gue: but why not extend this by multiplying copies through the
ingenious processes now in use, by which the printing of titles can be
effected far more cheaply than in any printing office? Might not every
library become its own printer, thus saving it from the inconvenience and
risk of sending its titles outside, or the great expense of copying them
for the printer?

The titles thus manifolded could be combined into volumes, by cutting
away all superfluous margins and mounting the thin title-slips
alphabetically on paper of uniform size, which, when bound, would be
readily handled. All the titles of an author's works would be under the
eye at a glance, instead of only one at a time, as in the card catalogue.
And the titles of books on every subject would lie open, without slowly
manipulating an infinite series of cards, one after another, to reveal
them to the eye. The classification marks could be readily placed against
each title, or even printed as a part of the manifold card titles.

Not that the card catalogue system would be abolished: it would remain as
the only complete catalogue of the library, always up to date, in a
single alphabet. Daily accessions inserted in it would render it the
standard of appeal as to all that the library contained, and it would
thus supplement the printed catalogue.

Of course, large and increasing accessions would require to be combined
in occasional supplementary volumes of the catalogue; and in no long
number of years the whole might be re-combined in a single alphabet,
furnishing a printed dictionary catalogue up to its date.

The experience of the great British Museum Library in this matter of
catalogues is an instructive one. After printing various incomplete
author-catalogues in the years from 1787 to 1841, the attempt to print
came to a full stop. The extensive collection grew apace, and the
management got along somehow with a manuscript catalogue, the titles of
which (written in script with approximate fullness) were pasted in a
series of unwieldy but alphabetically arranged volumes. To incorporate
the accessions, these volumes had continually to be taken apart by the
binder, and the new titles combined in alphabetical order, entailing a
literally endless labor of transcribing, shifting, relaying and
rebinding, to secure even an imperfect alphabetical sequence. In 1875,
the catalogue had grown to over two thousand thick folio volumes, and it
was foreseen, by a simple compu