20 The physical catalogue on cards

We would all like to have a detailed list of the books and tapes we own. The basic version, of course, is to have a long notebook (a ledger) for each type of possession, and go on entering our acquisitions as they come in, with basic description, title, date of purchase, and price paid. A separate ledger could be maintained for books and other texts, perhaps with separate sections for periodicals and for reprints or ‘grey’ matter (newsletters, mimeographs, occasional documents); and separate ledgers for recorded media (CDs, tapes, etc.), all types of equipment, and what have you. A running serial number may be all that is required to identify each item, and if you put this number on a sticker on or in the item itself, you have a robust and simple system to keep track of their status. When you give an item away, you can record the information and draw a diagonal line through its entry as token of disposal. In fact I use precisely this system to keep track of my financial investments (and significant equipment purchases), as it has the advantage over a computer based system of being always ready to go, robust and physically available at hand, and amenable to all sorts of annotation, on the run, whenever a thought strikes. Of course, it doesn’t produce nicely formatted reports or column totals, and doesn’t send out warning beeps when it’s time for renewal or servicing, which a computer system could do, but I suspect that it will be too late by the time I get round to putting all this on disk. Anyway, the old data will always reside between the covers.

When it comes to books, however, if you plan to have a few thousand, it makes sense to build up a card catalogue from the beginning. My card catalogue started when I was collecting references for my doctoral thesis; my book acquisitions took up steam only sometime after that, so it was a natural extension to enter the books as well on those 3 by 5 inch cards. Now it has become a ritual whenever I get home with any books or reports, whether from the bookshops or from meetings and conferences. They all get entered in the 3 by 5’s, and put into the card tray. Usually I enter the classification number as well, but if I am too bothered with other stuff to do it rightaway, I keep the unclassified cards in a separate holding tray, to be filled in later. I also enter the classification and date of purchase on the first leaf of the book itself (in pencil!), so that I can put it in its due place on the shelf after I have finished reading it (which is falling behind these days!.

What do I put on the card? There are very elaborate conventions on this, the best known being the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR2), of which I have a copy of the Concise version, revised 1988, prepared by Michael Gorman, and published jointly by the American Library Association (Chicago), the Canadian Library Association (Ottawa), and The Library Association (London). But I rarely look into it. I have standardized on the following format: leave the top line blank, on the next line enter the author’s name following the usual last name – first name conventions used in citing references, and year of publication; below that, the title of the work and any subtitles or smart one-liners; then other editorial information like series or set name and general editor (if important enough), illustrators, foreword writer (if an eminent person), then edition number, publisher and place, and finally the international book number (and Library of Congress number if available). At the top left, I write the Dewey class number, followed by shelf numbers (usually three letters from the author name, followed by year) to identify it uniquely; on top right, any special Location (Music Records, or Series, or Loft, for example). At bottom left, I pencil in date and price (both original and buying price if needed), and any supplemental information like key words, alternate classification numbers, etc. All this by hand: it takes a couple of minutes, and my record is ready! The cards are physically kept in a metal card cabinet with four sliding trays. You don't even have to go and buy the printed cards: you could do as well with any old paper cut to size (I notice my institute library does this for their internal purposes, although their actual catalogue is on computer, of course). Not pretty, but works well enough!

The official AARC rules are very precise about what each card should contain, and they also have official registers for the correct way of expressing names and so on. For the record, the following areas are prescribed:

Area 1: Title and statement of responsibility

Area 2: Edition

Area 3: Material (or type of publication) specific details (serials, computer files, maps, music etc.)

Area 4: Publication, distribution, etc.

Area 5: Physical description

Area 6: Series

Area 7: Notes

Area 8: Standard number and terms of availability

Area 9: Supplementary items

Area 10: Items made up of more than one type of material

Area 11: Facsimiles, photocopies, other reproductions

One point on which I disagree with the AARC2 is the rule that editors and compilers should not be made the “main entry”. I prefer to stick to only one type of main entry, which is the author or editor, and if this is not available, then sometimes the corporate body itself or even the publisher (like Government, or National Geographic, or Newsweek, or Oxford). AARC2 says that in the absence of a clear author or creator, one should use the title as first entry (leaving out articles at the start, e.g. Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, The). Sometimes I have used the dreaded Anonymous, too, but that is not a happy solution as it may tend to bunch up a lot of stuff at the head; much better to put the organisation name instead.

Actually, I don’t think they expect all the fields to be filled; the main bits, of course, are author, title and identification by edition or book number. If you have the time, by all means fill in some of the other stuff. The class numbers are my favourite, because I arrange both my cards and my shelves according to them; naturally, I favour Dewey Decimal numbers (I’m on DC22 now). This gets the books in order of field of knowledge and subject matter (in the Dewey order with all its idiosyncrasies!), which suits a knowledge-based user better than arranging by author name alone (or by title!). Very occasionally, if a book seems equally at home in two classes, I may put in a card for each DDC number, giving the shelf position on the top line. Of course, if I have two copies (which happens occasionally!), I put one copy in each location.

These other types of catalogue, of course, are also useful sometimes (e.g., if you are making up a short list in a particular discipline). In public libraries, they used to make up two card catalogues, one arranged by Subject (following the DDC or any other system), and the other by Author, called respectively the Subject Index (which could be an Alphabetical or a Classified Index) and the Author Index. Nowadays, of course, catalogues are maintained on computers, and the database software will allow you to list them by almost any of the fields: maybe by year, or publisher, or combinations.

I don’t actually use the card catalogue much, except to keep it up to date. At the back of my mind is the expectation that I will enter it into a computer some day (but I wonder whether that will actually be useful). I do not think it will help my heirs to sort out what is to be thrown or given away, nor do I expect my Maker to call me to account on this matter! I do riffle through it once in a while to see whether I have a certain book already, if I cannot see it anywhere around. Of course, since it is only a classified index, it won’t help me do alternate searches on author or ISBN or title; that will be possible only if it is put on a computer. I did make an experiment with a couple of software packages to do this, and I will talk about this next post.