A Librarian's Work. 357 



ally printed in capitals throughout. Our own 

 practice is to follow in capitalizing the usage of 

 the language in which the title is written ; but 

 many libraries adopt the much simpler rule of re- 

 jecting capitals altogether except in the case of 

 proper names, and this I believe to be practically 

 the better because the easier method, 1 though the 

 result may not seem quite so elegant. 



After the transcription of the entire title, the 

 number of volumes, or other divisions of the 

 book, is set down ; and next in order follows the 

 " imprint," or designation of the place and date 

 of publication. Finally, the size of the book 

 (whether folio, or quarto, octavo, etc.) is desig- 

 nated, after an examination of the " signature 

 marks ; " the number of pages (if less than one 

 hundred or more than six hundred) is stated ; 2 

 plates, woodcuts, maps, plans, diagrams, photo- 

 graphs, etc., are counted and described in general 

 terms. Any peculiarities relating not to the edi- 

 tion, but to the particular copy catalogued, are 



1 Since this article was written, I have adopted the simpler rule, 

 applying the French system of capitalization to all languages, with 

 the sole concession to our English prejudices of capitalizing proper ad- 

 jectives in English titles. Much time is thereby saved, and much ut- 

 terly useless vexation avoided. 



2 In order to point out books of an exceptionally large or small 

 size. I believe, however, it would be better to state the number of 

 pages in every case. 



