A History of Bibliographies of BibliographiesTaylor, Archer
History
A History of Bibliographies of Bibliographies
Taylor, Archer
Bibliography of bibliographies -- History
Labbé's original plan survived without substantial change in
Teissier's revision of 1686 and supplement of 1705. In the
_Auctuarium_, the fourth index, "Writers on Various Subjects (De
variis argumentis scriptores)," has grown enormously. If Teissier
had given any attention to remaking the structure of the book, it
might have suggested to him the idea of an alphabetical subject
index. He has no longer adhered strictly to listing bibliographies
in terms of men who specialized in various subjects but shifted
somewhat in the direction of an emphasis on the subject. He could
have introduced many practitioners of various arts and sciences into
the first index, but his decision to put them into the fourth index
shows a breaking down of the scheme that Labbé had invented. When he
says (_Auctuarium_, p. 398) that the seventh index will supplement
the list of library catalogues, which are in the eighth index, he is
confessing to uncertainty about the scheme. Wavering of this sort
is evidence that he did not fully understand the scheme or did not
choose to adhere to it.
Although scholars no longer remember Antoine Teissier and his
bibliographies, the _Catalogus_ and the _Auctuarium_ offer a
uniquely useful summary of seventeenth-century scholarship. In
them we find such bibliographies as a list of twenty-two medical
bibliographers (_Auctuarium_, p. 288), fifteen writers (_Catalogus_,
p. 349) on academies and universities (these authors are scarcely
bibliographers, but contemporary practice did not separate them
sharply from bibliographers), twenty compilers of catalogues of
manuscripts (_Catalogus_, p. 352), twenty authors of lists of
famous women (_Catalogus_, p. 352), and four bibliographers of
dictionaries (_Auctuarium_, p. 298).[89] There is even a reference to
a bibliographer of books of anagrams.[90]
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