210 THE LIBRARY 



mind seems to have contained all the learning of his generation, and 

 whose prescient genius anticipated, in part, some of the great ideas 

 of later generations. There is another function of national libraries. 

 Their catalogues, so far as they are printed, should form a standard of 

 excellence and be an important contribution, not only to the biblio- 

 graphy of the nation to which they belong, but also to that universal 

 catalogue which haunts the dreams of students and librarians who, 

 in our time, have taken such mighty strides toward this unattained 

 ideal. When the first International Library Congress was held in 

 London in 1877 1 urged the printing of the British Museum Catalogue 

 of Printed Books, which then filled two thousand volumes of manu- 

 script and was estimated to contain three million entries. There 

 were, of course, many other advocates of the printing scheme both 

 earlier and later. The task was declared to be impossible of execu- 

 tion. Yet it has been accomplished. The British Museum Catalogue 

 of Printed Books is the best bibliography of English literature and it 

 is also the largest contribution that has ever been made to the Uni- 

 versal Catalogue. The publication of the British Museum Catalogue 

 has facilitated research and has sensibly raised the standard of ac- 

 curacy. In spite of the general opinion that every man, and nearly 

 every woman, is able to drive a dogcart, edit a newspaper, and make 

 a catalogue, the accurate description of books is not an easy art to 

 be learned without apprenticeship or effort. The youngest of the 

 national libraries, if I may so style the Library of Congress, has 

 made a novel and praiseworthy departure in the supply of printed 

 catalogue title-slips to other libraries. This is one of several exam- 

 ples of economy by cooperation. 



The printed catalogue of the British Museum is, as I have said, 

 a mighty contribution to the Universal Catalogue. 1 Every library 

 seems fully occupied with its own special work, but there awaits for 

 some national library or international office the task, not indeed of 

 "completing, for in the nature of things it can never be complete, but 

 of greatly advancing the preparation of the Universal Catalogue. 

 This could be done by the simple process of reducing to cards the 

 printed titles of the books in the British Museum, and of incorporat- 

 ing with them, as opportunity served, the " Catalogue of Scientific 

 Papers," and such special bibliographical works as might be 

 approved or be available. All these ought, in theory, to be editor- 

 ially revised in accordance with a code of rules, and I know of none 

 better than those of the British Museum, which have the additional 

 advantage of having served as the standard in the largest under- 

 taking of the kind that the world has yet seen. And if absolute 

 uniformity was not attained there would still be an immense advan- 

 tage in the bringing together and arrangement of the multitude of 

 1 See Dr. Richard Garnett's paper in The Library, v, 1903. 



