Page:Library Administration, 1898.djvu/116

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CATALOGUING
99

as in the Museum catalogue. The duplicates, however, have numbers of their own, instead of bearing the same number as the first copy, so that the numbering is no clue to the number of different editions.

(2) Titles in languages other than French, English, Greek, Latin, and its modern derivatives, are followed by a translation in small type as foot-note. The object of this is not easy to see ; no mere translation of the title of a German book, for instance, could be of use to an inquirer ignorant of German.

(3) In all cases the author's name is repeated in the body of the title, a proceeding that adds little to the information of the searcher, and must in course of time lead to the use of some millions of superfluous words.

(4) Editions of a text with a translation are not classed apart as "polyglot" after the Museum practice, but kept with the editions of the text. As the mention of the Latin translation is not seldom omitted on the title-page, this practice seems calculated to assist the student who knows an edition from its title only.

(5) The detailed statement of the contents of each volume in the case of editions in many volumes is also useful, enabling the reader to obtain the particular volume required, instead of sending for the whole collection, or throwing on the attendants the onus of looking through tables of contents. This practice has recently been adopted to a limited extent in the British Museum catalogue. It is only practicable in the case of