College and Research Libraries


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Filing Ru~es for a University Library 
Rules1 for Filing Cards in the Catalogs of 

· Columbia U m'versity Libraries. Compiled 
by a Committee of the Cataloging Depart-
ment. New York, Columbia University 
Libraries, 1946. vi, 72 numb. leaves. · 
Cutter's Rules for a Dictionary Catalog set 

the general filing practice for the libraries of 
the country in the latter part of the nine-
teenth century. Since then a number of lead-
ing public libraries have published their filing 
codes. The most influential of these, as well 
as the first, was the one compiled by Mar-
garet Mann for the Carnegie Library of 
Pittsburgh. When the public libraries of 
Cincinnati, Cleveland, New York, and Queens 
published their filing rules , they all showed 
the influence of Miss Mann's modifications of 
Cutter. The trend away from Cutter was 
still further noticeable in the A.L.A. filing 
code 'published in 1942, which might have 
gone still further in the direction of simple 
alphabetical filing if it had not attempted to 
give instead a cross section of then current 
practice. 

During this long period of evolution, col-
lege and university libraries published little 
to compare with the work of their public 
library colleagues. Now the Cataloging De-
partment of Columbia University Libraries 
has provided the first full-fledged code of 
~niversity library practice. As such it is very 

. welcome, for it enables college and university 

libraries to compare their practice with that
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of one of the most important. university li-
braries. This is the distinct value of the 
compilation, · which does not aim at bein 
definitive as can be seen from the facts tha 
it is issued in mimeographed form and that i 
follows the A.L.A. filing code very closely 
for the most part. ' •. 

Work was started on the Columbia rules 
in 1940. The compilers were able to use the 
A.L.A. code throughout the various stages -. f , 
its preparation. They adopted the numberi hgl 
of rules in that code to facilitate reference 1 

, and they took over the wording of individual 
rules verbatim ·whenever Columbia practice 
proved to be the same. This was all very 

wi;~· the debate over classed or alphabetical~ 
filing, Columbia sometimes sides with one and 
sometimes with the other party. Books of the 'l 
Bible are arranged alphabetically, but the 
general statement in Rule 24 specifically pre-
fers. the classed arrangement based on Cutter. j 
As a consequ~nce Rule 25 .prefers to retain 
the older practice of separating in the catalog 
the works that an author has written from 
those he has edited. 

The new illustrations in the code will be 
studied with interest, as well as· the general 
introductory statements, particularly the one 
on the function of the filer.-A .ndrew D. Os-
born. 

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192 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES