College and Research Libraries By D A V I D C. M E A R N S To Be Enduring: The National Union Catalog Of Manuscript Collections IT is W I T H PROFOUND DISQUIETUDE, abun-dant rue, and a shattering sense of shame that I approach my subject. These distressing symptoms are, more- over, only aggravated and further inten- sified by feelings of pity for your pretty patience and submissive endurance. There is no lack of material, to be sure, but the recital of entries in a bibliog- raphy, however exhaustive and detailed it may be, is per se inimical to faultless prose and, at least for me, impossible of dazzling oratorical effect. Worse, it is in itself neither diverting nor inflamma- tory; it cannot arouse but it can disturb repose. An alternative would be, of course, to select and present "elegant extracts" from the literature, but inevitably you would have heard them all before or read them all before. It is a penalty of the profession of our choice that our lives are spent following one another from meeting to meeting and listening to one another with polite and collec- tive indifference. In consequence, except where brazen flattery is intended, the anthologist's indolent style should be, from humane considerations, daintily avoided, even in pronouncements on the state of the art. Mr. Mearns is Chief, Manuscript Divi- sion, and Assistant Librarian for the American Collections, Library of Con- gress. This paper was presented at the Rare Books Conference sponsored by the ACRL Rare Books Section at the Uni- versity of Virginia, Charlottesville, June 18,1959. But you have now perceived the alarming fact that my poor muse can- not compete in extolling the virtues and expounding the values of the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collec- tions. It has had its persuasively elo- quent advocates: Herbert Kellar in the Annual Reports of the American His- torical Association; Francis Berkeley in the Proceedings of the American Philo- sophical Society; Robert Land in The American Archivist. It has had also its rhapsodists, its lyricists, its librettists, its frenzied partisans. It has had its archi- tects and planners; its extravaganzas and its grandiosities. It has had its skeptics and its cynics; its sages and its seers. It has had dedicated servants. It has had Jobs to breathe on the heart. It has had scores of grandfathers and foster fathers. It is the child of a ghost: the ghost of Henry Ford. It seems likely that a national union catalog of manuscript collections has al- ways been predictable, for it derives, at least in part, from the American genius for dispersal. More than a century ago de Tocqueville wrote his familiar criti- cism: " T h e public administration is, so so speak, oral and traditionary. But lit- tle is committed to writing, and that little is wafted away forever, like the leaves of the Sibyl, by the smallest breeze." As long ago as 1843, Archibald Alison, in his best-selling History of Europe, paraphrased this dictum, insist- ing "that so wholly are they ti.e. the Americans] regardless of historical rec- ords or monuments that half a century hence the national annals even of these times could only be written from the archives of other states." This drew a protest from the reviewer for London's Athenaeum, who declared: "Assuming that there had been indifference on the part of the government, the Historical Commemorations alone, a custom pe- culiar to America, must, from their na- ture, tend to collect and preserve such a mass of historical information, as no other country has ever possessed, or can ever hope to possess. Every town, indeed, has its history and its historical rec- ords; and the labour of selection will be the great difficulty in the way of the future historian." No, we are not now, and have never been, a one-basket people, and in recent years this scattering tendency has been adopted, promoted, and even sanctified by the chief magistrates of the land. It is not to be wondered that the anguished victims of this heresy should pray loudly for the repentance of their tormentors and meanwhile seek a salve which would assuage their wretchedness. Ray Allen Billington diagnosed the ailment in these words: " T h e quantity of manu- script materials is so large, and the hold- ings so widely dispersed in archival es- tablishments, universities, research and public libraries, historical societies, and private collections, that the complete examination of all sources for any sin- gle problem, no matter how minute, would exhaust the energy and financial resources of the most diligent scholar." Dr. Billington's prescription: a union catalog. It is usual to date the origin of the union catalog of manuscripts movement in 1939, when the American Historical Association established a special com- mittee on manuscripts. T h e committee reported in 1946, and revised its report in 1947, recommending the establish- ment of such an apparatus in the Li- brary of Congress or other appropriate repository and calling for a budget of a quarter of a million dollars to be ex- pended over a three-year period. In 1948 the special committee was dissolved; its functions, including the function of fund-raising, passing to a joint commit- tee of the Society of American Archivists and the Association for State and Local History. T h e joint committee was in- structed to "plan a program designed to accomplish ultimately three things: (1) prepare a union inventory in this country; (2) make known in same way the yearly current accessions of public repositories; (3) establish ways and means whereby repositories can cooper- ate rather than compete for American historical material." With respect to the realization of its first and second objec- tives the joint committee can look back to the accomplishments of a decade with complete and purring satisfaction. T h e third presumably lingers stubbornly on the agenda. Actually the idea of a union catalog of manuscripts was no startling novelty. As long ago as 1894, the prophetic Mr. A. Howard Clark of the Smithsonian Institution had told a gathering of schol- ars: " T h e time may be at hand for this association to prepare a complete, clas- sified, and fully indexed analytical bib- liography of all works in manuscript or print, in English or in foreign tongues, concerning the history of America." There was tangible evidence of the feasibility of such an undertaking. In the closing years of the seventeenth cen- tury, a catalog of manuscripts in the public and private collections in the United Kingdom, including librorum manuscriptorum viri sapientissimi Sam- uelis Pepysii had been compiled and published at the Sheldonian Theater, Oxford, in two stout folios, in 1697. This had been prepared under the di- rection of a gifted divine, Edward Ber- nard, for eighteen years Savilian Profes- sor of Astronomy at the University. Be- cause of his distinguished mastery of catalogistics, I insert in the record a passage taken from David Charles Doug- las' English Scholars: 342 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES This extraordinary man . . . was born in 1638, and he was to play an important part in the development of scientific stud- ies at Oxford. But his interests were en- cyclopedic, and he turned easily from mathematics to ancient oriental literature, even going so far as to prepare an edition of Josephus and to seek a chair in this subject at the University of Leyden. Ber- nard's reputation as a scholar extended far beyond the boundaries of Oxford, or even of England, and, the friend of Mabil- lon, it was said of him by a continental critic that "few in his time equalled him in learning and none in modesty." It was fortunate for historical scholarship that such a man as this began in 1692 to pre- pare a comprehensive catalogue of the Bod- leian MSS, and it was still more fortunate that before he had been many years at his task he found in [ Humphreyj Wanley the young scholar who in all England was the best qualified to assist him. " I conceive it as part of a Library- Keeper's duty," wrote Wanley about this time, "to know what books are extant in other Libraries besides his own," and here he indicated what was to be the primary virtue of the critical catalogue in whose construction he was assisting. T h e com- pilers of Barnard's Catalogue tas it is com- monly known] did not confine their at- tention to MSS in the Bodleian Library itself but placed contemporary scholar- ship under a far greater debt by consid- ering also MSS existing elsewhere in Eng- land. Such a labour necessitated wide collaboration, and as the preface to the book showed, many notable scholars took a share in the final production. . . . It was a distinction . . . to be intimately connected with a work of co-operative scholarship as important as Bernard's Cat- alogue, for the volume was one of the major achievements of the Oxford school of Saxonists, and it gave a great impetus to medieval studies. One of the chief dif- ficulties of all previous investigators into the early medieval history of England had been that any proper comparative study of their chief sources was impossi- ble for them, owing to their ignorance of what MSS existed, and where they were to be found. Whether or not on Sunday evening, April 10, 1949, the members of the Joint Committee on Historical Manuscripts, assembled at the Princeton Inn, burned an offering in honor of the Rev. Dr. Ber- nard, or, as would have been more ap- propriate, contented themselves by pro- posing a series of toasts to the memory of that perspicacious prototype, is not clear from the fragmentary sources which survive. It is, however, reasonable to conclude, from certain recently recov- ered artifacts, and from occasionally in- audible wire-tappings, that their con- cern for a union catalog had taken a grimly realistic, or,' as they elected to put it, a "grass-roots," turn. It is also ascertainable that the Library of Con- gress had moved in from the dry periph- ery and become drenchingly involved in the deliberations. T h e observer from that sympathetic repository, in a yel- lowing travel report to his master, wrote with the pride that only self-conscious practicality cannot disguise: " I made it very clear that a condition precedent to any such enterprise was the assurance of complete and continuous cooperation from the institutions and individuals which and who would be expected to participate." He added, a little irrele- vantly, " T h e meeting broke up about midnight." And thus the union catalog was wil- fully shorn of all prospective frills, trap- pings, and glittering allurements. T w o years later the then Librarian of Con- gress expressed a willingness to provide the infant, when born, with a home. There remained, however, one ponder- ous preliminary to seeking dispensation from a foundation: a uniform and stand- ard practice for describing manuscripts. This practice must be acceptable to most curators and generally useful to scholars. In 1952, Luther Evans, still in a biblio- thecal incarnation, announced in his annual report: "Rules for the catalog- ing of all manuscript materials in the Library of Congress are . . . in prepara- SEPTEMBER 1959 343 tion. Advice has been sought from a number of experts on manuscript col- lections, including members of the Joint Committee on Historical Manuscripts . . . and a representative of the National Historical Publications Commission. T h e completion of these rules will make it possible for the Library to proceed with the development of another important cooperative bibliographic project: the National Register of Manuscript Collec- tions." T o draft the rules, Dr. Evans had designated a working party drawn from appropriate divisions in the processing and reference departments. I will not repeat the history of that consecrated group of Clio's handmaidens and handy- men. T o do so would be to violate the literary property rights, as yet not ded- icated to the public, of my erstwhile and esteemed colleague, Robert Land, who feelingly communicated its earlier chap- ters to the Mississippi Valley Historical Society in the spring of 1954. I may, however, without risk of infringement, be permitted to say that the proceedings were conducted with exemplary deco- rum and constant assurances of mutual consideration and respect, that visiting counselors from the outer-world consist- ently olfered benedictions and made sig- nals of approval, and that decisions or such perplexities as "choice of entry," " f o r m of entry," and "form, if not orig- inal," can be, for the initiate, somewhat enervating. If anyone object that it took longer to draft rules for cataloging man- uscript collections than it did for the gentlemen in Philadelphia to draw up the Constitution of the United States, let the complainant be reminded that the delegates to the Federal convention were a bunch of amateurs. Agreement for them was easy. In a more serious sense, however, it should be pointed out that no catalog can be, for everyone who may consult it, a precision instrument, neither can reference to the entries in it be substi- tuted for an examination of the works which they describe. A good catalog, a sound catalog, a responsive catalog must, however, present a degree of exactitude which will permit an investigator to eliminate from consideration those ma- terials which, obviously, are unrelated to his enquiry. It should, moreover, be borne in mind that large bodies of per- sonal papers and public records are com- plicated by the miscellaneity of their contents, their origins, the extent of their completeness or incompleteness, and the varying conditions to which their availability may be, in whole or in part, subjected. T h e elements which in combination constitute their distinguish- ing characteristics must be identifiable and identified. T h e codifiers had, in oth- er words, to devise rules which might be consistently applied to inconsistent, dis- similar and ruggedly, obstinately indi- vidualistic and inert collections. Again, the rules had to be so designed as to commend their adoption by those repos- itories upon whose active, steady par- ticipation the utility of a national cat- alog would depend. A draft was published in the spring of 1953, and widely distributed for com- ment. T h e rules received general appro- bation and the section of the final draft dealing with collections was ratified by A L A in 1954. Therefore, careful studies were con- ducted at the Library of Congress of the editorial costs that would be required to bring the catalog into being, based upon replies to a questionnaire which had determined the volume of work which might be anticipated over a five- year period. At a meeting called by the Librarian of Congress, L. Quincy Mumford, on March 7, 1957, attended by members of his staff and by Francis L. Berkeley, Jr., curator of manuscripts at the Uni- versity of Virginia, Lester J. Cappon, president of the Society of American Archivists and director of the Institute 344 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES of Early American History and Culture, and Boyd C. Shafer, executive secretary of the American Historical Association, it was determined that the Library of Congress should take the initiative by applying to the foundation for a grant sufficient to meet the obstetric charges. T h e proposal received wide, cordial, and sometimes expository scholarly sup- port. Thus, for example, the director of a library of early Americana at a mid- western university, wrote: "Manuscripts have a way of defying logic as to their ultimate resting place. Often they move thousands of miles from their place of origin. Despite efforts of many reposi- tories to publicize their holdings, the information does not always reach the persons who have most need of it. By collecting and concentrating this infor- mation in one file, tremendous service will be rendered all research workers." A professor at Harvard could, he de- clared, "imagine nothing of greater im- portance to the world of American schol- arship than the proposed National Union Catalog of Manuscripts." A state archivist could not, he said, "think of a more worthwhile expenditure of funds." A historian in a southern university re- marked: "One of the great and serious obstacles to scholarly work—and it is becoming more formidable all the time —is the great cost of itinerant research. Many people cannot raise the large amounts of money necessary for itinerant research on a considerable scale. So they either forego the books they'd like to write; or they write superficial volumes." A past president of the American His- torical Association termed it "a most important venture and one that badly needs to be done." T h e editor-in-chief of the papers of a distinguished New England family let it be known that he had grown "impatient with counsels of perfection that still seem to obstruct the way to the grand objective." Such encomia were comparable to endorsements of a beauty cream by the Duchess of Windsor or Dame Marilyn Monroe and performed a comparable service in selling the product. Last De- cember, as the American Historical As- sociation was taking over Washington's own Mayflower it was announced, with a caution not to tell before the twenty- eighth, that the Library of Congress would establish an inventory of impor- tant manuscript collections throughout the nation with a grant of $200,000 just received from the Council on Library Resources, Inc. T h e press-release, with unaccustomed excitement, explained: " T h e dream of historians for three-quar- ters of a century, it is expected to be of invaluable aid to scholars seeking the 'primary' source materials they need for research—in history, literature, econom- ics, science, etc." As to the immediate objective it was said to be the prepara- tion of uniform descriptions of some 24,000 collections known to exist in about seventy-five cooperating libraries and archives as well as of 3,000 collec- tions in the Library of Congress. T h e announcement stated that the program would be assisted by an advisory com- mittee representing the interested schol- arly councils, associations, and acade- mies. It continued: " T h e Library of Con- gress will now request data on standard forms or data sheets from institutions holding manuscript collections. On the basis of these reports, the Library will prepare catalog entries and publish cat- alog cards for them. Each entry will con- tain the description and location of a collection and will list the persons, or- ganizations, places, and subjects prima- rily represented in it." That was, as I say, six months ago. Meanwhile the infant has been duly nursed, swaddled, and cherished. It has made satisfactory gains in weight. T h e atmosphere has been sprayed with insec- ticide and a few persistent bugs have been hopefully removed. Definitions have been formulated and letters of explanation and instruction have been SEPTEMBER 1959 345 prepared. T h e reporting forms have been carefully and tenderly vised, re- vised, and rerevised. They are under- stood to be wearing the perfection of the untried. T h e Advisory Committee has been convened and has made helpful suggestions. A manuscript section has been established in the processing de- partment's descriptive cataloging divi- sion and its staff (complete with typist) has been recruited. Heading it is Les- ter K. Born, a gentleman of wide expe- rience and many accomplishments, es- pecially in the archival sciences. It is rumored that Dr. Born will soon make the grand tour of contributing reposi- tories. T h e first cards have issued from the press. And so, without unseemly haste, the National Union Catalog has attained reality and status. But its future is sternly and strictly in your hands—I should say it is in our hands for (as an inhabitant of the reference department) my relation to the catalog is identical to the relation of any other manuscript custodian. Will it become, in the course of its first quinquennium, a great schol- arly apparatus serving the entire nation? Will it fulfill the expectations and aspi- rations of its earlier and ardent pro- ponents? Will it work economies by re- moving futility from itinerant research? Will it assure better, more definitive cov- erage of the sources? Will it gather such momentum that its continuation, after the expiration of the grant, will be safe and certain? I do not know. But this I do know: it will be as good or bad, effective or in- effective, sound or unsound, comprehen- sive or perilously incomplete as we de- termine it shall be. It is up to us to give it dimension and character. T h e respon- sibility is not to be evaded. T h e work that it will impose will be hard work. It will be taken from our hides. It is unlikely that there will be appropria- tions, subventions, gifts, at least for the present, to allow the engagement of ad- ditional personnel to prepare those re- porting forms on which the catalog will be builded. Fortunately, however, this very situa- tion has been foreseeable and foreseen. It is now five years since the learned Berkeley, in a clear and steady voice, ut- tered simple if poignant truth to a Phil- adelphia audience, when he said: " T o be enduring, and even to approach com- pleteness, it must be the product, not of a temporary and prodigious effort, but rather a creation of day-to-day rou- tine by the normal staffs of manuscript repositories." And so it must, for the union catalog is, and will always remain, a ward of the realm. T h e creature of cooperation, it must thrive or languish to the extent of selfless interest and tenacious foster- ing. I exhort you, therefore, to give it your constant, tangible, and ungrudg- ing support. And give it cheerfully and generously and with all the signs of grace. Reluctance to participate is, of course, unthinkable; but if any, for whatever reason, venture to demur or to protest inabilities, let him be remind- ed that he will be subjected to strong compulsions to join in the exercise and that they will come, not from his pro- fessional associates, but from those far more puissant constituents for whose service he exists. But this is putting the case in negative terms. Positively, the union catalog be- stows promises enough, conveniences enough, advantages enough to command our collective allegiance and strenuous striving. Some years ago an Oriental tent- maker dashed off some lines which were later rendered by a gifted interpreter as: Alas, that Spring should vanish with the Rose! That Youth's sweet-scented Manuscript should close! Perhaps a union catalog's the way Again to open it, perfume and all, who knows? 346 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES