ade
English bibliography, or work on catalogues, a by-word among those who
give attention to these matters."

An American may well add, "They do these things better in France and
Germany," while declining to claim the meed of superiority for the United
States.

Too much prominence should not be given to place-numbers in library
catalogues. The tendency to substitute mere numerical signs for authors
and subjects has been carried so far in some libraries, that books are
called for and charged by class-numbers only, instead of their
distinctive names. An English librarian testifies that assistants trained
in such libraries are generally the most ignorant of literature. When
mechanical or mnemonical signs are wholly substituted for ideas and for
authors, is it any wonder that persons incessantly using them become
mechanical? Let catalogue and classification go hand in hand in bringing
all related books together, and library assistants will not stunt their
intellects by becoming bond-slaves to the nine digits, nor lose the power
of thought and reflection by never growing out of their _a b c's_.

There are two forms of catalogue not here discussed, which are adjuncts
to the library catalogue proper. The accession catalogue, kept in a large
volume, records the particulars regarding every volume, on its receipt by
the library. It gives author, title, date, size, binding, whence
acquired, cost, etc., and assigns it an accession number, which it ever
after retains. The shelf catalogue (or shelf-list) is a portable one
divided into sections representing the cases of shelves in the library.
It gives the shelf classification number, author, brief title and number
of volumes of each book, as arranged on the shelves; thus constituting an
inventory of each case, or stack, throughout the library.

To check a library over is to take an account of stock of all the books
it should contain. This is done annually in some libraries, and the
deficiencies reported. All libraries lose some books, however few, and
these losses will be small or great according to the care exercised and
the safe-guards provided. The method is to take one division of the
library at a time, and check off all books on the shelves by their
numbers on the shelf-list, supplemented by careful examination of all
numbers drawn out, or at bindery, or in other parts of the library. Not a
volume should be absent unaccounted for. Those found missing after a
certain time sho