Catalogue

CATALOGUE. - The word (from the Greek καταλέγω) properly denotes the orderly listing of a category of objects; applied to bibliology it therefore denotes the "ordered list of the works of a public or private collection," to serve as a tool for finding books.

As such the catalogue differs from the inventory, which is a simple accession list for administrative purposes, and from the bibliography, which is the systematic description of a given category of works, without reference to any actual collection.

I. HISTORICAL NOTES

The need for an ordered list of the works contained in a library arises with the formation of libraries themselves, so that catalogues are as old as collections of books. For the pre-medieval age, however, there are not sufficient data to distinguish their characteristics: the fragments on clay tablets of the catalogue of the library of Nineveh (7th century B.C.), today in the British Museum, the papyrus one of the library of Memphis (3rd century B.C.), the epigraphic one of Rhodes (2nd century B.C.), are not enough to shed light in this regard. Some reference to literary texts (cf. the Πίνακες of Callimachus) may suggest that the ancients already had in use the alphabetical arrangement, which is found instead rarely in medieval catalogues, in which the distribution is almost always by subject and has, more than anything else, the character of an inventory. The material is for the Middle Ages much more copious, especially for monastic libraries (Fulda, 9th and 12th centuries; Bobbio, 9th-11th centuries; Freising, 9th century; Passau, 923; Lorsch, 10th century; Regensburg, 975-1000; Pomposa, 1093; Hirschau, 1165; Nonantola, 1166; Montecassino, 11th and 12th centuries, etc.) and constitutes a document of the first order for the history of culture. With Humanism and the consequent expansion of the needs of culture, catalogues acquire greater systematicity (famous is that of the Vaticana compiled by Platina, with the collaboration of Demetrius of Lucca, in 1481, accompanied by an alphabetical index of authors), which is gradually perfected with the rise and consolidation of printing, when catalogues of books for commercial purposes also begin (the first is a list of Libri graeci impressi, published by Aldus Manutius in 1498). In the 17th century there are the first subject catalogues, such as the Index universalis of Giustiniani (Rome 1612), without however any well-disciplined rules governing them; it is only with the 19th century that a true doctrine of cataloguing begins, which leads to the famous 91 rules of the Italian Antonio Panizzi: an exile in London, he formulated those norms which, approved on 13 July 1839 by the superintendents of the British Museum and published at the head of vol. I of the Catalogue of printed books of the British Museum Library (London 1841), constituted the basis for all subsequent legislation on library catalogues. In Italy, in 1885, the Ministry of Education announced a competition for a work "that would set down the most rational and most practical norms for the formation of catalogues," a competition won by G.

Fumagalli with his work C. di biblioteche e indici bibliografici (Florence 1887); but only 26 years later came the formulation of a single code of norms for the compilation of catalogues in government libraries (decree of 11 June 1921), based on the fundamental publication of the American Library Association, Cataloguing rules: author and title entries (London-Chicago 1908). In 1930 the Vatican Apostolic Library also published its Norme per il c. degli stampati, which remain a model of the genre.

II. VARIOUS KINDS OF CATALOGUE

According to the special criteria of arrangement and the purposes they serve, there are various types of catalogue:

1) the accession catalogue, or entry register, in which the bibliographical indication is made for the most part in a summary manner and according to the chronological order of entry into the library. If it serves purely administrative purposes it constitutes what is called an "inventory register";

2) the topographical catalogue, in which the books are listed according to their arrangement on the shelves. It closely reflects the old medieval catalogues, and is particularly useful for the revision of the material;

3) the systematic catalogue, or by subject, in which the list is based on the scientific and logical relations that link one work to another. The distribution is made according to determined bibliographical rules fixed by special systems of classification (v.).

4) the subject catalogue, in which the bibliographical arrangement is made according to the alphabetical order of the word that expresses the topic (or "subject") of a given work. It differs from the preceding because it brings together only the works that treat of a specific topic, excluding those of an allied subject, and thus serves a narrower and less complete search.

5) the alphabetical author catalogue, in which the works are listed according to the alphabetical succession of the surnames, or pseudonyms, or names of the authors. It is of more general use and serves for finding works whose indications one already possesses.

6) the dictionary catalogue, in which the alphabetical author catalogue and the subject catalogue are fused together. It practically meets all the needs of the researcher, even if it cannot satisfy an inquiry in the broad sense as the systematic catalogue can, and it is in use at the Vatican Apostolic Library.

III. CARD FILING

To the old system of large registers, cumbersome and difficult to consult, as well as impractical for updating, there has today been substituted the system of cards, both for catalogues "in book form," in which the cards are gathered in a certain number inside a cardboard cover and fastened with two screw bolts, and for those "in drawer form," in which the cards (of a format that is now becoming generalized in the so-called international type, of mm. 125 X 75) are fastened at the base by means of a metal rod that passes through the hole made at the base of each of them.

The cards, compiled with the data supplied by the title page of the work to be catalogued, are divided into main, secondary and auxiliary.

The main card contains the exact and complete description of the work, and is composed of 6 elements: a) the "heading," that is, the word that determines the alphabetical order in the catalogue, and is constituted by the surname and name of the author, or by the first word of the title or by the modified title, or by another conventional indication, according to the type of catalogue the card serves; b) the "title page" of the work transcribed ad litteram, with the exception of mottoes, dedications, etc.; c) the "bibliographical notes" (number of volumes, format, number of pages, plates, illustrations, etc.); d) the "imprint notes" (place of edition, name of the publisher, place of printing, name of the printer, date of printing); e) the "contents," that is, when special needs require it, the division of the work (for example, for a miscellany); f) the "call number," that is, the letters, figures and conventional words that refer to the location of the work in the library. The main card is said to be finished, or closed, when the work being catalogued is complete; it is said to be in progress, or open, when at the time of registration the work is not finished.

The secondary cards are those compiled, in the same manner as the main one, when it is deemed appropriate to catalogue a work under different headings (for example, for the critical edition of a classic one will make a main card under the name of the author, a secondary one under that of the editor). A particular type of secondary card is the so-called "analytical" card, which is used to catalogue the individual writings of a single miscellaneous volume. In this case the card contains, after the name of the author and the title of the study, the indication "sta in..." followed by the heading and the title of the main card.

The auxiliary cards are of three types: cross-reference, added-entry, and identity cards. The first serve to refer from one filing word to another, and contain only these two elements (e.g.: Alighieri, Dante - v.: Dante). The added-entry cards serve to link secondary titles or authors with the author and title of the main card: after the filing word they bear the indication "see also...", followed by the filing word and the title of the main card. The identity cards serve for cross-referencing from one graphic form to another of the same filing word, generally from the "vulgate" form to the scientific one (e.g.: Omero, v.: Homerus).

Special rules, which are being made ever more general and universal in character, govern the determination of the filing word, especially difficult for collective works, for anonymous ones, for pseudonymous ones, as well as for periodicals, large reference works, and encyclopedias. Other rules concern technical terms for bibliographic and typographic indications, the use of capitals, the spelling of foreign names, etc.

In the richer libraries it is furthermore customary to make special catalogs for periodicals, for the printed works of particular collections, for reference works, and above all for incunabula, both because they have characteristics different from those of the modern book (signatures, colophon, printing privilege, etc.) and because their interest, even if purely editorial, requires a cataloging that takes into account, as the filing word, the name of the printer.

Always separate is the catalog of manuscripts, whose compilation demands special rules and sure competence on the part of the cataloger. In this catalog the essential elements of the card are three: the heading, that is, the author, when known, or the "incipit" of the manuscript or the title, or even only the subject when no more precise data can be derived; the body, that is, all the indications relating to the content of the work; the notes of the codex, namely the shelf mark, the date, the writing material, the format, etc.

For catalogs in archives, v. ARCHIVIO.

For present-day catalogs: American Library Association, List of subject headings for use in dictionary catal., 3rd ed., Chicago 1911; I. D. Brown, Library classification and cataloguing, London 1912; J. H. Quinn, Library cataloguing, ibid. 1913; W. W. Bishop, Practical handbook of modern library cataloguing, Baltimore 1914; Ch. A. Cutter, Rules for a dictionary catalogue, Washington 1914.

For Italy: G. Fumagalli, C. di biblioteche e indici bibliografici, Florence 1887; G. Ottino-G. Fumagalli, Biblioteca bibliografica italica, 2 vols. and 4 suppls., Rome 1889-1902; Società bibliografica italiana, Progetto di norme uniche per la compilazione di c. alfabetici, Pavia 1901; Ministero dell'educazione nazionale, Regole per la compilazione del c. alfabetico, Rome 1922 (reprinted in 1932); id., Regole per la descrizione dei manoscritti e per la compilazione dell'indice generale degli incunaboli, ibid. 1941.

For the Vatican Library: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Norme per l'indice alfabetico dei manoscritti, Vatican City

1938; id., Norme per il catalogo degli stampati, 2nd ed. (revised and enlarged with respect to the first of 1931), ibid. 1939 (the work has been translated into Spanish and English; the French and Portuguese versions are in preparation, and the 3rd Italian edition is about to be sent to press).

Alessandro Pratesi

CATALOGO BUCHERIANO (ANONIMO BUCHERIANO): v. BOUCHIER GILLES.