238 A LIBRARIAN'S WORK. fxn. 



a dozen years, or whenever a " new catalogue " is 

 thought to be needed. " How often do you make a 

 catalogue ? " or " When 'will your catalogue be com- 

 pleted?" are questions revealing such transcendent 

 misapprehension of the case that little but further 

 mystification can be got from the mere answer, " We 

 are always making a catalogue, and it will never 

 be finished." The " doctrine of special creations," 

 indeed, does not work any better in the biblio- 

 graphical than in the zoological world. A catalogue, 

 in the modern sense of the term, is not something 

 that is " made " all at once, to last until the time has 

 come for it to be superseded by a new edition, but it 

 is something that " grows," 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 explanation of this process of catalogue- 

 making, thus answering 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 

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

 delivery by the express-man to the time when it is 

 ready for public use. 



New American books, whether bought or presented, 

 generally come along in driblets, two or three at a 



