College and Research Libraries National Bibliography and Bibliographical Control: A Symposium IN THE A p r i l 1947 issue of College and Research Libraries the " R e c o m m e n d a t i o n s A d o p t e d by the C o n f e r e n c e on International Cultural, Educational, and Scientific Exchanges, Princeton, N . J . , N o v . 26, 1 9 4 6 " w e r e published. O n e of the important recommendations was the development of a complete current national bibliography. Because of the importance of this problem, the editors print b e l o w a paper on " N a t i o n a l Bibliography and Bibliographical C o n t r o l , " by Paul V a n d e r b i l t , of the L i b r a r y of C o n - gress staff, together with an introductory m e m o r a n d u m by L u t h e r H . Evans, Librarian of Congress. T h e r e are also included comments by T h e o d o r e Besterman, Jerome K . W i l c o x , and Rebecca Rankin. Since there are various aspects of the proposal w h i c h are not covered in the remarks of the commentators, it is suggested that readers having v i e w - points other than those expressed here send them to the editor. It may be possible to publish them in a subsequent issue. Introductory Memorandum1 1. I attach hereto a memorandum entitled "National Bibliography and Bibliographical Control" prepared by Paul Vanderbilt of the staff of the Library of Congress. 2. This memorandum has been prepared in direct response to the resolution adopted at the Conference on International Cultural, Educational, and Scientific Exchanges, Princeton, N.J., N o v . 26, 1946, as f o l l o w s : It is recommended that the Library of Con- gress should formulate and present to A.L.A., A.R.L., S.L.A., and other library associations in this country, for their comment and criticism, plans for editing and publishing a complete current national bibliography of the United States, involving as may be necessary the co- ordination of existing efforts in this field, such as the catalogs of the Superintendent of Docu- ments, the Monthly Checklist of State Publica- tions, Cumulative Book Index, Catalog of Copy- right Entries, and other sources, and looking to the coverage of fields not now covered, such as municipal documents, house organs, etc. and pursuant to the decision, taken at the meeting on Jan. 22, 1947 to follow up on the 1 O r i g i n a l l y addressed to C a r l H . M i l a m , E x e c u t i v e S e c r e t a r y , A m e r i c a n L i b r a r y Association. Princeton conference, that the Library of Congress would accept the job, and would have something ready for comment and criticism at the June meeting of A . L . A . at Atlantic City. 3. A s you know, the discussions regarding "bibliographical control of research ma- terials" go back as far as does the need for it. In the very recent past there have been the extensive discussions and researches of the joint Committee on Indexing and A b - stracting in the M a j o r Fields of Research, representing 10 libraries and other profes- sional associations, which, in its final report in 1945 recommended that coordination of bibliographical activity be recognized as a function of the federal government. In the more recent past we have seen, in the sug- gestions submitted for the program of U N E S C O , that the crying need of intellectual workers throughout the world is the infor- mation regarding the published materials within their respective fields of research. M o s t recent, of course, we have the action of the Princeton conference. But the in- stances which I cite are merely indicative and symptomatic of a universal need. APRIL, 1948 155 4- M r . Vanderbilt's paper is the first essay toward the development of a genuinely com- prehensive plan to meet this need. In no sense does it attempt to provide all, or even a large number, of the answers. It does, however, attempt to strike at the root of the problem and to provide a fundamental an- swer. It cannot, in any sense, be taken to represent the official and final opinion of the Library of Congress; nor is it to be assumed that the Library of Congress is prepared to execute the plan which is projected. In brief, M r . Vanderbilt's paper is an attempt to formulate a proposal for basic bibliographical control of the materials of research—basic in the sense that, once done it would not have to be repeated, and also in the sense that further bibliographical activity might be de- veloped on a basis of it. 5. I hope that the paper may be read and discussed in this light. A s I have said above, it does not presume to give all, or even a large number, of answers. It does not, f o r example, tell us whether we should give up the separate publication of the Catalog of Copyright Entries or of the Monthly Check- list of State Publications. It does not tell us whether the catalog should separate books from music and maps, or list them together; whether official publications should be ar- ranged with belles-lettres or separated there- from. And, if it does not give us the an- swers regarding our own bibliographical publications or our own bibliographical pro- cedures, it is much further f r o m providing answers with regard to publications or pro- cedures which are not our own. 6. W e hope for discussion of the basic principle. W e hope f o r criticism. W e hope for suggestions, however wild or ideal. W e propose to go on from this statement to a convincing and—we hope—a practicable c o - operative plan. Luther H. Evans Librarian of Congress. B y P A U L V A N D E R B I L T N a t i o n a l Bibliography and Bibliographical C o n t r o l IN THE Library of Congress, we have been talking among ourselves for a long time about bibliographical controls. W e haven't always called it that, or even bibliographical planning, a term which we used in connection with setting up a specific project f o r investi- gation. T h i s project has been envisaged in several different ways. A s a possible future staff appointment, it was described in terms of need f o r an energetic and imaginative per- son to develop and coordinate the biblio- graphical services rendered by the library to the other libraries of the nation, through card distribution, through the union catalog, through bibliographical and reference service, and through interlibrary loans, to plan an ex- panded service program f o r the library as a whole, and supervise its execution. A s some- thing more preliminary, it has been discussed in terms of someone w h o would travel and talk to librarians and others throughout the country, exploring the achievements already reached and the plans in mind, with a view to gaining an adequate measurement of pro- fessional thinking as well as details of actual accomplishment. In still other preparatory terms, we have thought of collecting data on what has already been written on the integra- tion of bibliographical controls, with special reference to specific plans so that they can be compared, and compiling lists of individ- uals, committees, and organizations known to be working, not necessarily on individual bibliographies but rather on the coordination of all bibliographical effort. So far, our find- ings are that there is little unanimity of opin- ion, and no one who has given the matter any close observation or well-informed reflection will find this surprising. T h e r e are two kinds of intensive activities stirring. There is impassioned urging that the mastery of recorded knowledge be con- sidered as of such enormous importance as to underlie the future of peace, the future of research, and the future of practically every activity of mankind, and theoretical promising that this mastery will achieve through rec- ords the same accuracy of communication from mind to mind that conversation, the telephone, and the mails have already given us. T h e other kind of activity conjures up particular projects: to list periodicals accord- 156 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES ing to their principal subject content, to establish uniform codes for citing the ab- breviated titles of periodicals, to issue a union bibliography of publications in the field of international relations, to present a uniform code for cataloging books printed in H e - brew, to microcopy f o r preservation news- papers printed upon perishable paper, and so on almost ad infinitum. T h o s e who hope for world accord and concerted action along the entire front of the struggle f o r control of recorded knowledge retire almost inevitably, in the end, behind a pious hope for a change in human nature, f o r the imposition of legal regulations, for spontaneous cooling of some of the hottest arguments known to the learned world, or possibly for the help of a super- electronic mechanical aid to thinking. T h e protagonists of limited, isolated schemes fare much better, and the great progress that has been made is due precisely to their unremit- ting, intensive energy in independent creative effort. Their trouble is mainly lack of funds. M o s t of these projects are expensive, and the amount of readily available money is insuffi- cient to finance them all, so that competition inevitably prevails over rational selection. W i t h the announcement of U N E S C O , many saw on the horizon a kind of inter- national Rockefeller Foundation which, to those who come first, with the most appealing arguments, might be an ideal solution, but such hopefuls have often read the U N E S C O documents without sufficient breadth of in- terpretation or possibly without sufficient care. U N E S C O , like every other intelligent effort, is attempting to make known to one party what other parties are doing, to serve as a medium f o r the comparison of projects, in the hope that independent action all over the world, with the addition of an improved knowledge of similar efforts elsewhere, may become a little more effective, and that even- tually there may develop a kind of common denominator, an expressed and well-under- stood point of departure. T h e specific projects which yield the most valuable results are those which bear within them a common denominator, some part of a universal approach to the difficulties of bibli- ography as a whole. O u r problem is " t o find the comprehensive pattern which will satisfy the needs of all significant groups," that is, to depend upon a variety of projects to produce final results, but to provide a uni- form base of raw material, or preliminary listing and sorting upon which the specialized projects may draw. W e at the library look closely at our costly and time-consuming op- erations to see whether the base f o r further refinement which we hope for is really being established. O u r large staff of descriptive catalogers costs a great deal of money, and we have so far acted on the assumption that their efforts were essential and the expense inevitable. T h e union catalog has been a great enterprise, but it has not yet literally solved the problem of locating in some Ameri- can library at least one copy of every impor- tant research book, for this it cannot do until it is literally complete, and until the gaps which it reveals have been filled in. O u r public catalog, made so carefully, still does not simply and unerringly reveal the true complete content of the library, including periodical literature, on any topic, but con- tinues to answer questions with riddles. W e have become concerned about biblio- graphical planning in connection with great projects outside the library. T h e Biblio- graphic Index, concerning the development and value of which there is a certain differ- ence of opinion, is apparently now limited to material which can be inspected for assign- ment of subject headings in N e w Y o r k City, and yet this is the only tool of its kind. A survey has revealed 243 indexing and ab- stracting services, and for all of this intensive effort there is still widespread complaint that the periodical literature of the world is ir- regularly and incompletely covered. D e - mands are made upon us either for a com- plete subject bibliography or for selective re- duction of the mass of potential material, and we are again and again faced with the choice between a laborious committee-ap- proved bibliographical compilation or an an- swer, perhaps to an important inquiry, that so far as we know there is really no adequate tool available. This sort of thing happens all over the world, and it is only in certain fields where special interests have poured vast sums of money into reference media, as chem- ists or the legal profession or, f o r instance, the nickel industry have done, that any really satisfactory degree of control has been achieved. W e look to these and other specific accomplishments, however, for a kind of guid- APRIL, 1948 157 ance which stirs our imagination and both technically and ideologically may point the way. W e have a great measure of biblio- graphical control. W e have trade lists and national lists, a constant stream of bibliogra- phies and bibliographies of bibliographies. W e have, if you will exempt the details, a pretty widely accepted system of recording biblio- graphical items, of cataloging, and of citation. In some slow but sure way it has become the almost universal practice to provide books with title pages f o r identification, and to gather books together into libraries. W e have come a long way. But we have a long way to go, and we wonder whether we are going about it as effectively as we might if all the facts were known. One phase of our discussion at the library reached an important turning point at our decision to issue the Cumulative Catalog of Library of Congress Printed Cards, the de- tails of which have been given in the an- nouncement issues of the Processing Depart- ment's Cataloguing Service bulletins for last November and December. A review pub- lished in the Library Journal last M a y 15 says: It seems only reasonable to term the new publication one of the major forward steps in centralized cataloging in the United States since the inauguration of printed card sales near the turn of the century. . . . Methods of biblio- graphic description can now be standardized and simplified. Those who dream of printed book catalogs replacing cards in future libraries now have a new tool with which to experiment, while the goal of complete centralized descrip- tion and location of the bibliographic resources of the nation can now be measureably nearer. W e would never have taken a step of this sort without the careful consideration with which many of you have come in contact and without the conviction that we were on the right track. So far, professional opinion has supported our confidence. L.C. Card-Production By definition, the Cumulative Catalog re- produces, so as to provide an additional means of distribution, the cards originally produced f o r cataloging purposes within the library. Certain modifications, in fact, in the design and mechanical handling of cards have di- rectly resulted f r o m the method of producing the Cumulative Catalog. Taken altogether, card production is bibliographically probably the library's most important enterprise, and the one which has had the greatest effect upon the practices of other libraries. T h e r e are still innumerable questions of detail to be set- tled, and every thoughtful and technically skilled cataloger engages in differences of opinion with the Processing Department. Y e t we can point to a group of techniques and an embodiment of plans which may be said not only to have worked, within the scale originally contemplated, but to have survived enormous expansion in scope. T h e making of cards, moreover, is the operation which technical librarianship has carried to the greatest refinement, and consequently, is the point upon which the greatest intensity of discussion in relation to the importance of the detail involved can be aroused. H o w - ever, excepting for the various services such as the Engineering Index which issue their material in card form, most card production has been conceived in terms of the needs of individual library catalogs. W h i l e a number of international codes have been proposed for adoption, it seems to us that insufficient thought has been given to card production as the first step in international bibliographical control, the raw material upon which sub- sequent operations rest. So our discussion has often started on the issue of how far the card-producing activity of the library should be carried and whether it is possible to achieve an expanded coverage with cards made according to present standards. O u r thinking ahead leads us to base our plans on existing accomplishments. W e should not limit our thinking ahead to the original intention of producing high- standard card catalogs for our own use and giving other libraries a chance to benefit by the work. It has already become more than that. A great many bibliographical projects are based upon a review of proof sheets issued during the production of cards. Fun- damentally a card is a one-item bibliography, the original record, the point where all other bibliographical operations begin, for even lists are usually made f r o m slips or rudimentary cards. In one way or another we have be- come responsible f o r a supply of bibliographi- cal raw material, and, to the considerations of accuracy, reasonable consistency, profes- 158 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES sional workmanship and availability, we must now add that of complete coverage. W e must consider whether uniform card produc- tion covering the entire national output of recorded knowledge, from a certain year on- ward, does not underlie all major projects f o r selection, analysis, and bibliographical control. In this concept, cards are not in- tended solely for catalog purposes, but also, because they can be manipulated, for sorting for bibliographical purposes. T o what ex- tent is bibliography handicapped by the fact that for the United States there is no com- plete listing of the entire mass of raw de- scription in a form which can be physically broken down as a starting point for particu- lar projects? T h e most obvious answer is that coverage of this sort for one nation's output even if it could be achieved, is not going to give us subject.coverage, which does not f o l l o w national lines. But just as selec- tive lists of subject references must be based on complete lists from which the unnecessary matter is discarded, so the complete subject lists must be based on more inclusive lists of production, probably in national units. I am intentionally discussing card produc- tion before book-form national bibliography because of our conception of a national bibli- ography, not only as a list of bibliographical items published, but also as a list of descrip- tive cards introduced into the bibliographical machinery and available. Direct production of a book-form catalog, while it might have typographical advantages, seems to us less of an accomplishment than one operation which produces both cards for sorting and books f o r distribution, checking, and reference. A f t e r exhaustive inquiry and experimentation, the Processing Department evolved the method of reproducing the cards in book form by photo- offset which we now feel has such promise. Should the fact that we cannot hope to pro- duce descriptive cards for the whole world's yearly output delay us in trying to provide the basic inventory for the United States, if that much is within our p o w e r ? T h e na- tional unit is a very logical unit, and one which practically every planner has used. Herbert Putnam, writing on the future of the Library of Congress in Emily Miller Danton's The Library of Tomorrow, pub- lished in 1939, calls attention to the 6,000 regular purchasers of the cards prepared by the library and goes on to say that the " f u l l - ness and scholarly accuracy of the entries on these cards requires so much labor that the output cannot begin to keep pace with in- coming material. Ideally, this service should constitute a central cataloguing bureau for the entire country but, actually, it falls far short of doing so. T o achieve this ideal a larger staff of cataloguers is needed as well as a larger appropriation for printing and distribution of the cards and for the acquisi- tion of books." Great improvements have since been made in the degree to which cata- loging keeps pace with incoming material, particularly with the inception of cataloging by the Copyright Office, and various phases of the cooperative cataloging program have ex- tended the scope. John Shaw Billings, in his presidential address to the American L i - brary Association in 1902, spoke as f o l l o w s : I think it well, however, to remind you of your duties to this your national library, and especially that the librarian of every city, town, or village in the country should make it his or her business to see that one copy of every local, noncopyrighted imprint, including all municipal reports and documents, all reports of local in- stitutions, and all addresses, accounts of cere- monies, etc., which are not copyrighted and do not come into the booktrade, is promptly sent to our national library. T h e current tendency is not to propose that all of the needed cataloging w o r k should be done at one place because of the great difficulty of physically assembling it, but rather to suggest that librarians must "see to it that the cataloging and bibliographical work is done by the whole library community and by others engaged in the similar work of placing important facts under current finger- tip control." In the first place, can we accept the thesis that it is desirable that a specific group of libraries should, taken together, acquire the entire United States output year by year, and that their cataloging efforts taken together would thus produce cards for the .entire na- tional output, which, if gathered together and published in annual volumes with cumulations, would constitute a desirable system of na- tional bibliography-? In the words of the recommendation of the Library of Congress Planning Committee, the library is urged, as part of its leadership APRIL, 1948 159 in cooperative movements, and as part of its share of the national library program on be- half of nonfederal libraries and of individ- uals who are not federal employees, to un- dertake ". . . the printing at regular intervals of as complete a list as possible of publica- tions currently published in the U.S. . . ." T h e Conference on International Cultural, Educational, and Scientific Exchanges, held at Princeton, N.J., N o v . 26, 1946, recom- mended that: . . . UNESCO and other suitable agencies and groups, governmental and nongovernmental, en- courage national governments, national library associations, and other agencies in every country to see to it that there is published for each country a current national bibliography, which will include in an author arrangement under broad subjects, in one or more sections or parts, the following types of material, listed in the order of importance: a. Books and pamphlets in the book trade b. Government documents at all levels c. Nongovernment periodicals d. Newspapers; and, if possible: e. Miscellaneous publications f. Motion pictures, including news reels, documentaries, instructional films, and photo- plays. W e believe there is a place and need for both selective and comprehensive national bib- liographies, but because of their fundamental importance we recommend that priority be given to effecting arrangements for securing bibliographies of the comprehensive type. It is recommended that the Library of Con- gress should formulate and present to A.L.A., A.R.L., S.L.A., and other library associations in this country, for their comment and criticism, plans for editing and publishing a complete current national bibliography of the United States, involving as may be necessary the co- ordination of existing efforts in this field, such as the catalogs of the Superintendent of Docu- ments, the Monthly Checklist of State Publica- tions, Cumulative Book Index, Catalog of Copy- right Entries, and other sources, and looking to the coverage of fields not now covered, such as municipal documents, house organs, etc. Subsequent action, following up the Prince- ton recommendations, taken at an informal meeting held in the Library of Congress on Jan. 22, 1947, resulted in a commitment that the library would present-a plan f o r a na- tional bibliography at the San Francisco con- vention of the American Library Association. T h e Assembly of Librarians of the Ameri- cas which has just been meeting at the Library of Congress included in the recom- mendations of its Committee on Education for Librarianship "that steps be taken to o r - ganize as soon as possible the bibliographical patrimony of each country in accordance with the latest requirements of library science and utilizing appropriate practices and tech- niques;" and in the recommendations of its Committee on Bibliography that "in view of the circumstance that repeated recom- mendations of international organizations concerning the desirability of publishing na- tional bibliographies have not been heeded except in a few countries . . . , national li- braries or bibliographical institutions be charged with the duty of bringing to fruition the compilation and publication of national bibliographies of their respective countries, where such w o r k is not already being realized either commercially or by government agen- cies." T h e recommendation of the Princeton C o n - ference does not clearly state that this plan must necessarily involve a single publication or a new one, and it implies nothing one way or another on the effect which a full material bibliography would have on lists now current which would be duplicated in part. All of the existing lists have a distinct function to fulfil, and the library proposal to expand its card-producing facilities and its Cumulative Catalog to a point of all-inclusiveness seems to us in no way to interfere with any of the existing publication programs of more re- stricted scope and perhaps greater usefulness. If our inquiry were directed at the publication of the national bibliography alone, we might well explore the question whether the Cumu- lative Book Index, the Catalog of Copyright Entries, the Monthly Checklist of State Pub- lications, the Monthly Catalogue of U.S. Pub- lic Documents with other standard lists, taken together, constitute an approach to national bibliography, and that all that is needed is a supplement which would list publications not included in any other list. But the established major lists are themselves parts of a pyramidal structure from which the apex is lacking. T h e r e are other more partial lists of publications of particular agencies of the government, f r o m which the entries are repeated in the Superintendent of Documents' inclusive list. Last M a r c h the 160 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES Congressional Joint Committee on Printing approved a resolution eliminating the biennial catalog of government publications, on the theory that the essential purposes could be accomplished by the monthly list and annual index. T h e Superintendent of Documents also issues selective lists, such as the 46-page One Hundred Selected Books Now Available . . . published in 1946. And there is no list which literally covers the entire output of the federal government, including material, often of great value, processed independently by the various agencies. T h e N e w H a m p - shire State Library, the Maine State Library, and the Universities of North Carolina, Arkansas, and Florida are issuing lists of ma- terial for their respective states. T h e Cali- fornia State Library covers bibliographically the publications of California municipalities, and the municipal reference library in Chicago has likewise undertaken a local bibliographical function. Jerome Kear W i l c o x ' Manual on the Use of State Publications and the lists on state documents published every other year in Special Libraries are but two of the items in what is already a fairly complex bibliography on the listing and availability of our national output. W e have not yet actually tried to make a list of current bibliographies which, taken altogether, would indicate everything issued in the United States, and this should be a part of a fully-developed attack on the problem, but that list would be sufficiently long to show that literally complete national bibli- ography involves more than a f e w convenient reference tools. M o r e o v e r , as already sug- gested, the approach to complete national bibliography through use of a number of ex- isting lists takes no account of that desirabil- ity of producing at the same time the same information in card f o r m for a variety of subsequent bibliographical projects; whereas an approach which takes the Cumulative Catalog of the Library of Congress as a base would cover such a provision. O u r tentative plan, then, of developing the Cumulative Catalog into a national bibliogra- phy is in line with the recommendation of the W o r l d Congress of Libraries and Bibli- ography held in Rome in 1929, which, at its fourth session on international projects, "notes the need of an adequate national bibli- ography and recommends that each country publish its national bibliography in such form that cards for the entries may be filed for reference." So far as our plans have been worked out theoretically, this involves two steps: a. T o expand the card-producing facilities of the library to cover more and eventually all the United States material and more and eventually all kinds of material, and b. T o divide the annual and, if decided upon, five-year issues of the book-form Cumulative Catalog into two parts, the first limited to United States imprints of the previous year and the second to contain all other entries, that is, foreign and earlier United States imprints. Increased Attention to Nonbook Forms W h i l e books, pamphlets, and periodicals are still the major concern of libraries and still the unquestioned leading media of re- corded communication, libraries generally, and particularly the Library of Congress, are gradually giving increased attention to non- book forms such as maps, some of which are already listed in the Cumulative Catalog, mo- tion pictures, as noted in the Princeton rec- ommendations, sound recordings, in which we have an important development, and music, f o r which our Copyright Division now pre- pares individual cards for some 14,500 pub- lished items a year. If the function of a national bibliography is, among other things, to serve not only as a medium f o r verifica- tion in cataloging books but as a checklist of all material which conveys knowledge or in- formation or reaction of any sort, should we not logically break completely the barrier between published print for reading and other forms of communication, and draw the line only at publication, validity, and continuity? I use this word "continuity" in order to ex- clude photographs and other single images, sounds, or words, but include any series of such elements which involves a sequence in time. Adequate discussion of this line of de- marcation, or attempt to define publication, validity, or magnitude of time element, while probably necessary at some stage, had best be avoided here, as it would certainly lead too far afield into academic minutiae, and the definition, in the end, would doubtless have to rest upon flexible conventions. But we have already gone far enough in this direction to recognize films, phonograph records, commer- cial advertising matter of many kinds, dia- APRIL, 1948 161 grammatic material, radio programs, any- thing, in fact, regardless of f o r m or medium, as contributions to knowledge and records of our time which, on an equal footing with publications in the usual sense, deserve biblio- graphical recording to assure their availabil- ity and use. O n this tentative assumption, we shall use the words "publication" or "material" or "current U.S. output" in this wide sense in the remaining passages of this paper. If cards are to be issued at the Library of Congress for all of this material made available in the United States, does this necessarily mean that the material must itself come into the library? And if it does not, can we satisfactorily undertake the produc- tion of cards based on copy contributed, with- out seeing the material itself? T h e first re- action is likely to be a strong negative, but in view of the amount of confident bibliographi- cal transcription which is constantly and suc- cessfully carried on, we wonder whether this distrust of all but firsthand inspection is wholly justified, and the issue is of such crucial importance that we think it deserves the most careful exploration before this pros- pect is rejected. M i g h t it be practical for the library to produce, in expansion of its present cooperative cataloging arrangement, two kinds of cards: a. Cards of the same fullness as at present, continuing present policies, for material added to the library or, to the relatively slight degree that current United States publications are in- volved, for material covered by copy sent in f o r cooperative cataloging by other libraries under the present agreements. b. Cards which can be distinguished from preceding category in some way, without subject headings, without classification, and without unverifiable added entries and descriptive de- tail, to be distributed in a different way and at a different rate, for books known to the library only from lists available or contributed by co- operating local and special libraries, but still made as well as possible. Obviously the theory advanced here is that coverage is, for the total bibliographical prob- lem, more important than perfectionism, that raw material for further bibliographical re- finement at the evaluation stage should be turned out rapidly and cheaply, and that total omission, assuming our conception of an all- inclusive national bibliography, is worse than the omission of, or even error in, descriptive detail. O u r precautionary measure is that unverified cards should not be confused with final cards. T h e greater danger is that in- superable difficulties might be met in working out a system for nonduplication of effort. It is in this connection that cataloging at the source, since there is likely to be but one source and many points of distribution, at the moment of issue, by collaboration between the publisher and the library profession, may, in the long run, not prove so impractical as has been assumed. T h e libraries which would undertake to supply copy would be those which, taken all together, cover the whole output of the United States and are suffi- ciently convinced of the importance of the larger bibliographical issue to contribute in this way to the general good, just as the na- tional library might contribute by printing cards f o r books which it never receives. T h e alternative would be to add everything to the Library of Congress, a possibility which seems to us now as the less realistic of the two. Another phase of the problem is whether the Library of Congress Card Division could reasonably be expected to stock such a cumu- lation of cards, or whether there is some promise in experiments recently conducted by the Processing Division to hold and stock the transparencies from which cards in lesser demand can be printed photographically on order. T h i s would apply particularly to cards for the nonbook materials and lesser publications based on cooperative copy. It seems to us reasonable to stock cards on which average demand may be anticipated as at present, but to print a lesser quantity of the additional cards proposed, and hold a master transparency against the possibility of further photographic reprinting if demand requires. But the complete output would be available to regular subscribers both as cards and as proof sheets, f o r the expanded national part of the Cumulative Catalog, and potentially available f o r a promising innova- tion in bibliographical sorting over and above the needs of our own subject cataloging. T h e r e has been talk of providing behind the scenes a variety of bibliographical files in part f o r the use of the compilers of bibli- ographies who might use them personally, but 162 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES more importantly as a source of high-speed photographic reproductions of subject sections of the catalog, an operation which cannot well be performed by withdrawal of cards from the public or other permanent catalogs. Sort- ing for this purpose might go further than the filing of cards in classified order accord- ing to their assigned shelf numbers or alpha- betically by their assigned subject headings. There might be classifications by geographical areas covered (as distinguished from alphabeti- cal place names), by chronological periods covered, by materials or things, by concepts or ideas, and by the activities of man, all designed to bring together scattered subject headings in a different arrangement, all in addition to the traditional classification by fields of knowledge, and all following upon experiments in classification carried on by many organizations concerned with the collec- tion of references in classified order rather than the arrangement of books on library shelves. T h e r e might also be sortings ac- cording to publishers and places of publica- tion, by form and by treatment (e.g. text- books or historical fiction) as well as by date of publication. In such a bibliographical op- eration, we might have to file subject cards without hesitation for material which we had never seen. In a very high percentage of cases there is adequate indication of con- tent for rudimentary sorting in the title it- self, and in a device of this sort, intended to put into bibliographers' hands mere raw ma- terial for their further individual use, there is a justifiable margin of surmise which should be absent in the actual cataloging of a library. Subject Approach Analyzed If the national bibliography were to be truly all-inclusive in the coverage of the out- put, there is little question but that it should list periodical articles individually. It is at this point, however, that we must try to be practical. T h e r e is another way. In the subject approach, we should not try to do everything with one list, but depend rather upon developing a series of existing services so that they may together cover the field. Author listing and basic inventory, even on the scope which we have suggested, would benefit greatly by the uniform treatment of an all-inclusive national bibliography, because the listing can be defined accurately and, taken in units of nations and years, can be done, if done inclusively, once and for all, leaving only relatively minor technical diffi- culties and the inconvenience of reference to many volumes. But that is a bulky but or- derly reflection of a massive production which we are trying to increase rather than sup- press. T o subject bibliography, however, there is no definable end, no consistent na- tional or annual limitation, no reliable or even desirable uniformity of interpretation, and a great desire to reduce the mass selec- tively. T h e eventual ends of subject bibli- ography are best served not by a single sys- tem, but by a great number of successive in- dividual efforts, varying according to points of view, critical skill, and application. T h e services are but an intermediate step be- tween inventory and critical selection. If the services themselves are selective, where lies inclusive subject coverage? If progress can indeed be made in improving the cover- age and coordination of the indexing and ab- stracting services, may we hope that they would undertake the generalized subject ap- proach, not only to periodical material but to the content of books and related nonbook material as w e l l ? Could they do this if the library's bibliographical services can find ways of making the material available to them? And in exploration of this possibility, would not the availability of cards, from the special sortings just described be the most valid ap- proach? It occurs to us, too, that one of the most potentially fertile applications f o r punched cards as aids to bibliography is con- trol of what material has been indexed and abstracted in which services, rather than con- trol of the subject content itself. Cards which can be read visually but which can be routed or distributed from a center mechani- cally according to coverage formula could do a great deal to decrease undesirable overlap and increase coverage to journals not ordi- narily indexed by a given service. It would then become very important to know com- pletely from the inventory what the com- posite works subject to indexing are. Complete Bibliographical Control? I have been trying to indicate that our thinking about national bibliography has been in the direction of considering it as an ele- ment in the achievement of complete biblio- APRIL, 1948 163 graphical control rather than as an isolated publishing project. Bibliographical control has not meant to us the achievement of a system whereby any inquiry, however vital, however new, however personal, or however imaginative can immediately be answered by a selective analysis ready-made by some other specialist who has anticipated this demand. That may be what we ought to lead up to, but we must approach it in gradual stages, for perfection of control lies at the end of the trail, the ultimate objective of intellectual inquiry. W e have thought of national bibli- ography and card production as important elements in providing the foundation upon which may be based extremely varied biblio- graphical compilations undertaken by others, perhaps, by other offices of the libraries them- selves, and directed at the needs of special branches of science, special groups of schol- ars, and special levels of inquiry. W e ask you as the library profession whether you think we are proposing one more publication to do what a combination of ex- isting publications will do as well, whether the production of one national bibliography, even in view of the large number of national bibliographies currently produced in other nations, would really be a step toward co- ordinated control. W e ask you whether an undertaking of this magnitude should be con- ceived as self-supporting, and if so, what you think its chances are. W e need advice on whether we are justified in suggesting the amount of cooperation involved in supplying copy, and whether the net result would be a national service eventually appreciated or an undesirable attempt at centralization, in which there may be some danger of principle involved. W e ask ourselves whether we are being realistic in considering plans of this sort with- out so much, at this stage, as calculating costs. W e ask ourselves what bibliographical interpretation of leadership we ought to place on our position as the national library, and whether we are turning in directions already exhausted as fantastic wishful thinking, or whether we are logically developing the con- tinuation of operations already begun and to which we have committed ourselves at this time. Attack at Various Levels and Stages I am very much impressed by the general spirit of Paul Vanderbilt's paper, and by that of D r . Evans's introductory note. It is obvious that the solutions eventually found must be realistic and realisable; but I am sure that it is a mistake to approach so great and urgent a problem from the point of view of what is immediately attainable with exist- ing resources. W e have to find the ideal solution and then reduce that solution to practicable form. If there is anything cer- tain in this field it is that fragmentary solu- tions will only aggravate the present condi- tion of affairs. It should no longer be neces- sary, for instance, for individuals to attempt enterprises which should be undertaken by cooperative effort. I had hoped to be able, in response to your request, to offer considered comments on this whole problem of bibliographic control, but it is difficult to find an opportunity for consecu- tive thought during the Mexico City confer- ence of U N E S C O . M a y I, therefore, hastily throw out a general suggestion? It appears to me that the problem of bibliographic con- trol should be tackled at various levels and in various stages. The complete listing of the entire intellectual production of mankind is needed only for purposes of inventory. I suggest, therefore, that there should first be compiled such national inventories, by daily bulletin where necessary and practicable, and split up by form, possibly in the six groups proposed by the Princeton conference of 1946. Such an inventory would be most useful in book form. Immediately on this complete inventory should follow a first process of selection, by the production of national bibliographical listings, from which the obvious rubbish and ephemera have been eliminated. This bibli- ography, which should in the first place be in card form, would form the basis for the next stage, which would be a rearrangement of the bibliographic cards, after a further process of exclusion, in subject and classified form, both national and international. A further process of selection, together with much criti- cal effort, would produce the fourth stage, that of international abstracts by wide sub- 164 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES jects. Finally (in the contemporaneous sense) would come the critical survey of the year's work in particular disciplines. In the United States such a structure already exists in large part. T h e Catalog of Copyright Entries could be converted into the national inventory; the L.C. Cumulative Catalog could be divided into national and foreign sections, the first part forming the national bibliography; and so o n . — T h e o d o r e Besterman, chief, Documentation, Library, and Statistical Services, UNESCO. Federal Documents T h e proposal by Paul Vanderbilt poses a solution f o r achieving a comprehensive na- tional bibliography. Can the Cumulative Catalog of the Library of Congress achieve this result in the field of government publica- tions? W h a t is involved in such a project? T h e Monthly Catalog of U . S. Government Publications, issued by the Superintendent of Documents, now contains over 20,000 entries annually. It includes printed and processed periodicals, serials, and separates. Although since January 1936, it has included processed publications, it has never been comprehensive in their coverage. T o date, no effort has ever been made to include printed and proc- essed publications of field agencies. Although the M onthly Catalog has f o r some time indi- cated Library of Congress card numbers at the time of publication, one finds only a small percentage of the entries with Library of Congress card numbers. T h e natural as- sumption would follow that at present only those items with L . C . card numbers would have been in the Cumulative Catalog. This raises the question whether there should be an L . C . card for every federal government publication. T h e problem is really larger: namely, should any library's catalog contain a card f o r every federal publication in its collection? T h e answer should be definitely " N o , " especially in the case of small pam- phlets. Complete analytics for the contents of each series should also be discouraged. W e need comprehensive and as nearly com- plete as possible periodic bibliographies of government publications at the national level, but why make them part of the Cumulative Catalog? T h e responsibility for coverage in this field should be the Superintendent of Documents, w h o is charged with this func- tion, and all federal publications should be omitted f r o m the Cumulative Catalog. This policy would eliminate duplication and enable the Library of Congress to continue its pres- ent policy of printing cards only for the im- portant documents. It is also suggested that the Library of Congress discontinue analytics for most of the publications in series, allow- ing such analysis to be made only in the Monthly Catalog. Judging from the lack of inclusiveness in the Monthly Checklist of State Publications, I have serious doubts as to whether the L i - brary of Congress should undertake to cover an equally large or larger field such as federal government publications. Since already the Office of Superintendent of Documents has the background of knowledge and the facili- ties, it should undertake the really compre- hensive catalog of federal publications. As a matter of fact, just such plans are under way in this office. T h e first step was taken when the decision was made to abolish the Document Catalog and concentrate all efforts on the current periodical catalog, the Monthly Catalog. Just as a matter of record here, it might be well to state that, if the Docu- ment Catalog had been continued for the next biennium, 1941-42, it would have repeated over 45,000 entires already noted in the Monthly Catalog, with the addition of only 2,000 new items now published in the first supplement. Beginning September 1947 the new format of the Monthly Catalog is that which is found in any library card catalog, with one exception: the alphabetical arrangement is under inverted author headings. In addi- tion to all agencies being arranged in alpha- betical order, all publications for each agency are in alphabetical checklist order, separates and series titles, with contents, being all in one alphabet. Furthermore, a more complete subject analysis is now planned each month in the index, and more direct reference is se- cured by reference to entry number rather than page. About the first of the year 1948, the office plans to begin and to continue a APRIL, 1948 165 systematic effort to secure from all federal agencies, both Washington and field, all their publications, either processed or of non- G . P . O . imprint. W h e n this program is com- pleted, we shall have, for the first time, a comprehensive catalog of U . S. government publications nearing completeness in scope. W i t h the change in arrangement in the Monthly Catalog itself, libraries can very definitely eliminate a tremendous amount of unnecessary analytics f o r publications issued in series. Henceforth, all library catalogs need only record series by titles of the series, securing analysis of the contents of the series through the Monthly Catalog. Furthermore, all small pamphlets and other ephemera can be systematically arranged by issuing agency, and the references can be secured to them by subject and author through the Monthly Catalog. Re State Publications T h e question of the inclusion in the Cumulative Catalog or in any other tool, of a complete list of all the publications of the forty-eight states and the territories and in- sular possessions, poses a real problem for solution. Unfortunately, the title, Monthly Checklist of State Publications, now issued by the Library of Congress, is misleading be- cause actually the bibliography has never been more than an accessions list of state publica- tions received in the Library of Congress. Furthermore, very few comprehensive lists of publications have appeared in any of the states, either cumulative or on a current pe- riodical basis. Strangely enough, only a f e w of the state libraries, either now or ever, have issued periodic checklists of their state publications. A t the present time the state libraries of Maine, N e w Hampshire, N e w York, and California do so. In the cases of Wisconsin and Minnesota, historical so- cieties have prepared periodic lists. Such lists have also been recently regularly pre- pared by the state universities of North C a r o - lina, Florida, and Arkansas. Only one state, California, has a central- ized state document distribution statute, one of the provisions of which is the issuing of a comprehensive quarterly list of California state publications. W h i l e it is true that every state has many statutes calling for some distribution of its publications, even includ- ing, in many cases, the Library of Congress, no one officer is charged with the responsi- bility of this distribution. In a sense, state, city, and county government publications are local imprints of the state, as are books and pamphlets published by small printers and publishers within the state. A national agency such as the Library of Congress cannot ex- pect all publications published within state borders to come to it because of a state stat- ute prescribing such action. Securing state imprints, including state and local govern- ment publications, requires at least one repre- sentative of the national agency in each state or possibly a regional representative to visit systematically all agencies many times during the year in order to secure their publications. Should not the state library or the state uni- versity library assume this function in each state? Furthermore, should it not also sup- ply the master catalog card f o r each state imprint? T h i s project is not only one of list- ing and cataloging but also of collecting, and therefore cooperative efforts are most essen- tial. If this were done, the Monthly Check- list of State Publications would be far more complete than is now possible. Complete separation of this checklist without duplica- tion should be made. City and County Documents A t the present time systematic listings of publications of government agencies lower than the state level, such as city and county documents, are almost nonexistent. Such listings are available for only N e w Y o r k City, Chicago and C o o k County, and Cali- fornia cities and counties. T h e N e w Y o r k City list and the combined Chicago and C o o k County list are prepared by the Municipal Reference Library in each city. T h e Cali- fornia publications are to be found through an accession list of city and county publica- tions received by the state library, which is published by that library in its " N e w s N o t e s " of California library. Furthermore, it is doubtful whether many libraries throughout the country have nearly complete collections of their local city and county publications. It would, therefore, appear that the success of such a project would be dependent upon the cooperation of every library in the U.S. Here we appear to be in the realms of Utopia. 166 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES As soon as bibliography for government publications becomes comprehensive or com- plete, libraries should save considerably in their annual cost of cataloging. Such bibli- ography should adequately cover contents of all publications issued in series and thereby eliminate costly analytics completely from the card catalog. Furthermore, it is conceivable that all document cataloging might be elimi- nated in favor of this type of bibliography. T h e author section of the bibliography could be checked for all items as received, and the entire collection bound and arranged on the shelves alphabetically by state, then by issu- ing agency, and finally, by title. Therefore, could libraries not well afford to contribute their savings in cataloging costs to such a national bibliography? T h e success of a project of such magnitude will require sub- stantial financial assistance from libraries or a permanent grant from some educational foundation or both. Furthermore, with the successful promotion of such a project, a li- brary not only can reduce its cost of cata- loging but can also substantially reduce the permanent size of its public catalog by ex- cluding government publications from it en- tirely. Comprehensive or complete biblio- graphical coverage in book form can ma- terially reduce the size of the public catalog - in any field where author, title, and subject are treated in the bibliography. •t Summary T o summarize briefly, checklists of govern- ment publications at the national level now exist for federal and state publications. Present plans for the Monthly Catalog of United States government publications should make it adequate. Suggestions made above should make the Monthly Checklist of State Publications include what its title indi- cates. Publications of local governments (city, county, school districts, townships, etc.) present a virgin field for checklists. They are not even available at the state level, let alone the national level. W i t h over 3,000 counties and many times that number of cities in the United States, who has the cour- age to tackle a current periodical checklist? A beginning might be made by including only cities and counties of 100,000 population and over. T h e ultimate solution of this problem would undoubtedly be checklists of local gov- ernment publications at state levels.—Jerome K. Wilcox, chairman, A.L.A. Committee on Public Documents. Municipal Documents M r . Vanderbilt's statement of the basic principles involved in our national biblio- graphic control in the United States is most illuminating. H e seems to have raised all the vital questions concerning such control and his discussion of them is to the point. I find myself in agreement with him and the Library of Congress in its thinking on these proposals. These are his points that I would empha- size : 1. Our problem is . . . to provide a uniform base of raw materials, or preliminary listing and sorting upon which the specialized projects may draw. 2. Card production is the first step in na- tional and international bibliographic control, the raw material upon which subsequent opera- tions rest. 3. T o the considerations of accuracy, reason- able consistency, professional workmanship, and availability we should add that of complete coverage. 4. T h e national unit is a very logical unit. 5. After exhaustive inquiry, the method of reproducing cards in book form by photo-offset was evolved by L. of C. 6. T h e current tendency is not to propose that all of the needed cataloging work should be done at one place. 7. A list of current bibliographies (services which are continuous and reliable) should be a part of a fully developed attack on the problem. 8. Cumulative Catalog of the Library of Congress would be the logical base for a na- tional bibliography as desired. 9. T h e tentative plan of developing the Cumulative Catalog into a national bibli- ography, involving two steps as outlined, seems very reasonable and workable. 10. T h e libraries which would undertake to supply copy would be those which, taken all together, cover the whole output of the United States and sufficiently convinced of the impor- APRIL, 1948 167 tance of the larger bibliographic issue to con- tribute in this w a y to the general good, just as the national library might contribute by print- ing cards f o r books which it never receives. T h e last point is the crux of the entire proposal. And the success of such a national plan would depend on full cooperation of the many libraries to be involved. I find myself believing that such a production of one na- tional bibliography is a step toward coordi- nated control and that if the idea can be sold to those who are to be involved in planning it and executing it, then present costly biblio- graphic undertakings will gradually conform to the larger new proposal, and help in financ- ing it, and that it would within time become self-supporting. In work with municipal documents, the fact that practically all such documents have never been copyrighted, made it apparent to librarians years ago so that D r . Billings in 1902 reminded librarians of the necessity of supplying such documents to the Library of Congress. W e of the N e w Y o r k Municipal Reference Library immediately upon establishment in 1913 took cognizance of the importance of the city's documents and collected full sets f r o m the time of the records of N e w Amsterdam in 1653 to date. Feeling that we had a respon- sibility to other libraries of the country to make known what documents were published by the city, and since w e were located at the source, the N e w Y o r k Municipal Reference Library began publication of its " M o n t h l y List of N e w Y o r k City Publications" in 1916 and it has been issued regularly, and without a single interruption from that date to the present, a period of thirty-one years, printed in the Municipal Reference Library Notes. N o other city in the world provides such an accurate and current checklist of its own documents. Y e t the Library of Congress in this statement by M r . Vanderbilt does not mention this bibliographic source of N e w Y o r k City municipal documents. Soon after 1920 I felt the lack of any check- lists f o r documents of other American cities; and therefore instigated a cooperative effort through the Special Libraries Association to overcome the lack. T h e result was a printed volume entitled "Basic List of Current M u - nicipal Documents" 1923 which was actually a checklist of official publications issued regu- larly by the larger cities of the country. From that date we have sought the coopera- tion of all municipal reference libraries in submitting their cities' documents to Public Affairs Information Service which lists them in its weekly service. Even with continual urging and coopera- tion on a volunteer basis, this effort in one small segment of a larger national undertak- ing has not been 100 per cent successful; at best, it can not be rated at much more than 10 per cent successful. This experience at a cooperative effort of listing (not cataloging) municipal documents as published in the United States, on a purely volunteer basis, indicates how difficult it will be when applied to a national bibliography and bibliographic control. H o w e v e r , I heartily endorse the principles as stated by M r . Vanderbilt and should be happy to help in establishing such a worthy national under- taking. It needs the support of all.—Rebecca B. Rankin, librarian, Municipal Reference Li- brary, New York City. Cataloging Q u a r t e r l y Desirability of a cataloging quarterly to be issued by the A . L . A . Division of Cataloging and Classification will be put to a membership vote at Atlantic City. T h e prospective editor is Arthur B. Berthold. Information concerning coverage and contributing editors will ap- pear in forthcoming issues of the A.L.A. Bulletin.—MARIE L O U I S E PREVOST, Chairman, Committee on a Cataloging Quarterly. 168 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES