceedings," Library 
Journal2:259 ( Nov.Dec. 1877 ). 

123. Hermann A. Hagen, "The Librarian's 
Work," Nation 24:40-41 (Jan. 18, 1877). 

124. Charles A. Cutter, "The Cataloguer's 
Work," Nation 24:86-88 (Feb. 8, 1877). 

125. Ibid., p.87. 
126. For more details see Kenneth J. Brough, 

Scholars Workshop: Evolving Concep-
tions of Library Service (Illinois Contri-
butions to Librarianship, no.5 [Urbana: 
Univ. of Illinois Pr. 1953] ), p.105-9. 

127. Dunkin, Cataloging U.S.A., p.20. 
128. Cutter, "Rules," p.10 . 
129. Dunkin, Cataloging U.S.A., p.20. 
130. Lyle, The Administration of the College 

Library, p.5~9. 
131. Isadore G. Mudge, ''Present Day Econ-

omies in Cataloging as Seen by the Ref-
erence Librarian of a Large University 
Library," in American Library Associa-
tion, Catalog Section, Catalogers' and 
Classifiers' Yearbook 4:22 ( 1934). 

132. Fiske, "A Librarian's Work," p.481-82. 
133. Robinson, "College Library Administra-

tion," p.509. 
134. Ibid. 
135. "Proceedings," American Library Journal 

1:141-42 (Nov. 30, 1876). 
136. Melvil Dewey, "Catalogues and Cata-

loguing," Part I, 1876 Report, p.623. 
137. Hanson and Daily, "Catalogs and Cata-

loging," p.268. 
138. Leo E. LaMontagne, American Library 

Classification with Special Reference to 
the Library of Congress (Hamden, Conn.: 
Shoe String, 1961), p.208. 

139. Dunkin, Cataloging U.S.A., p.100. 
140. Cutter, "Rules," p.9. 
141. Robert L. Mowery, "The Cutter Classifi-

cation: Still at Work," Library Resources 
& Technical Services 20:154-56 (Spring 
1976). 

142. Dunkin, Cataloging U.S.A., p.101. 
143. LaMontagne, American Library Classifica-

tion, p.232-33. 



450 I College & Research Libraries • September 1976 

144. Little, "School and College Libraries," 
p.923. 

145. Horace Kephart, "Classification," World's 
Library Congress, p.861-62, 890. 

146. Haynes McMullen, "Administration of the 
University of Chicago Libraries, 1910-28," 
Library Quarterly 23:29 (Jan. 1953). 

147. "Symposium on Classification," ALA Bul-
letin 5:224-39 (July 1911). 

148. Works, College and University Library 
Problems, p.103-4. 

149. John P. Comaromi, Mary E. Michael, and 
Janet Bloom, A Surve.y of the Use of the 
Dewey Decimal Classification in the Unit-
ed States and Canada (Albany, N.Y.: For-
est Press, Lake Placid Foundation, 1975), 
p.13. 

150. Ibid., p.16. 
151. Robert L. Mowery, "The 'Trend to LC' 

in College and University Libraries," Li-
brary Resources & Technical Services 19: 
389 (Fall 1975). 

152. Lyle, The Administration of the College 
Library, p.57-58; Rutherford D. Rogers 
and David C. Weber, University Library 
Administration {New York: Wilson, 
1971 ), p.171. 

153. Abstract of Ruth M. Heiss, ''The Card 
Catalog in Libraries of the United States 
Before 1876" (Master's thesis, Univ. of 
Illinois, 1938), in American Library As-
sociation, Catalog Section, Catalogers' and 
Classifoers' Yearbook 8:125-26 ( 1939). 

154. Ranz, The Printed Book Catalogue, p.76. 
155. Catherine D. Hayes, "The History of the 

University of Rochester Libraries-120 
Years," The University of Rochester Li-
brary BuUetin 25:70 {Spring 1970). 

156. Robinson, "College Library Administra-
tion," p.512. 

157. Justin Winsor and Otis H. Robinson, Col-
lege Libraries as Aids to Instruction (U.S. 
Bureau of Education Circulars of Infor-
mation, no.1-1880 [Washington, D.C.: 
Govt. Print. Off., 1880]), p.14. 

158. Ibid., p.17. 
159. James Krikelas, ''Catalog Use Studies and 

Their Implications," in Melvin J. Voigt, 
ed., Advances in Librarians hip 3: 195-200 
(1972). 

160. American Library Association, "Constitu-
tion," American Library Journal 1:254 
(March 31, 1877). 

161. American Library Journal 1:251 (March 
31, 1877). 

162. Melvil Dewey, "The Coming Catalogue," 
American Library Journal 1:423 (Aug. 
31, 1877). 

163. John M. Dawson, "A History of Central-
. ized Cataloging," Library Resources & 

Technical Services 11:28-32 (Winter 
1967). 

164. Vivian D. Palmer, "A Brief History of 
Cataloging Codes in the United States, 
1852-1949" (Master's paper, Univ. of 
Chicago, 1963). 

165. Velva J. Osborn, "A History of Coopera-
tive Cataloging in the United States" 
(Master's paper, Univ. of Chicago, 1944). 

166. John M. Dawson, "The Library of Con-
gress: Its Role in Cooperative and Cen-
tralized Cataloging," Library Trends 16: 
88 {July 1967). 

167. John W. Cronin, "Remarks on LC Plans 
for Implementation of New Centralized 
Acquisitions and Cataloging Program U n-
der Title IIC, Higher Education Act" Li-
brary Resources & Tchnical Services 11: 
35-45 (Winter 1967 ) . 

168. 1876 Report, p.513-14, fn.l. 
169. Dawson, "The Library of Congress," 

p.90-91. 
170. Library of Congress, Processing Depart-

ment, The Cataloging-in-Source Experi-
ment: A Report to the Librarian of Con-
gress {Washington, D.C.: Library of Con-
gress, 1960). 

171. Hanson and Daily, "Catalogs and Catalog-
ing,"p.287. 

172. A. R. Spofford, "Periodical Literature and 
Society Publications," 1876 Report, p.681. 

173. Charles A. Cutter, Rules for a Dictionary 
Catalog (4th ed.; Washington, D.C.: 
Govt. Print. Off., 1904), p.22. 

17 4. Cutter, "Rules," p.33. 
175. Cutter, Rules, 4th ed., p.59. 
176. Works, College and University Library 

Problems, p.118-19. 
177. Drury, Order Work, p.98. 
178. "Proceedings," American Library Journal 

1:124-25 (Nov. 30, 1876). 
179. American Library Association, Co-opera-

tion Committee, "Fifth Report," American 
Library Journal1:432 (Aug. 31, 1877). 

180. ''Proceedings," Library Journal 2:34 
(Sept. 1877). 

181. Edward B. Nicholson, "On Buckram as 
a Binding-Material," Library Journal 2: 
207-9 {Nov.-Dec. 1877). 

182. A. R. Spofford, "Binding and Preservation 
of Books," 1876 Report, p.673-78. 

183. Ibid., p.673. 
184. Poole, "The Organizational and Manage-

ment" p.481. 
185. D. V. R. Johnston, ''Elements of Library 

Binding," World's · Library Congress, 
p.907-16. 

186. Works, College and University Library 
Problems, p.99. 

I( 



187. College and University Postwar Planning 
Committee, College and University Li-
braries, p.30-32. 

188. Dudley A. Weiss, .. Binding Institute, Li-
brary," in Encyclopedia of Library and 
Information Science V.2 (New York: 
Dekker, 1968), p.510-12. 

189. American Library Association, Library 
Technolggy Project, Development of Per-
formance Standards for Library Binding, 
Phase I-II (Chicago: American Library 
Assn., 1961, 1966). 

190. Fremont Rider, The Scholar and the Fu-
ture of the Research Library: A Problem 
and Its Solution (New York: Hadham 
Pr., 1944), p.12. 

191. Ibid. 
192. William J. Baumol and Matityahu Mar- . 

cus, Economics of Academic Libraries 

From Cutter to Computer I 451 

(Washington, D.C.: American Council on 
Education, 1973), p.41-42. 

193. Hanson and Daily, "Catalogs and Cata-
loging," p.292. 

194. Barnwell, .. A Universal Catalogue," p.54-
55. 

195. OCLC needs no explanation for the many 
library users of this fastest growing of the 
computer systems. For those just back 
from a decade on a desert island, Art Plot-
nick has drawn together a primer on 
OCLC, with a side glance at BALLOTS, 
its West Coast counterpart, in American 
Libraries 7:258-75 (May 1976). 

196. Ibid., p.58. 
197. Abstract of Frank M. McGowan, ''The 

~sociation of Research Libraries, 1932-
1962," in Dissertation Abstracts Interna-
tional 34:348-A (July 1973). 

Helen W. Tuttle is assistant university 
librarian far technical services, 

Princeton University, 
Princeton, New Jersey. 

_I