GK3 At The British Museum

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31197, 22 October 1966, Page 4

GK3 At The British Museum

(By

TERRY COLEMAN

in the “Guardian", Manchester)

I Reprinted by arrangement > “What peace, what love, what truth, what beauty, what happiness for all, what generous kindness for you and me are here spread out.” This is Thackeray, speaking in 1875 of the new reading room of the British Museum. Peace and love and truth and all these other generous things are still there, along with a constant and echoing tap-tap-tap. This is the reading room’s typical sound. It is caused by the heavy, metal-rimmed catalogue covers striking, as they are opened, against the leather tops of desks and benches.

October 5 was indeed a day of happiness for all at the museum; sherry flowed in the director’s offices; GK3 was finished and they were all proud. GK3 is the code-name for the new catalogue in 263 volumes, each of about 500 pages, the set containing in all more than four million entries. It lists the museum’s books from 1485 to 1955 and is the nearest thing there is to an index of Western literature.

This is remarkable. After all, as recently as 1954 the then Keeper in the department of printed books estimated that the new catalogue then being prepared was unlikely to be completed within 100 years. A less optimistic observer said 250 years.

How has this come about? In the beginning, the reading room catalogue was made up of large guard-books in which were pasted handwritten slips. This ran to 2500 volumes and was unwieldy. In 1881 a catalogue was printed, and completed by 1900. This was GKI. Supplements were issued, but by 1931 GKI was out of date and an entirely new catalogue was started. All entries were checked and many amplified. But there were not enough people to do the proof-reading and by 1954 the alphabetical order had reached DEZ and no further. This was the catalogue that was going to take a century. It was called GK2. A new beginning had to be made. The attempt to revise old entries was abandoned. Broadly speaking, GKI was taken as the basis, and into it

were incorporated printed entries from the supplements issued up to the end of 1955. This was all arranged alphabetically, partly by hand and partly by an educated camera called the abstractor, and the whole was printed lithographically. The result is GK3, of which 750 copies have been sold at £1709 each. Seven out of ten have been exported: more than two million dollars have been earned from American libraries and universities. The reference copy in the reading room itself is of course brought more closely up to date; slips are inserted listing books published up to, say, six months ago. A ten-year sup= plement to GK3, from 1955 to 1965, will be going to press soon.

Sir Frank Francis, the director, was mighty pleased, and so he ought to be. He was the Keeper who said GK2 would take a century, and it was his idea to start again with GK3. When he was asked, he compared the new edition with the great French and American national catalogues. That of the Biblioteque Nationale was started in 1897 and has only got to T. That of the Library of Congress is also extremely well done, but does not go back so far as the BM’s.

But, Sir Frank was asked, does GK3 list all the museum’s books? This was bound to come up. Mr Peter Fryer, journalist and author, has recently completed a book called “Private Case—Public Scandal,” which is soon to be published by Seeker and Warburg. The book’s style is more moderate than its title, but in it Mr Fryer states that many “special case” books, for instance erotica, are not lin the general catalogue and can be seen only after good reason is given by a reader: and that other books (called SS books) are suppressed and readers are allowed neither to read them nor even to know, after inquiry, whether they are in the BM at all. i What about these books? The special case volumes, said ’ Sir Frank, were not included ■in GK3, but they would ! gradually be incorporated [into the catalogue. He could jnot say when. j According to Mr Fryer, the first book the BM ever suppressed was “The Modern Characters of Shakespere” with manuscript notes by George 111. He says this was bought for £7O in 1847 and has been locked up ever since. When I asked Sir Frank about this book he said he did not

know of it: the Principal Keeper of Printed Books, Mr A. H. Chaplin, said neither did he. When he was asked about the SS books. Mr Chaplin explained that he did not know what the initials stood for, but that the BM was obliged to suppress these books for a variety of reasons, for instance that they were libellous or contained State secrets. As soon as they ceased to be libellous or secret they were removed from this category. How many were there of these books; hundreds, thousands? A good deal fewer than many thousands, he said, adding that he had never himself seen these books. The Superintendent of the reading room interjected that he had never seen the books either: he did not know if he was entitled to. As for erotic books, then, would the Superintendent consider it a good and sufficient reason if a would-be reader said he wished to consult a book of engravings for pleasure? He thought not, even though the applicant might be a hedonist.

But all this is a small, though important, matter. The reading room is an incomparable library, and anyone who has read there must be grateful. GK3 is also an achievement. But what do these letters, GK, mean? They are short for Generalkatalog. But why in German? The Keeper did not know: neither did the Superintendent. Someone suggested that the librarians of the nineteenth century admired German methods: someone else that a “K” was used instead of a “C” because earlier scholars would have been familiar with Greek.