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Notes
However, various people, recognizing the need, have issued calls for bibliographical indexes from time to time. Randolph G. Adams, for example, said in 1935, "We want a general index to American bibliographical journals which have ceased publication"; he pointed out in regard to such journals as Heartman's American Book Collector that "a mass of valuable information [is] buried in these volumes" (Colophon, n.s., 1, 293). But no index of the kind he described has ever appeared. A similar concern was shown by M. McIlvaine at the turn of the century; see "The Indexing of Bibliographical Periodicals," Yearbook of the Bibliographical Society of Chicago, 2 (1900-1), 20.
Book reviews are not included in the SB lists, but many of them from 1960 on can be located through An Index to Book Reviews in the Humanities (1960- ) and Book Review Index (1965- ). Before that time some can be found in the Modern Humanities Research Association's Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (1921- ); and the Times Literary Supplement has always paid particular attention to bibliography, reviewing individual numbers of bibliographical journals as well as books.
Another annual record of bibliographical material is the Oxford Bibliographical Society's Bibliography in Britain (1963- ), beginning coverage with 1962; it lists only works published in the United Kingdom, but it does include book reviews and the British professional journals in the fields of printing and librarianship. The "Register of Current Publications" in Proof (1971- ) is limited to books.
Called at first "Neue Erscheinungen auf dem Gebiete des Bibliothekswesens" and later, in expanded form (beginning with 1904), "Neue Bücher und Aufsätze zum Bibliotheks- und Buchwesen."
The Bibliographical Index (1938- ), another prominent current index, is limited to material in checklist form and is therefore less useful as a guide to material in the field of physical bibliography, though naturally some material in this area does turn up there. The earlier Internationaler Jahresbericht der Bibliographie (1931-41), covering 1930-40, though written in essay form, is also concerned largely with enumerative bibliography.
These last two works serve in a sense as a cumulated guide to periodicals, since they do bring together a large number of references to bibliographical articles dealing with English and American books. But neither work sets out to provide complete indexing for any periodical; and, in the nature of things, both must have overlooked certain relevant articles in obscure journals which have never been indexed. In any case, the title of each shows that its area of interest is something less than the entire field of bibliography. (A number of other lists of the kind enumerated in this paragraph are recorded in my Guide, pp. 888-93.) At the time of the writing and proofreading of the present article, the first volume of a proposed series called Indexed Periodicals, edited by Joseph V. Marconi and announced for 1972 publication by the Pierian Press of Ann Arbor, was not yet available. Volume 1 is planned to provide a record of all the journals covered by the major American, British, and Canadian indexes and will probably present a more detailed account of the indexing irregularities of those bibliographical journals which it lists than can be found in this article. On the other hand, the present survey tries to cover a central group of journals representing the whole field of English and American bibliography (including some journals not indexed anywhere) and tries to refer to all the principal indexes that take up English-language bibliographical journals (including some indexes not announced for coverage by Marconi).
Among other useful individual cumulative indexes are those to the first fifteen volumes (1890-1935) of the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society Publications (by M. R. Dobie) and to the seven volumes (1923-30) of the Fleuron (by A. F. Johnson), appearing in each case in the last volume of the group; the excellent index to the first ten volumes (1920-30) of the fourth series of the Library is less used now, since that material is included in Cole's more comprehensive index. One of the most famous and best of all such indexes to single bibliographical journals is Robert Proctor's A Classified Index to the Serapeum (1897).
Many of the bibliographical journals listed there, however, have also been covered in more comprehensive indexes (e.g., Bibliographica, Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, Library Quarterly, Library Journal); nevertheless, a cumulative index to a single periodical is often more thorough than combined indexes to several and may include references to book reviews and editorial commentary, for example.
As early as 1910 J. Christian Bay recommended that the Bibliographical Society of America set up a committee "to look into the problem of unnecessary duplication" in periodical indexes. See "A Survey of Periodical Bibliography," PBSA, 5 (1910), 61-69.
A W. Pollard once expressed doubt about the necessity for thorough bibliographical indexes, when he asserted that "it is a question whether the work spent in accumulating bibliographical information which would never be used might not exceed the work at present wasted for lack of bibliographical information that the same ground has already been adequately covered" (Library, 2nd ser., 6 [1906], 111). It is indeed a question; but one cannot assume that there is any information which will never be used or that there are many discoveries of the past which will be duplicated in every detail. The growth of scholarship demands a knowledge of previous work; and a guide to that work also stands as a historical record of the contours of a particular intellectual movement (in this case, the development of analytical bibliography). The problem presented by bibliographical material published in places where it is difficult to locate (such as in dealers' catalogues or in footnotes to non-bibliographical articles) is discussed further in G. T. Tanselle, "A Proposal for Recording Additions to Bibliographies," PBSA, 62 (1968), 227-36.
Other, shorter, lists of bibliographical periodicals exist. One recent list is included in the Widener Library Shelflist Number 7: Bibliography and Bibliography Periodicals (1966), pp. 445-64; another is the list of serials in the Edward C. Kemble Collections on American Printing and Publishing in the California Historical Society, as recorded in the Kemble Occasional, No. 5, Sept. 1968.
I have limited the discussion to journals in the English language (or journals like Gutenberg Jahrbuch, with a long tradition of important articles in English). Although many journals dealing with librarianship and with the history of printing are published in other languages, the principal developments in descriptive and analytical bibliography have appeared in English and (aside from the early work on incunabula) have been associated with the study of English and American literature.
Because of the presence of the table, the discussions do not always give precise figures and dates; the table can be used to supply the more specific data on which generalizations in the discussion are based.
However, the Bibliographical Society's News Sheet (1894-1920), which contains some important material, is not included in any standard index; but an index of it is supplied in G. T. Tanselle, "The Bibliographical Society's News Sheet, 1894-1920," Gutenberg Jahrbuch 1967, pp. 297-307.
In this case, consulting the cumulative index to the journal is simpler and more reliable than using the general periodical indexes.
It was also provided with an individual index (covering 1882-87) by A. G. S. Josephson in Bulletin of Bibliography, 3 (1902-04), 120-24, 136-39 (reprinted in 1904 as Bulletin of Bibliography Pamphlet No. 12).
An index to this journal is included in G. T. Tanselle, "Legler's American Book-Lore," Gutenberg Jahrbuch 1969, pp. 331-34.
One related category of bibliographical writing which has rarely been indexed adequately consists of the columns on rare books or book collecting which have had long runs in certain book-reviewing publications; the best of these often include material of more than passing interest. Three of the most important American examples began in 1924: "The World of Rare Books" in the Saturday Review of Literature (conducted by Frederick M. Hopkins through October 1927 and then principally by Carl P. Rollins for about ten years); "Books for Bibliophiles" in the New York Herald Tribune Books (conducted by Leonard L. Mackall through April 1937 and then by Lawrence C. Wroth to the end of 1947); and "Notes on Rare Books" in the New York Times Book Review (signed in the thirties and forties by Philip Brooks). Similar columns, conducted by Frederick M. Hopkins and Jacob Blanck, appeared in Publishers' Weekly in the 1930s and 1940s; and Paul A. Bennett's "Books and Bookmakers" in Linotype News is another example, emphasizing individual designers. Among English columns, Bernard Newdigate's "Book Production Notes" in the London Mercury (1920-37) is well known.
It is continued as a section of the Printing Industry of America Management Reports (1947-50), as supplements to the International Graphic Arts Education Association News Bulletin (1951-53), and as a section of Graphic Arts Progress (1954- ).
A forerunner, just preceding the Graphic Arts Index, was the Index to the Printing Trade Periodicals of the Year (1930-32), a joint effort of the Printing Industry Research Association and the St. Bride Printing Library. The Industrial Arts Index [now Applied Science and Technology Index] (1913- ) covers so few printing journals (e.g., Printing Art, Inland Printer) for such limited periods that it adds little to the coverage available elsewhere. Some articles on printing are entered individually in the card catalogues of collections on printing, like the printed Dictionary Catalogue of the History of Printing from the John M. Wing Foundation in the Newberry Library (1961; supp. 1970); but such catalogues do not normally attempt any systematic sort of periodical indexing (though the catalogue being formed, under George L. Harding's direction, in the Kemble Collections at the California Historical Society does include unusually thorough coverage of articles in journals).
Another paper journal, Paper Industry and Paper World, is covered in IBZ from 1949 through 1966.
Indexed (under its later title, Bookbinding and Book Production) in Library Literature for 1936-51; Pacific Bindery Talk is also covered in this index for 1933-39.
Cannons supersedes Library Work (cumulated for 1905-11), the forerunner of Library Literature; but because Library Work includes digests and has author entries, it may still be useful on occasion. Another standard guide to library materials is Robert B. Downs's American Library Resources (1951; supp. 1962), which lists books and articles that make reference to specific library locations of books. The Annual Library Index (originally called Annual Literary Index; 1892-1910) is actually an index to general periodicals but does cover Library Journal in each volume, as well as the Library in the last three volumes (1908-10).
The abstract service for the library field—Library Science Abstracts [now Library and Information Science Abstracts] (1950- )—is not, as the title suggests, normally concerned with matters of physical bibliography.
The Antiquarian Society Proceedings for 1900-10 are included in the Supplement to the ALA Index to General Literature.
Annual reports of research libraries also frequently contain bibliographical information. Sometimes they are published, at least in revised form, in the journals (as in the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society or the Yale University Library Gazette); but other important reports, such as Edwin Wolf's for the Library Company of Philadelphia, are issued separately.
However, to cite two exceptions, the Missouri Library Association Quarterly has recently given considerable attention to private presses, and the California Librarian has published a checklist (by Theodore F. Gould) on the history of nineteenth-century printing and publishing in California (27 [1966], 97-106).
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