University of Virginia Library

In a celebrated essay in 1941 on "The Crisis in Cataloging,"[1] Andrew D. Osborn remarked, "The relationship between cataloging and bibliography has been a difficult one to define" (p. 400). Indeed, anyone who has investigated the history of attempts to define it will regard this comment as a considerable understatement: the matter is intrinsically complex, but to make matters worse bibliographers and cataloguers have often been unsympathetic, or even hostile, toward each other's practices and approaches. Yet descriptive bibliography and cataloguing, as Osborn continues, "have many points of contact and many elements in common. Their history has been intertwined in many respects." The two are naturally related pursuits, and the interests of all who are concerned with books are best served by a spirit of cooperation between them; the split which threatens to make them continually more incompatible does no one any good. Both have become specialties, with the familiar result that communication is hampered; and those working in each field go their own way, without being well informed about, or perhaps even interested in, what is happening in the other. Bibliographers and cataloguers, and many other people as well, constantly consult both catalogues and bibliographies; the two kinds of works are necessarily different, having different aims, but they are both parts of a larger undertaking—the recording of intellectual products and their physical embodiments. A user of these works should ideally be impressed more by their compatibility

than by their divergence, and anything which produces greater communication between bibliographers and cataloguers is a move in the right direction.

The present moment is particularly appropriate for an increased effort at mutual understanding. For their part, bibliographers have shown in recent years a renewed interest in the production of lists which do not entail full physical descriptions. D. F. McKenzie, for instance, has suggested that bibliography can perhaps best serve the study of history and literature "by returning . . . to the more directly useful, if less sophisticated, activity of enumerative 'bibliography.'"[2] And David F. Foxon has stated "the case for another species of bibliographer whose role lies somewhere between the enumerative and the descriptive";[3] after explaining the rationale of his own English Verse, 1701-1750: A Catalogue, he adds:

Both writers allude to the accomplishments of Pollard, Redgrave, and Wing in producing "short-title catalogues" and comment on the need for an eighteenth-century STC; and the attention now being given to this need has provided the occasion for useful discussions about the nature and form of such works.[4] But the suggestion, in these two statements, that bibliographers must "return" from "sophisticated" or "fashionable" activity misleadingly implies that they have been irresponsible and have abandoned what is basic. There is no reason why these approaches have to be set in opposition to each other, for the pursuit of descriptive bibliography does not involve a disrespect for the making of outwardly simpler lists and catalogues. Fredson Bowers, on the opening page of his Principles of Bibliographical Description (1949), recognizes that catalogues "will always exist as one of the basic needs of scholarship." Whether or not this view may have been lost sight of by descriptive bibliographers, these recent statements are a healthy reaffirmation of the value of catalogues and lists. To them should be added another obvious point: that bibliographers contemplating work on a short-title catalogue or list ought to be aware of standard library cataloguing practices, so that they are in a position to take advantage of any that seem useful for their purposes.

Conversely, cataloguers now more than ever need to examine descriptive bibliography for possible techniques or procedures that could be incorporated with advantage into their own work. Cataloguing in recent years has been at a critical juncture in its history, with the emergence of increasing possibilities for international standardization and cooperation as reflected in the extent of the agreement reached at the 1961 International Conference on Cataloguing Principles in Paris. The publication of the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules (1967), based on the Paris principles, and the development of the International Standard Bibliographic Description (1971), designed to make the elements of a catalogue description recognizable through punctuation, as well as the distribution of MARC (Machine Readable Cataloging) magnetic tapes,[5] have served to indicate the enormous influence which cataloguing procedures can have and to provide an occasion for rethinking those procedures. Although it is unfortunate that these standard codes were promulgated without consideration of the contributions which descriptive bibliography might make, it is not too late to incorporate alterations in them, if changes are found to be desirable. Relatively speaking, we are still at the beginning of the tenure of these rules; and, if further improvements can be made in them by drawing on the experience of descriptive bibliography, this is the time for effecting those changes.

Cooperation between bibliographers and cataloguers, however, can be significant only if the relations between their activities are clearly recognized. I should like to begin by looking into this relationship, attempting to define the position each occupies in the whole realm of bibliographical study. Then, on this tenth anniversary of the appearance of the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, I propose to examine some of those rules from the point of view of the descriptive bibliographer. As a result, I hope that it will be possible to survey with understanding various suggestions for cataloguing "rare" books and to point out some ways in which the approach of bibliographers and that of cataloguers can be brought closer together without placing an unfair burden on cataloguers.