Z
792
094
C45

SOME OBSERVATIONS
ON THE
RODLEIAN CLASSED CATALOGUE.
BY
HENRY W. CHANDLER, M.A.
FELLOW OF PEMBROKE COLLEGE, OXFORD.

PRICE ONE SHILLING.
OXFORD:
B. H. BLACKWELL, 50 AND 51, BROAD STREET.
1888.

ARTES
LIBRARY
1837
VERITAS
SCIENTIA
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
ZE PLURIBUS Cmum
TUEBOR
SI QUÆRIS-PENINSULAM-AMLENAM
CIRCUMSPICE
:

.094
C4 5
NOTE.
FROM the preface and its date it will be seen that these
'Observations' were printed and ready for publication at the
end of September last; and I intended that they should be
issued as soon as I received notice of the Special Meeting
which was ordered to be held early in October. Days rolled
on; days became weeks, and yet no notice came; so at last
I changed my mind, and resolved to withhold the paper
till after the meeting. It was possible that there might
be no need to publish it at all. At length on Thursday,
Oct. 25, ten Curators met. One member of the committee
on the Classed Catalogue moved the adoption of the report
(see p. 17), and another member of the same committee
seconded the proposal. Then we all talked. I observed
that three years ago I circulated amongst the Curators
reasons (see p. 6) which seemed to me fatal to any classed
catalogue, and that I did not intend to waste time by
repeating them. At length we divided, when five voted for
the continuance of the Classed Catalogue and four against
it, so that my belief (p. 31) was well founded.
}
1
October 25th, 1888.
25918
H. W. C.
1
}

1
2

PREFACE.
SOME may perhaps think that these Observations might
more fitly have been submitted to the Bodleian Curators
at the ensuing meeting; and there was a time when I
should certainly have thought so myself. But the experience
of the last year or so has convinced me that it is perfectly
idle to discuss any technical matter with my colleagues.
They have their own notions with regard to books, and
they very naturally cling to them; the consequence is that
I can hardly understand their views, and am quite sure that
they cannot comprehend mine. Moreover, as I explained
more than a year and a half ago (see Remarks on the Practice
and Policy of lending Bodleian Printed Books and Manu-
scripts, p. iv), the Curators have let me know that they
dislike my lengthy papers, and no wonder. Even if I read
out these Observations, and even if the Curators had the time
and the patience to listen to them, there is no reason, judging
from the past, to suppose that they would produce any useful
effect. It would after all be necessary to appeal to Con-
vocation, so that the simplest and shortest way of proceeding
is to come before Convocation at once.
September 21st, 1888.
H. W. C.
·

וי
1
THE BODLEIAN CLASSED CATALOGUE.
NEARLY three years ago, on November 7th, 1885, the
Bodleian Curators received a report from the Librarian
asking for an increase of staff, and a few days later
they received from me a printed Memorandum concerning
that request in which the following passage occurred:
"Who tied the millstone of a classed catalogue round
the Librarian's neck, I do not know; but the classed
catalogue and all the work which it entails is so much
labour thrown away. No real scholar, no man who is
capable of literary research, wants a classed catalogue;
he hates the very sight of such a thing; it serves no
useful purpose; it is a snare and a delusion. The
sciolist, and he alone, thinks how delightful it would
be to turn out any given subject and there see all the
books that have been written on it. He does not know
how impossible the thing is, or what mischiefs result
from the attempt to compass such a work. Most French
catalogues are classed, and he who has had the ill luck, as
I have, to consult them, retains a lively sense of detestation
for those who were foolish enough to class the books.
How is a man, it will be asked, to know what books
have been printed on this or that? The answer is that
every man fit to be admitted to a great library knows
many ways of acquiring this information.
Could men
of real knowledge be consulted, I am quite sure that
a large majority, if not all, would infinitely prefer the
alphabetical arrangement under authors' names, to the
best classed catalogue that could be devised. Let it be
observed that I say classed catalogue. Could all these
6
useless duplicate slips be dispensed with, there would
be a very considerable diminution of needless work and
of needless expense." On reflection, not being quite
certain that this would be intelligible to all the Curators,
or, to speak more correctly, being certain that it would
not be intelligible, I wrote the following privately printed
Memorandum dated Dec. 1, 1885:-
"In the Memorandum of Nov. 10th I made some remarks
on the Bodleian Catalogue, and as there is reason to fear
that in being brief I became obscure, the Curators will,
I hope, pardon some further observations. The matter
is unfortunately a little technical; and perhaps not every
man has had an opportunity of learning those details,
without a knowledge of which a correct judgment can
hardly be formed. A full and adequate discussion of the
whole question in all its bearings would require a pamphlet,
possibly a book; but it would be folly to write and print
what few would care to read and digest.
"The existing Bodleian Catalogue visible to all on entering
the library is contained in more than seven hundred large
folio volumes, in which the books are entered under authors'
names alphabetically arranged. Of this catalogue I may
have something to say on a future occasion; at present
I am concerned with another known as the Subject or
Classed Catalogue, in which the titles of our printed books
are to be arranged under classes, sub-classes, and so on.
Such an arrangement is with some books easy, with others
difficult, with many impossible: some go quietly enough
under one class, some under two or three, some under
many, and some utterly defy all attempts at classification.
'My dear Sir,' says the man whose ideas of books are
hazy, you are really very obtuse, you make difficulties.
where none exist; the thing is exceedingly simple. Put
all your theological books together, put all your law books
together, and so on; range all the Histories of England,
all the Histories of France, side by side; proceed on
the same principles with the whole of your books, and
your classed catalogue will be made: it may take a
slight amount of trouble, yet any body with an ounce
of brains and a little good will can and must succeed;
real difficulty there is none.' It is impossible to suppress
a smile when one thinks how many men there are even
in this University to whom this sad nonsense appears
to be perfectly sane and rational. 'But,' my hazy
friend continues, you surely forget that what you so
dogmatically call 'nonsense' is advocated by a large
number, perhaps by a majority of librarians; they must
know all about books; it is their profession.' No, I
do not forget the librarians, to whom, their profession
and qualifications, I shall some day return.
6
6
"A man thinks to himself how pleasant it would be to
turn-let us say-to the head Balloon,' and there see
all the books that treat of them arranged in the exact
order that suits him (it will suit nobody else); another
wishes to discover what were the popular London Songs
at the Restoration; another desires to prime himself for
a paper on the Ink of the Middle Ages; all expect to
discover what they require in the classed catalogue. Under
what head ought Balloon' to come? That depends on
the way in which you look at them. Those who dream.
of travelling in the air will be disposed to think that
travelling in the air should stand somewhere near travelling
on land and travelling on water: those who look on the
balloon as a toy, an amusement, an entertainment for a
tea-garden, will be inclined to hunt for them under Sports,
Pastimes, and Amusements: those who regard them as
bags full of gas lighter than air may search under Natural
Philosophy. Quot homines tot sententiae, and, what is rare,
everybody is right. You may with perfect correctness
look at a balloon in an indefinite number of ways, and
8
your classification will vary accordingly. Do you want
your book in order to know how balloons are made?
surely it must come under the Arts: do you wish to
read of celebrated ascents and descents, what can be more
natural than to turn to some sub-division of History?
At this point I lay down my pen, and consult a classed
catalogue of more than thirty thousand distinct works
(more than a hundred thousand volumes), and endeavour
by its help to discover some books on the subject. It is
idle to look under Theology or Jurisprudence; neither
are History or Literature promising. Only one big head
remains, Arts and Sciences; and, after running my eye
over nine closely printed columns of index in small type,
I discover that there is no head Aerostation or Balloon
at all. Books certainly exist on the subject, and some
of them are probably hidden away somewhere in this
catalogue, but where? After a long search I am unable
to say where. This, it will be said, only proves the
badness of your book; in fact, however, it proves more,
for the same thing necessarily happens times without
number in all classed catalogues.
"For the London Songs of the Restoration three or four
heads may be with some difficulty discovered, but it would
be a weary business to make out under which of them
we should be likely to find Durfey and his compeers.
Then as to Ink in the Middle Ages, one reflects that old
ink is a kind of pigment, modern ink is a species of dye,
it is a chemical compound; are we to look under Manu-
factures, or Applied Chemistry, or Middle Ages? Again,
it occurs to one's mind that people who discourse of writing
and writing materials must talk of ink; are we to turn
out the Art of Writing? and, if so, under what more general
head does that come? As a matter of fact, in this case
as in the others, I, in common with all men accustomed
to literary research, know perfectly well how to get at
9
•
books on all three subjects, supposing such books to
exist; but we should never dream of getting our inform-
ation out of the classed catalogue of such a library as
the Bodleian. It would take too long, and be too much
like looking for a needle in a bottle of hay. However,
I again take up my classed catalogue. Under Arts I find
a general heading, 'Writing and other means of representing
speech:' to that I turn and read two closely printed
columns, but not a word do I see about Ink; so I have
recourse again to the index, and at length, in a totally
different part of the catalogue, under Literary History,
I discover a subhead Palæography'; after a time I light
on the one book of Caneparius de Atramentis, Lond. 1660.
And now bidding adieu to classed catalogues, I turn to
a very
different sort of work, and there, without a moment's
trouble, I get the names of more than twenty authors
who have written upon Ink, and, if I were not too lazy,
could with ease add to that number. Whereupon thinking
of ink, it just occurs to me that, between forty and fifty
years ago, I copied down a mediæval receipt for the
making of ink (and have just fished it up and re-read
it) out of Arnold's Chronicle of London, a book which,
like thousands of others, must always render a classed
catalogue a snare and a delusion. Where should a
Chronicle of London be put? Either under History or
under London. Both would be right and both wrong,
for the contents of this curious old book are very mis-
cellaneous; it contains inter alia not only a list of the
Lord Mayors of London, but (I speak from memory)
directions how to grow parsley in a few hours, how to
make ink, etc. etc., and the earliest known copy of that
famous old ballad, The Nut-brown Maid.' Such a book
goes by equal right in twenty places. If you put it
in twenty places, you must pay for twenty slips instead
of one; you vastly increase the bulk of your unwieldy
10
catalogue; the larger you make it, the more difficult it
is to use it, and after an enormous expenditure of time,
trouble, and money, you produce something which no
man fit to be admitted to such a library as the Bodleian
would ever care to look at.
"It will be said that I have purposely chosen extreme
examples and cases where I happen to have private in-
formation. Nothing of the sort: the examples were
written down at random just as they came into my head
and as to extreme examples, it must be remembered that
a classed catalogue which will not stand the test of
extreme cases is self-condemned. Everybody knows that
Bibles are to be looked for under Theology; Fearne on
Contingent Remainders, under Law; and so on; it is only
by taking something a little out of the common way that
you can judge whether you have got a useful or a
useless article.
"A large percentage of books, perhaps thirty or forty
per cent, or more, are obstinate; they will not go under
one class and stop there; small blame to them, for they
have just as good a right to go in half a dozen other places.
Either enter them then in half a dozen places, or make cross-
references, say the advocates of a classed catalogue. Very
good only just consider what this means. It means that,
besides the huge alphabetical catalogue in over seven
hundred volumes, there is to be another ever so much
larger; it means an immense expenditure, rather an im-
mense waste, of money.
"What the present catalogue cost is more than I can tell;
but to suppose it to have come to £5 a volume for labour,
transcription, paper, and binding, is probably ludicrously
below the actual sum expended; at £5 a volume it must
have cost over £3500, and perhaps more than twice that
sum. The classed catalogue, being of necessity considerably
larger, can hardly cost less. And for what is this money
11
spent? For a thing that nobody wants who knows anything
about books.
"Consider too the fate of an author like Aristotle or
Leibnitz; their works are scattered in all directions.
Where there is an alphabetical catalogue of authors, there
may not be any great hardship in this, because every
book is entered at least twice; and if you want the Opera
Omnia, you can turn out Aristotle or Leibnitz and find
them but where, as in many French libraries, the
librarians are so ignorant of their profession as to make
only a classed catalogue, the search for the works of a
polygraphic author is, as I know by bitter experience,
simply maddening.
"If any two persons would spend an hour in assigning
to their respective classes a hundred books taken at
random, they would discover that the arrangement which
one considers to be natural and proper, is to the other in
the highest degree unnatural and improper. A man may
discover more than this; he may find, and certainly will
find, not only that he differs widely from other people,
but, what is more confounding still, that he differs from
himself. The classification which seemed natural enough
a month ago looks very different to-day. And the classed
catalogue of a library is largely, if not wholly, the vagary
of the librarian: even if it is fashioned on results arrived
at in a congress of librarians, it by no means follows that
any but the authors of the scheme can find their way about
in it, nor can they always do so. Each system of classifi-
cation-and there are many such-is a maze in which all
but those in the secret are lost.
"But even were such a catalogue possible, no one man
could compile it; for to class all the books in a library
as large as the Bodleian, is to class works which cover,
or nearly cover, the omne scibile; and unless a man knows
every branch, nay, every twig and bud of human know-
12
ledge, he will never be able to assign to each book its
proper place, even if the book has only one proper place;
still less successful must he be, if, as is usually the case,
a book has two, three, or more places.
"" If
any one will only take the trouble to think the matter
over, he must see that classification, like cataloguing, is
relative to some use that is to be made of the classification.
As the use varies so does the classification, the principles
of which shift about as rapidly as the bits of glass in
a kaleidoscope. Let no one be deluded by such a phrase
as Subject Catalogue: subject is a vague word, and subjects
can be composed in as many ways as ideas can be associated.
'The condition of the poor among the ancient Romans' is
a 'subject'; 'Aristotle's quotations from Homer and other
poets' is also a 'subject'; and so on ad infinitum. Both
these subjects will go, as will most others, under more heads
than one.
on.
"Again, there are an immense number of books which
refuse to go under any one class whatever; their contents
are so multifarious and miscellaneous, that they have the
right to enter anywhere and everywhere. Some librarians
try to get out of this sort of difficulty by abandoning
'subjects' and taking to 'forms.' They put all 'Essays'
together irrespective of subject, all Biographies,' and so
A man interested, let us say, in 'Broadsides' would
highly approve of such an arrangement, for he would find
all such things, however heterogeneous, classed together,
ballads, proclamations, play-bills, posters, and the like.
Suppose, again, a man wanted autobiographical sketches
from St. Augustine's Confessions down to (or up to) the
Memoirs of Finette, he would get them in the catalogue
I am now considering; he would not get them in the
Bodleian Subject Catalogue, because Autobiography'
is a 'form' and not a 'subject.' In any case, however,
thousands of volumes in a library so large as ours must
13
be thrown together into purely arbitrary and artificial
classes which have nothing to do either with 'forms' or
'subjects.' A book relegated to such a heading as 'Literary
Miscellanies' is, in fact, not classed at all, and all such
sham classes (numerous enough in large catalogues) are
so many confessions that the attempt to sort books by their
subjects breaks down.
"Some books are definitely this or that, and nothing else;
but large numbers are as vague and indefinite as the
transition tints in a rainbow, or as those excruciating
notes somewhere between C and C sharp which may be
heard on a summer's night in a conversazione of excited
cats. The man with no ear for music has no difficulty
in classing the ambiguous note; the man insensible to
colour boldly classes the equivocal tint; and some charming
book that laughs at classification, a perfectly sane and
delightful volume like the Essays of Elia' or 'Fuller's
Holy and Profane State' will be seized by the stolid slave
of a system, and thrust like a lunatic into the straight-
waistcoat of a class where its best friends will never more
be able to find it.
"Not to be wearisome, a classed catalogue of a large
library is an absurdity and something worse, because
all classification is arbitrary; what suits one searcher for
wisdom will not suit another, and it is impossible to
please all; because the larger the number of classes, the
more difficult it is to discover whereabouts your book
is likely to be found; because there must be an immense
number of double and treble entries and of
entries and of cross-
references; because large classes containing thousands of
volumes are altogether artificial and useless; because the
result must be an unwieldy, overgrown thing in the case
of the Bodleian, probably twice as big at least as the
present alphabetical catalogue; because the labour, time,
and expense of it is enormous; because, finally, it can never
answer the expectations of those who wish for it.
1
14
"Such are some (and only some) of the objections to
a classed catalogue. After all what the weak-kneed
brethren want is not a classed catalogue; they want what
the Undergraduate profanely calls tips'; being not very
industrious, and perhaps not overburdened with learning,
they want to be directed, with as little trouble as possible,
to all the books, pamphlets, articles, and so forth, which
treat of any subject that happens to interest them. The
need which they dumbly feel and cannot articulately
express is for a ready and infallible index to all literature
whatever, or failing that to all printed books. As well
cry for the moon; the thing is not to be had. An
index to the names of such books as are definite enough
to admit of classification is not a downright impossibility;
large portions of it, more or less complete, already exist,
and if more were wanted, more would be made, but such
an index would necessarily omit an enormous number
of volumes as irreducible to order; the index would
never be more than a portion, and a comparatively small
portion, of a catalogue. This might, perhaps, assist the
toddling babes of literature, but the men do not want
it, and I contend that only the men ought to be admitted
to such a library as the Bodleian. Be that, however,
as it may, it is no part of a librarian's duty to inform
readers what books exist treating of Roman roads, London
fogs, &c. &c. The reader must bring that knowledge
with him, or he must know how to obtain it; and really
when one considers how simple an art that of literary
research is, it is wonderful that we should sanction the
expenditure of Bodleian funds on a work not wanted
by robust and expert students, and almost, if not quite,
useless to anybody else."
When this Memorandum was written, I had not read
one single word of the evidence given by Mr. Panizzi
and others, some portions of which are quoted below;
15
my conclusions were wholly independent; they were not
derived from the testimonies of others, but from my own
experience. The paper, as far as I know, produced no
effect whatever on those to whom it was addressed, and,
to tell the plain truth, I did not expect that it would
produce any. Two Curators certainly read it, and de-
clared themselves perfectly satisfied with the soundness
of the argument; but then they were men so well ac-
quainted with the subject that they needed no persuasion
from me. To those who have only a superficial knowledge
of the matter, and still more to those who are wholly
ignorant of it, the statement that a real classed catalogue
of the Bodleian is an impossibility may naturally appear
a paradox. But let it be carefully borne in mind what
the question really is. It is not perhaps impossible to
make a satisfactory classed catalogue of a small library;
the question is whether it is possible to make such a
catalogue of a library so large as the Bodleian is. Many
things are possible on a small scale which are impossible
on a large one. A ship a quarter of a mile long may
be possible; a ship four miles long is not.
I am unable to give a history of the Bodleian classed
catalogue; but assuming the correctness of certain in-
formation now before me, it would appear that it was
commenced in June, 1878, and that something like £1400
had been already spent on it by the end of 1886. At
the British Museum they began a classed catalogue in
June, 1826, and after wasting upon it £5335 18s. 8d.
they abandoned it in 1834. What ours will cost no
man can tell or even guess; but from what I must regard
as a wildly sanguine estimate, based throughout on sup-
positions which never can be realized, it cannot cost less
than £5650, in addition to the money already spent on
it; in all £7000 in round numbers. If this sum were
doubled, or even trebled, it is certain that the thing could
16
not be done, and it is for the University to seriously
consider whether it will persist in throwing good money
after bad, or whether it will at once close a profitless account,
and write off its losses as a bad and irrecoverable debt.
Convocation has the right to spend its own money exactly
as it pleases; but I see what I fancy to be a plain staring
piece of folly, a downright waste of money, and, having
said so publicly I wash my hands of the business.
The time which it will take to complete the catalogue,
supposing its completion possible, is as uncertain as the
money which it will cost. Assuming a number of con-
ditions to be satisfied which never can be satisfied, that
is to say, if we suppose that to happen which certainly
will not happen unless miracles recommence, it cannot
be completed for some five and twenty years. And even
then it would not be really completed, because the whole
catalogue would need revision, duplicate or multiple slips
would still have to be written and arranged, and supposing
all this done there would still remain an alphabetical index
to the subjects contained in it, for without that index.
the classed catalogue, even supposing it ever completed,
would be far too unwieldy for use.
So much appeared
to be clear in September, 1886. In January, 1888, we
are told that it is possible this estimate of the time
required for the work may have been excessive. So far
from being excessive, it vastly underrated the difficulties
of the task, and by consequence took an over-sanguine
view of the time necessary for its completion.
As to its size, it is estimated that it would fill quite
one thousand volumes folio, and it would no doubt fill
more than that number. A thousand or more large folio
volumes will insist on occupying a very considerable space,
and that man is not to be envied who is condemned to
use a catalogue so ponderous and so formidable.
It seems then that, if we spend an unknown but vast
17
sum of money, we shall at a comparatively remote period
perhaps produce a gigantic sham catalogue which no man
fit to use the Bodleian Library would ever care to look at.
On June 18, 1887, the Curators appointed a Committee.
of four to report on the classed catalogue; and on
April 26, 1888, it reported, by a majority of three to
one, in favour of continuing the work. The dissentient
member (not myself) put on paper his reasons for dis-
agreeing with the report. As there were only seven
Curators present at the statutable meeting on June 9th
last, it was ordered that the report should be considered
at a special meeting to be held early in October on a
day to be fixed by the Vice-Chancellor.
Here I get
into a difficulty. It would not be fair to criticise this
report unless Members of Congregation have it in extenso
before them; and it is quite possible, it is even probable,
that I shall be blamed for merely mentioning its existence
and drift, for I have been informed by one who ought
to know that our meetings are private, and that our pro-
ceedings are confidential.' This pernicious doctrine I
flatly deny, except as respects affairs which could not be
published at the moment they are being transacted without
damage to the interests of the University, or in cases
where publicity would needlessly wound a man's sensi-
bilities. Except in such cases where common sense and
good feeling dictate silence, I maintain that all our pro-
ceedings are and ought to be public as far as Convocation
is concerned; and that which is of right open to the
knowledge of some thousands of men, is as a matter of
fact open to all the world.
We are a public body doing public business, and public
business in general is best done openly. There is no
reason for shutting out daylight, and there are reasons
for letting it in. Publicity would have prevented at least
one Bodleian atrocity of which the University in general
18
has not the faintest
parties that it has not.
suspicion, and it is lucky for all
Openness, moreover, would probably
save a good deal of waste, even if it produced no other
beneficial results.
The unfortunate officials are harassed with reports which
cost an infinity of trouble to compose, some money to
print, and then in too many cases they are, as far as
I can see, consigned to utter oblivion. For instance, on
Nov. 8, 1884, the Librarian was requested to report each
year the number of volumes in the Library.
This was
at the first meeting I ever attended, and I did not feel
justified in saying what I thought, for it was by no means
clear to me that I quite understood what was meant by
the resolution. The consequence was that at an enormous
expenditure of time and labour (both of which mean
money) the books and manuscripts were counted, and the
result was printed in eleven pages of foolscap; nor have I the
least doubt that those who caused all this prodigious waste
of energy believed that they had done something very
useful indeed; whereas the thing, though a curiosity, is
absolutely useless. Ought you not to be able to say
whether you have lost a volume, some one ignorant of
books may ask. To which the answer is, Yes, you ought.
And how, Ignoramus will ask, can you know that if you
do not know how many volumes you have in your library?
O sancta simplicitas! Let me cut this nonsense short.
Say that in the year A you have exactly x volumes in
your collection; suppose further that in the year A+ 1
you add y volumes, then it is self-evident to every man
who knows anything at all about books that the total
number of volumes in the year A + 1 need not be x + y,
and in a large library very rarely will be so.
If so,
counting your books is no safeguard against losses: they
are detected in a very different way. To all men in the
least acquainted with books it is also self-evident that
19
the number of volumes in a library-especially in a large
library furnishes no safe measure of the number of
books or distinct works in it. Without reckoning parts
not yet bound up, we have in the Bodleian over four
hundred thousand volumes of printed books.
No man
knows how many titles these volumes represent; but it
would hardly be rash to say that they represent a million
or more distinct works, for, as in all large old libraries,
we have thousands of volumes which contain from two
to twenty or more distinct books between their covers.
Counting your volumes, then, is a very different thing
from counting your books, though not all persons seem
to be aware of this elementary truth. But to return:
publicity might and perhaps would have spared the
Librarian and his staff the trouble of preparing this
entirely useless report, and the University the expense
of printing it, for there surely must be men in this place
who would have seen the absurdity of it, and then they
would have stopped it. To be quite frank, let me say
that I detest all this theory of the privacy of our meetings.
Legal obligation to secrecy there is none, for it has been
removed by Act of Parliament; yet it would be improper
for me to reprint this report of the Committee, though
I hope that Convocation will insist on seeing all the
papers hitherto printed on the matter, for it is bound to
assure itself that University funds are not being wasted
on an impracticable project.
After all, who outside the Library want this monstrous
catalogue? As far as can be seen only a few Bodleian
Curators, and it may be safely affirmed that they of all
men in the world would never consult it or need it, even
were it at this moment complete. In the Blue-books
relating to the British Museum* there is a good deal of
• These Blue-books I shall refer to by pages, using the following
abbreviations: BM. 1.= Report .. on the Condition, Management and
20
evidence about classed catalogues well worth consideration.
We are sometimes told that there is a classed catalogue
of the King's Library, but, as Sir H. Ellis says (BM. 1. 129),
it is not strictly a classed catalogue; it is divided into five
or six faculties, and has an useful juxta-position of subjects,
but it is not a classed catalogue to the extent to which you
probably may expect to find it.' Sir H. Ellis was Principal
Librarian when he uttered those words, so that he knew
what he was talking about. A classed catalogue,' he says,
'will not be consulted by more than one man where 1000
will consult the other,' (BM. 1. 182;) 'it is generally the
less well-informed who are so anxious to refer to a classed
catalogue.' (BM. 1. 183.) On the whole it will be found
that Sir H. Ellis did not care very much for this sort of
catalogue. Scientific men are often strongly in favour of
such a thing for the simple reason that they have in general
not the ghost of a notion what they are talking about.
In this number are Mr. J. Scott Bowerbank (BM. 2. 73-85),
Dr. Olinthus Gregory (BM. 2. 281 sqq.), Professor Owen
(BM. 3. 330), Mr. J. E. Gray (BM. 3. 342), and Mr. J. J.
Bennett (BM. 3. 398); and very rarely have men been more
completely turned inside out than these scientific gentlemen
were by Mr. Panizzi, a very Napoleon of librarians, a man
who had every conceivable detail of library administration
always at his fingers' ends, (see BM. 3. 703 sqq.) 'I must
say candidly,' he observes (BM. 2. 398), 'that I have a
great objection to what are called classed catalogues. I
think it is impossible to make a good one; I never heard
of any. I never heard of two men agreeing on the plan
of a classed catalogue......... The worst of all is the plan
I have been obliged to adopt for the Royal Society of
Affairs of the British Museum ordered to be printed 6 August, 1835.
BM. 2. Report .. on the British Museum.. ordered to be printed
14 July, 1836. BM. 3. Report of the Commissioners appointed to
inquire into the Constitution and Government of the British Museum, 1850.
21
London, which will beat anything for absurdity. Scientific
men have obliged me to adopt a plan which does not
deserve the name of a plan of a classed catalogue. So
that people must first of all agree on what is a classed
catalogue. As to science particularly, it is impossible to
have classed catalogues scientifically made at present. For
scientific purposes particularly, classed catalogues 40 or
50 years old, on a scientific plan, cannot possibly be now
of use, because the changes which have taken place in
mineralogy, in botany, and in all natural sciences are such
that you must be reclassing every day. Take chemistry
from the time of Boerhaave: it was the system of Boerhaave
which prevailed when Heyne began the Göttingen classed
catalogue. Then Lavoisier made a revolution in that
science; then, after the French School, Davy, Dalton and
Berzelius have made another; and Volta discovered, or
rather caused immense progress to be made in galvanism;
magnetism is now successfully investigated, and who knows
what future changes it may produce in this same class,
chemistry? As soon as a classed catalogue of chemical
books is completed you must begin a new one to keep
pace with the progress of the sciences. Not one of those
who speak of a classed catalogue scientifically arranged, if
they would honestly confess it, ever used one. The first
thing they used was an index of authors at the end of
such a catalogue. If you take the best classed catalogue
of this sort that has almost ever been made, Dryander's
catalogue of Sir Joseph Bank's collection, I challenge
anybody, but a very clever botanist, or a very clever
mineralogist or zoologist to use it. It is not made for
the student; a man that is already a very good botanist,
or mineralogist, or zoologist will consult it, but a man
that does not know thoroughly these sciences is bewildered;
he will use the list of names at the end, and from that
go the classes.' (BM. 2. 398—9.) And again, 'I have a
22
great objection to classed catalogues. The thing which is
requisite is a good index of matters to an alphabetical
catalogue.' (BM. 7. 7.) He thinks that 'readers in general
would leave it [i.e. a classed catalogue] alone.' (BM. 2. 402.)
And yet again he 'entirely disapproves the formation of
a classed catalogue;' he thinks that an alphabetical
catalogue with an index of matter [s] will inform students
what books there are upon a particular subject in the
Museum much better than the classed catalogue.' (BM.
2. 409.) These opinions Mr. Panizzi held and expressed
in 1836, and after twelve years more of experience he
repeated them in 1848. I said then [i.e. in 1836], what
on consideration I have always found reason to think was
right, that a classed catalogue is a thing that cannot be
done in a manner either satisfactory, or that can be of
general use. But what is of great use, and what I should
wish to see made, is an index of matters to a good
alphabetical catalogue.' A fair sprinkling of literary men
were examined by the Commissioners, and some of them
wanted a classed catalogue, but as a rule who knows less
about books and catalogues and library work than a
literary man? They are generally as ignorant of such
trifles as are most scientific men. Yet not all literary
men were bitten by this heresy, for Lord Strangford when
asked Would there not be enormous difficulties in making
a class catalogue of such a library as that of the British
Museum?' answered Enormous; I should say amounting
to an impossibility.' And there was one very eminent
scientific man, Augustus de Morgan, who possessed what
such men very rarely possess, a knowledge of bibliography.
He snorts at all classed catalogues. I do not believe,'
he says, 'in the existence of a systematical classification
by subjects; I have never seen it done, and I do not
believe it can be done.' (BM. 3. 378.) The best scientific
catalogue of which we know is that of the Royal Society's
"
23
Library, and it is a classed catalogue.
We always go
to it first, for the accuracy of the titles, and it has
often helped us when others have failed. Of course
we do not hold the classification to be a merit, and we
may add that it has given us much trouble.' (BM. 3. 379.)
He is afterwards asked this question: "Then I understood
you to say, that you do not think it would be expedient,
so far as the sciences are concerned, to have a classed
catalogue of any particular science with which you are
acquainted?—If such a catalogue existed, I should never
look at it; but I should go to the alphabetical catalogue,
if they gave me the benefit of one.' And again, I hold
it to be impossible that there should be one man of
such universal knowledge as to make a classed catalogue.'
(BM. 3. 430.) Mr. J. H. Parry, a barrister who for
four years and a half assisted in the British Museum
Library, says, 'An alphabetical catalogue, with an index
of matters, in my opinion is preferable to any classed
catalogue, and more capable of being used by students,
and by all parties consulting the catalogue.' (BM. 3. 470.)
Dr. S. R. Maitland, for some time librarian to the
Archbishop of Canterbury, and a bookish man, thus
expresses his opinion: A classed catalogue does not
appear to me to be so much a part of a library, as a
part of a system of knowledge and instruction, which
people ought not to expect from a librarian.' (BM. 3. 502.)
The Rev. W. Cureton, the Syriac scholar, and Assistant
Keeper of MSS. in the British Museum, says, 'I do
not see the use of a classed catalogue for any one par-
ticular library. A generally classed catalogue of literature,
equally applicable to all collections of books, would
certainly be desirable if it could be effected; but as each
particular library must necessarily be different in many
things, a classed catalogue for such a library would be
a very imperfect thing, and may mislead an inquirer,
24
who, failing to find under any particular head some
work of the existence of which he was ignorant, may
neglect to avail himself of a book most important for
his purposes, from the fact of his not finding it in a
particular class in the catalogue of such a library as
that of the British Museum. You certainly would have
no facility for finding the books in the library by means
of a classed catalogue. I have always found that when-
ever I have had to use a classed catalogue, I never could
find the books which I wanted.' (BM. 3. 509.) The
italics in the above passages are mine. It would be
easy enough to cite more witnesses, but these are surely
enough.
But it will be said that foreign libraries have classed
catalogues, and therefore we ought to have one too.
To which the answer is this: in the first place, of
foreign libraries that can be properly compared with the
Bodleian not one has any real classed catalogue of all
its books; and in the second place, even if they possessed
such an article it by no means follows that we ought
to spend our money on one. It seems quite impossible
to hammer into some heads the simple principle that
our plain duty is to do what we think the best without
the slightest reference to what other people do. If, as
has been said, man is the most imitative of all animals,
assuredly some people in this University are of all men
the most imitative. Their one idea seems to be that
we must copy, or as they sometimes put it themselves
that we must do as others do.' Such strange perversion
of mind is pitiable, for surely the question for rational
and responsible beings is very rarely indeed how other
people act, but what it is right and fitting for us to do.
"
Most if not all French catalogues are classed, and if
the experience of others could give us wisdom, we
might learn something from the difficulties with which
25
·
the National Library at Paris has had to contend, where
for quite two hundred years they have been waging a
hopeless but gallant fight with a very dragon of a
catalogue. Up to the present moment however the
librarians have made very little impression on the brute.
Every book goes, or is supposed to go under one or
other of thirty large classes adopted in 1682, dans
lesquelles,' says Richou,* toutes les matières ont tant
bien que mal trouvé place.' The thirty fundamental
classes are wretchedly chosen, and cross each other as
must indeed always be the case, e.g. class R is 'Sciences
philosophiques, politiques, économiques, morales et
physiques;' class S is 'Sciences naturelles;' class V is
'Mathématiques, sciences et arts; and class Z-a gigantic
sort of waste-paper basket-is 'Polygraphie et collections
diverses,' that is books which even the most hopeful or
the most conceited of Frenchmen cannot for the life of
them class at all, and in that one class Z, the estimated
number of volumes is 120,346, a large library in itself.
In 1850 it was resolved that the catalogue should be
sent to press as soon as any one of these thirty classes
was reduced to what a French librarian calls order, and
it was estimated that the entire catalogue would not
require more than twelve years to print, and that it
would be contained in from 65 to 72 volumes. Hope
told a very flattering tale. Thirty-eight years have
elapsed since these resolutions were formed, and what
has been effected? Class L'Histoire de France' sub-
divided into 15 chapters, and further sliced up into 892
sections, containing in all 441,836 volumes (a volume is,
• Traité de l'Administration des Bibliothèques Publiques par Gabriel
Richou Archiviste-paléographe, Conservateur de la Bibliothèque de la
Cour de Cassation. Paris 1885, 8vo. pp. 147-154; a book by a man
who is up to his work, and from it I have taken my facts concerning
the National Library.
Jor M
26
C
be it noted, a vague word in the mouths of foreign
librarians) has been printed in eleven volumes quarto;
besides which there remain in slips two supplementary
volumes, and when two other volumes of alphabetical
indexes are finished class L will have been at last
'classed.' Class TSciences medicales' has been issued
in two volumes, to be followed by a third. In slip or
manuscript there is a classed catalogue of class N Histoire
de la Grande Bretagne;' of part of class O, i.e. History
of Spain; alphabetical inventories of general history
(part of class G); and of class K'Histoire d'Italie;
in all eleven volumes. On the whole it appears that
the classed catalogue has been too much for its projectors,
and, worse than all, serious and well-founded complaints
have been made as to the quality of the work that has
been performed. They promised ‘le recueil bibliographique
le plus riche et le plus utile qui eût jamais été composé,'
and the net result is that for a large part of the library
they have positively no catalogue at all, at least none
which readers can consult.
Every man conversant with books knows very well that
the classification which suits one person or one purpose
is altogether useless for another person or another purpose.
Innumerable instances could be given of this. I will
mention one which may perhaps come home to some who
read these lines. Suppose a man wishes to write the history
of Oxfordshire, which sadly wants one, it may be granted
that in a classed catalogue of the Bodleian he would sooner
or later be able to find such books as the classifier chose
to put under that head; but every one of those books
the man in question would already know from sources open
to all the world; on the other hand, those books which
do not bear on their titles or on the cataloguer's slips
something to lead the classifier to put them under 'Oxford-
shire.. he would not find, and they would be the very
shire.. ke
27
books he most wants to see.
The naturalist will complain
bitterly, and with justice, if books on the flora and fauna
of Oxfordshire are not entered under Natural History;
the geologist will complain if treatises on the fossils of
the Oxford clay are not fully entered under Geology;
the builder or architect will complain if a book on the
peculiarities of Oxford stone or on the Norman churches
of the county are not to be found under the heading, be it
what it may, where, from his point of view, they are naturally
to be looked for; the historian of the British army will
be disgusted if he is sent off to Oxfordshire in order to
get the exact title of a pamphlet on the Oxford Blues;
the herald and genealogist has a right to find the Historical
Collections' of Arthur Collins under Family History or
some similar head; the historian of Oxfordshire will be
beyond measure vexed if the book is not also entered under
Oxfordshire; in fact that book must be entered in at least
ten or twelve different places in any real classed catalogue;
though I am tolerably sure that few who advocate such a
catalogue will be able to guess the reason why. Or again,
suppose that as part of the history of Oxfordshire a man
should treat of printing as practised in that county; he
would not find one single book to help him under that
head, unless as before said their titles led the classifier to
put them there. Not one single early Oxford printed book
would he find; in fact he would find no Oxfordshire
printed book at all unless it plainly related to Oxfordshire.
Again it would be by the merest chance if he found any-
thing about the cholera outbreaks in the county; they
would possibly be carted off to some subdivision of
Medicine. Or suppose a man studying Cholera, would
he find the reports and accounts of its appearance in
different towns, counties, or countries under Medicine
or under Topography (if the latter he is not to be envied)
or under both? The topographer will be savage as a bear
28
if he does not find under the head of the county all the
printed accounts of plague, pestilence, and famine which
have occurred in it; the doctor will be ready to hang himself
if he has to hunt for outbreaks of his pet disease under
the head of every place where it may have shown itself,
and if either should find a maddening set of cross-references
it is to be feared that the catalogue room (for it will want
one all to itself) will become a chamber of horrors full of
groans and curses, a short and simple cut to a lunatic.
asylum.
C
Let any man try his hand at classing the two books
mentioned in the Memorandum of Dec. 1, 1885, namely
the Essays of Elia and Fuller's Holy and Profane
State. He may do it no doubt to his own satisfaction,
but to the enormous dissatisfaction of every other man
in the world. Or will anybody have the goodness to
classify a perfectly real tract, namely the Second Report
of the Auxiliary Trinitarian Bible Society of St. James's,
Clerkenwell' ? The Trinitarian will insist on having it
under that head because he happens to be specially
interested in it, the Bible man must have it under Bible,
the Bible Society man under that head, the historian of
societies will want it under Society, and the chronicler
of Clerkenwell will foam with rage if it is not found under
that parish. Is this rubbishing report then to be entered
four or five times over? In a small library of ten or
twenty thousand volumes such things give rise to no very
particular trouble, for it is by far the shortest plan to read
such a catalogue straight through from beginning to end,
but in a large library such difficulties are incessantly
occurring, and they multiply themselves with increasing
rapidity the larger the library is. How many subdivisions
there are in the plan of the Bodleian Catalogue I do not
know, and I suppose no one knows, but, unless I have
been misinformed, after the first rough sorting into about
29
fifty classes, we go at one magnificent and tiger-like
bound into some six thousand subdivisions.
Let any rational being consider what a classed catalogue
of the Bodleian means. It means the arrangement of more
than a million of titles on some elaborate plan which is
to please, not every body for that is always impossible,
but more than half those who consult the enormous com-
pilation; it means too that of these million and more of
titles, half at least, if not much more than half, must be
entered each from two to twenty or more times. It means
indeed much more than that, but he who does not see the
absurdity of the whole scheme without going into further
details is beyond the reach of argument, and in the words
of Montucla, il a perdu le droit d'être frappé de l'évidence.
But I have written more than I intended though the
subject is almost endless, and there are many aspects of
it which I have not even alluded to.
To sum up the case roughly, it comes to this. Can a
real and useful classed catalogue of all the printed books
in the Bodleian Library be constructed? With Panizzi
and others we may answer without the slightest hesitation
that it cannot; it is totally impossible. Can something
which some people would call a
would call a classed catalogue—a
perfectly useless and sham affair of enormous bulk-be
compiled at a prodigious expense, and in the course of
years, I had almost said, of ages? Perhaps it could,
though the matter is very doubtful. Is it worth while to
spend money on such a visionary scheme, when money is
so scarce and so much wanted for things of unquestion-
able utility? Would it not be better for instance, to fill
up some of the gaps in our collections, or to get our
manuscripts properly catalogued and indexed? These are
questions which sooner or later Convocation will have to
answer, and the sooner it answers them the better.
shall, no doubt, be told that Convocation has already
We
30
deliberately resolved that a classed catalogue shall be made.
This is perfectly true, but it is also true that Convocation
has never claimed the attribute of infallibility, and that
it is not bound to persist in error because in an unguarded
moment it may have been betrayed into a mistake.
It is by no means improbable that when it voted for a
classed catalogue of the Bodleian, it believed the cost
to be comparatively trifling, and the work to be both
possible and useful. If it should now be convinced that
the catalogue is really impossible, useless if possible, and
in any case enormously expensive, it may show its wisdom
by declining to sanction any further waste of funds in
these hard times; and I hope for its own sake, and still
more for the sake of the Bodleian that it will do so,
and do it if need be at once.
C
That University money is sometimes wasted most of us
occasionally suspect; as regards the Bodleian I do not
suspect it, I know it. For instance, only the other
day it was reported that thirteen hundred pounds had been
thrown away on a bit of work which was pronounced, and
no doubt truly pronounced, to be confused, inaccurate, and
worthless.' Waste is almost always inexcusable, but the
waste of public funds is worse than inexcusable. Some-
body or other ought to be answerable for the loss of all
this money.
The Librarian could not fairly be held re-
sponsible; he had done his duty admirably for years,
he had more business than he could well manage, he
was, unless I have been very much misinformed, harassed
by the Curators, he was no longer young, and he was
afflicted with an excruciating and exhausting disease. No
blame can, I think, justly be laid at his door. Thirteen
hundred pounds are not spent in a day or in a year; it
would have been perfectly easy to have discovered the
incompetence or the carelessness of the person to whom
this large sum was paid, yet, strange to say, no one of