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III
Tanselle's comment on MLA and MHRA is followed by an observation about the desirability of indexing by bibliographical technique:
ABHB is some advance in that it uses the much finer classification scheme adopted from Bibliography in Britain. But it still indexes by materials, author, or other definable 'subject', not by technique.
LL (see below) offers no advance on the others: since physical bibliography is a peripheral subject for LL the relevant headings are particularly broad.
IBZ (see below) similarly uses only the broadest of subject headings (alongside specific headings for persons etc.), such as Bibliographie (in its various significations), Typographie etc.
In fact, the only index I am aware of which indexes by technique is the annual index to Library, and obviously its utility is confined to that title. (Note that the annual indexes to BC and PBSA are confined to proper names.)
The nature of the different indexes may be judged by the entries assigned one article, for convenience taken from Library 30 (1975), part 1, 'Punctuation and the compositors of Shakespeare's Sonnets, 1609':
- Library: Bibliographic method: compositors' stints distinguished by punctuation and spacing habits, 1-24
- Bodleian Library, Oxford, Shakespeare quartos watermarks, 11
- Composition: Shakespeare Sonnets (1609), 1-24
- English studies: W. Shakespeare, 1-24
- Jackson, MacD. P. 'Punctuation and the compositors of Shakespeare's Sonnets, 1609', 1-24
- Poetry: W. Shakespeare, 1-24
- Punctuation: MacD. P. Jackson, 'Punctuation and the compositors of Shakespeare's Sonnets, 1609', 1-24
- Shakespeare, William, Sonnets (1609), compositors' stints distinguished by punctuation and spacing, 1-24
- Skeletons (in press work): W. Shakespeare Sonnets (1609), 2-3
- Spelling: evidence for compositors' stints concurs with punctuation habits, 1-24
- Watermarks: Shakespeare Sonnets (1609), 11n. (+ references to 26 authors referred to or quoted from)
- LL: Criticism, Textual
- Printing. History
- MLA: English Literature VI. Renaissance and Elizabethan. Shakespeare. Sonnets
- IBZ: Shakespeare, William
- [MHRA]: Bibliography. Book Production, Printing, and Textual Studies
- Sixteenth Century. William Shakespeare. Separate Works. The Sonnets
If bibliography as a field of knowledge and indexing by technique were to be combined the resulting index would need to be akin to the annual indexes to Library. Whether it would be practicable to apply that level of indexing to a number of discrete items even as small as a thousand or so is perhaps a moot point. National ventures would be an appealing avenue, though the much-delayed Bibliography in Britain does not offer an encouraging example. An alternative avenue would be the indexing of a fixed list: perhaps the yet-to-be-published Bodleian Index to Certain Bibliographical Journals [of 1933-1965] could provide the basis for an on-going index.
In the meantime MHRA must be regarded as the most satisfactory index to Anglo-American bibliography, supplemented—for the most recent two years—by MLA.
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