Page:Essays in librarianship and bibliography.djvu/204

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184
ESSAYS IN LIBRARIANSHIP

are to be found in their shelves or repositories." That is, the catalogue must have press-marks; in which suggestion Dury was two centuries ahead of many of the most important foreign libraries. It will be observed that he takes it for granted that the catalogue shall be printed, and in this he was ahead of almost all the libraries of his time, and until lately of the British Museum. In fact he could not be otherwise, for a printed catalogue is an essential condition of his dominant idea that the librarian should be a "factor" to "trade" with learned men and corporations for mutual profit. Hence he prescribes "a catalogue of additionals, which every year within the universities is to be published in writing within the library itself, and every three years to be put in print and made common to those that are abroad."

The full plan of communication is unfolded in the following passage:—

"When the stock is thus known and fitted to be exposed to the view of the learned world, then the way of trading with it, both at home and abroad, is to be laid to heart both for the increase of the stock and for the improvement of its use. For the increase of the stock both at home and abroad, correspondence should be held with those that are eminent in every science to trade with them for their profit, that what they want and we have, they may receive upon condition; that what they have and we want, they should impart in that faculty wherein their eminence doth lie. As for such as are at home eminent in any kind, because they