FIFTEEN-YEAR JOB

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 94, 18 October 1939, Page 4

FIFTEEN-YEAR JOB

CATALOGUING BODLEIAN

The Bodleian Library has now printed a specimen volume of its new catalogue. On this basis it is estimated that the whole work will be completed in 1951, at a total cost of £100,000, says the "Christian Science Monitor."

For several -years the Bodleian i authorities have been anxious to know exactly what they possess in their million and a half volumes, which are increasing at the rate of nearly 300 a week. Work on the new catalogue was begun in 1932. It is to be published ia 435 volumes, of which the first will be ready in 1946. At present the catalogue staff is working in the old Bodleian, but next April they are to be transferred to the new building extension, which is being erected by Sir Gilbert Scott at a cost of £1,000,000. The catalogue is to be arranged according to authors, not subjects. There are to be special catalogues for music, maps, and Oriental books. The new work is a revision of the present catalogue of the library, which now runs to about 1300 volumes. This catalogue was published in four volumes between 1843 and 1851, and cost £6000. It soon became clear that a printed catalogue wr?j cf little value, for interleaving could not be practised on a scale large enough to meet the needs of so fast growing a library. The printed titles were therefore transferred to written slips, which were then pasted down on the blank leaves of some 700 volumes, capable of indefinite extension by the process of adding fresh pages.

This part of the work was completed in 1878, costing £14,500. It is these heavy volumes, with leather thongs at the top to facilitate lifting, that are familiar to thousands of contemporary Bodleian readers.

The Bodleian has always been -keenly interested in cataloguing. . It was opened in 1602, and within three years Sir Thomas Bodley added a shelf list, which was followed in 1620 by a printed alphabetical catalogue which won a great reputation. In 1674 a third catalogue was issued. This was the first catalogue to be made in England according to a definite code of rules. All subsequent Bodleian catalogues are developments of this pioneer work.