Papers and Proceedings of the Thirty-Fourth Annual Meeting of the American Library Association: Held at Ottawa, Canada, June 26-July 2, 1912
Science
Papers and Proceedings of the Thirty-Fourth Annual Meeting of the American Library Association: Held at Ottawa, Canada, June 26-July 2, 1912
American Library Association; Library science -- Congresses
Some of the fundamental principles may seem more like rules than
principles at first sight but it is believed that they are all well
principled. However, it is not pretended that they are all the
principles in sight; quite the contrary, there is quite a pocket-full
of these left each with the memorandum of some principle, big or
little, and there are but twenty-one here enumerated. This being a
discussion rather than a systematic paper properly refers to matters
of recent personal experience. Since the first page of the new subject
index contains subjects down to the name "Absolute," there has been
drawn a synopsis of all the subject headings used by the A. L. A.,
Library of Congress, Harvard, Sydney, Princeton and the indexes of the
Expansive Classification and Decimal Classification.
This will illustrate the variety of usages which have to be dealt with
in attempting to systematize this matter so as to get uniformity and
may be regarded as illustrations of the principles enumerated.
1. A catalog is a name list of concrete or specific objects as
distinguished from classes of objects; a list of plants in a botanical
garden, of mineral specimens in a museum or books in a library, but
a list of kinds of plants, minerals or books apart from concrete
specimens is not. In the case of books such a list is a bibliography.
The book catalog is a directory or guide book to certain concrete
books, the bibliography is a list of books in the abstract, applying
equally whether its books exist in one place or another, or even if
they no longer exist at all.
2. A library catalog is a directory or guide book to books for use.
The immediate object to publishers, new book dealers, book auctioneers
or antiquarians is sale, the object to the librarian is use. This
difference affects both the form of the catalog and the description of
the books.
3. Library catalogs in turn may be distinguished into catalogs for
the administration (which include chiefly accession catalog and the
shelf list) and those for direct use of readers (which include author,
subject, title, imprint, etc., catalogs)--the special use in every case
modifying the form of the catalog.
4. Catalogs for readers differ according to the two needs of readers
which the catalogs try to meet. These needs are (1) To find a given
book; (2) to find a book or group of books of a given character. It
is not quite exact to say under this second head, that the object is
to find information on a given subject or topic, for it may be that
the object is to find special forms such as incunabula or Venetian
imprints, association books, fiction, poetry, drama, essays, orations,
ballads, encyclopedias, dictionaries, periodicals, classes of rarities,
books on vellum, etc.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account