Essays in Librarianship and BibliographyGarnett, Richard
Science
Essays in Librarianship and Bibliography
Garnett, Richard
Bibliography -- Methodology; British Museum; Library science
Dury next judiciously adds that room must be left in the library for the
increase of books, an indispensable condition not always easy of
fulfilment; and that "in the printed catalogue a reference is to be made
to the place where the books are to be found in their shelves or
repositories." That is, the catalogue must have press-marks; in which
suggestion Dury was two centuries ahead of many of the most important
foreign libraries. It will be observed that he takes it for granted that
the catalogue shall be printed, and in this he was ahead of almost all
the libraries of his time, and until lately of the British Museum. In
fact he could not be otherwise, for a printed catalogue is an essential
condition of his dominant idea that the librarian should be a "factor"
to "trade" with learned men and corporations for mutual profit. Hence he
prescribes "a catalogue of additionals, which every year within the
universities is to be published in writing within the library itself,
and every three years to be put in print and made common to those that
are abroad."
The full plan of communication is unfolded in the following passage:—
"When the stock is thus known and fitted to be exposed to the view of
the learned world, then the way of trading with it, both at home and
abroad, is to be laid to heart both for the increase of the stock and
for the improvement of its use. For the increase of the stock both at
home and abroad, correspondence should be held with those that are
eminent in every science to trade with them for their profit, that what
they want and we have, they may receive upon condition; that what they
have and we want, they should impart in that faculty wherein their
eminence doth lie. As for such as are at home eminent in any kind,
because they may come by native right to have use of the library
treasure, they are to be traded with all in another way, viz., that the
things which are gained from abroad, which as yet are not made common
and put to public use, should be promised and imparted to them for the
increase of their private stock of knowledge, to the end that what they
have peculiar, may also be given in for a requital, so that the
particularities of gifts at home and abroad are to meet as in a centre
in the hand of the Library Keeper, and he is to trade with the one by
the other, to cause them to multiply the public stock, whereof he is a
treasurer and factor.
"Thus he should trade with those that are at home and abroad out of the
university, and with those that are within the university, he should
have acquaintance to know all that are of any parts, and how their view
of learning doth lie, to supply helps unto them in their faculties from
without and from within the nation, to put them upon the keeping of
correspondence with men of their own strain, for the beating out of
matters not yet elaborated in sciences; so that they may be as his
assistants and subordinate factors in his trade and in their own for
gaining of knowledge."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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