I have prepared a list of the subjects comprised in the classification of the Museum, which I put in for your examination. For a list of the principal systems proposed for the classification of libraries, I may refer to Petzholdt's "Bibliotheca Bibliographica." It is in so far deficient that it necessarily contains no reference to the recent labours of our American friends and colleagues, who, coming to the subject with unbiased minds and an inventive ingenuity and fertility equalled by no other nation, have already done so much to advance the frontiers of the librarian's science.
[210:1] Read before the London Conference of Librarians, October 1877.
[221:1] It deserves to be recorded that at this period, and for some time afterwards, books were not labelled externally, but merely press-marked inside the covers. When labels were introduced, at the suggestion of Mr. Winter Jones, the printing of the first set cost £800.
SUBJECT-INDEXES TO TRANSACTIONS OF LEARNED SOCIETIES[225:1]
We all remember the excellent paper read at the Oxford Conference by Mr. J. B. Bailey, sub-librarian at the Radcliffe Library, upon the advantage of a subject-index to scientific periodicals. Mr. Bailey spoke with just praise of the splendid alphabetical catalogue issued by the Royal Society, but observed that from the nature of the case this is "nearly useless in making a bibliography of any given subject, unless one is familiar with the names of all the authors who have written thereon." This is manifestly the case. As an illustration both of the value and the deficiencies of the Royal Society's index, I may mention that while on the one hand it has enabled me to discover that my father, chiefly, celebrated as a philologist, has written a paper on the curious and perplexing subject of the formation of ice at the bottoms of rivers, the existence of which was wholly unknown to his family, it does not on the other hand assist me to ascertain, without a most tedious search, what other writers may have investigated the subject, or, consequently, how far his observations are in accordance with theirs. Multiply my little embarrassment by several hundred thousand, and you will have some idea of the amount of ignorance which the classified index suggested by Mr. Bailey would enlighten. We may well believe that the only objection he has heard alleged is the magnitude of the undertaking, and must sympathise with his conviction that, granting this, it still ought not to be put aside, merely because it is difficult. I hope to point out, however, that so far as concerns the scientific papers, to which alone Mr. Bailey's proposal relates, the difficulty has been over-estimated, that the literary compilation need encounter no serious obstacle, and that the foundation might be laid in a short time by a single competent workman, such as Mr. Bailey himself. Of an index to literary papers I shall speak subsequently; and, there, I must acknowledge, the difficulties are much more formidable. But as regards scientific papers, it appears to me that the only considerable impediment is the financial. When the others are overcome, then, and not till then, we shall be in a favourable position for overcoming this also. The reason why the formation of a classified index to scientific papers is comparatively easy, is that the groundwork has been already provided by the alphabetical index of the Royal Society. We have the titles of all scientific papers from 1800 to 1865 before us, and shall soon have them to 1873. Though it might be interesting, it is not essential to go further back. We have now to consider how best to distribute this alphabetical series into a number of subject-indexes. To take the first step we merely require a little money (the first condition of success in most undertakings), and some leisure on the part of a gentleman competent to distinguish the grand primary divisions of scientific research from each other, and avoid the errors which cataloguers have been known to commit in classing the star-fish with constellations, and confusing Plato the philosopher with Plato a volcano in the moon. I need only say that very many of our body would bring far more than this necessary minimum of scientific knowledge to the task. I may instance Mr. Bailey himself. The money would be required to procure two copies of the alphabetical index (which, however, the Royal Society would very likely present), and to pay an assistant for cutting these two copies up into strips, each strip containing a single entry of a scientific paper, and pasting the same upon cardboard.