A Librarian s Work. 333 



pleted ? &quot; are questions revealing such transcen 

 dent misapprehension of the case that little but 

 further mystification can be got from the mere 

 answer, &quot; We are always making a catalogue, and 

 it will never be finished.&quot; The &quot; doctrine of spe 

 cial creations,&quot; indeed, does not work any better 

 in the bibliographical than in the zoological world. 

 A catalogue, in the modern sense of the term, is 

 not something that is &quot; made &quot; all at once, to last 

 until the time has come for it to be superseded by 

 a new edition, but it is something that &quot;grows,&quot; 

 by slow increments, and supersedes itself only 

 through gradual evolution from a lower degree of 

 fulness and definiteness into a higher one. It is 

 perhaps worth while to give some general explana 

 tion of this process of catalogue-making, thus an 

 swering once for all the question as to what may 

 be a librarian s work. There is no better way to 

 begin than to describe, in the case of our own li 

 brary, the career of a book from the time of its 

 delivery by the expressman to the time when it 

 is ready for public use. 



New American books, whether bought or pre 

 sented, generally come along in driblets, two or 

 three at a time, throughout the year ; large boxes 

 of pamphlets, newspapers, broadsides, trade-cata 

 logues, and all manner of woful rubbish (the ref- 



