B004R9Q09U EBOK (26 page)

In addition to subject headings, Panizzi introduced an important innovation that would allow the catalog to reveal the relationships between particular books. Panizzi explored a sophisticated and nuanced approach to modeling the implicit links between books, recognizing that “a book is a particular edition of a work, a part of a complex web of editions and translations, and that catalog users should be able to see these relationships even as they search for a particular book.”
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He felt the old catalog was too limited, linear, and one-dimensional, proposing instead a new, intricate set of rules for identifying additional “meta” information such as editions, publishers, dates, and places of publication. He introduced a total of 91 rules, covering a vast array of bibliographical scenarios. For example, he introduced the distinction between a “book” and a “work”—that is, between the physical edition and the intellectual property encoded within. That distinction marks a major conceptual leap in the prac
tice of cataloging. By recognizing the dual nature of books as both physical objects and, separately, conveyors of meaning, he introduced an important layer of abstraction. Now librarians could separate the process of identification—locating a particular book on the shelf—and integration—situating the intellectual contents of a book within the topical cosmos of the larger collection. The great Library of Congress cataloger Seymour Lubetzky would later characterize Panizzi’s insight as recognizing “the dichotomous character of the book, which, extrinsically, is a separate physical entity, an artifact unrelated to any other, but, intrinsically, a record of human thought and experience.”
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Panizzi’s 91 rules would become the foundation for the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, still in widespread use today.

While Panizzi’s painstakingly detailed rules may seem abstruse and esoteric—the stuff of bureaucratic make-work—Panizzi saw his rules as anything but quotidian. For him the rules embodied the fulfillment of a higher political purpose. Creating a more usable catalog was no exercise in ontological hairsplitting; it was, in fact, an act of revolution. He wanted to open the library up beyond its traditional audience of privileged men of letters to attract a new class of common readers who initially might know little about books. “I want the poor student to have the same means of indulging his learned curiosity,” he wrote, “of following his rational pursuits, of consulting the same authorities, of fathoming the most intricate inquiry as the richest man in the kingdom.” He took this populist credo a step farther, arguing that Britain owed as much to its citizens. “I contend that the government is bound to give the most liberal and unlimited assistance in this respect.”
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Like Diderot, Panizzi was a devout populist willing to stake out a provocative social agenda.

Panizzi’s radical vision did not sit entirely well with the British literary establishment. Soon after he introduced his rules, he met with a stout backlash from some of the library’s most eminent patrons. One influential reader, Sir Nicholas Harris Nicolas, wrote a withering attack on the new catalog for
The Spectator
, deriding the “exotic capriccios” of the young Italian librarian. Particularly galling to many of the library’s longtime readers was Panizzi’s insistence on a new procedure for requesting books from the shelves. Previously, readers
had simply scribbled book titles on any handy piece of paper and handed it to a desk clerk. Panizzi insisted that readers now had to fill out a printed form, requiring them to consult the catalog to request books by call number (or “pressmarks,” as they were then known). This trifling bit of bureaucratic process creep sparked a small outrage among some of the library’s more prominent patrons. “We know the inconvenience attending this obligation is felt by many literary men,” wrote Nicolas, “whose time is of value to them. … [N]o more should be expected of a Reader than to specify the book he wants by its title, and that all besides belongs to the librarian.” Panizzi seemed to be putting the burden on readers, but in truth he was actually trying to make the structure of the library more transparent, so that readers could mine the collection for themselves.

Panizzi’s ambitious catalog took far longer than expected to produce, further angering his opponents. Literary worthies like Thomas Carlyle railed against the project: “Elaborate catalogues are not what we require,” he wrote. At hearings before the Royal Commission, Carlyle fretted that the library would flounder without a simpler and more quickly produced catalog and that it would become “a Polyphemus without any eye in his head.” Carlyle, it should be noted, harbored a personal animus toward Panizzi. He felt that the library staff had failed to support him effectively while he was doing research at the library, and he took his grudge out on Panizzi. Panizzi informed Carlyle that he had received the same level of support as every other user of the library. That came as an outright affront to the famous man, and Carlyle was incensed. He was no ordinary reader, after all; he was the most famous writer in England. Despite the ongoing public criticism, the library commissioners stood by Panizzi, eventually forbidding the library trustees from interfering with the library’s cataloging decisions—and thus ensuring the transformation not just of the British Museum library but of all libraries.

Panizzi’s catalog, born of the industrial age, would usher in a new era of democratic access to libraries worldwide. When the catalog was finally published in the 1850s, it became enormously popular as a reference work in its own right. The first edition sold 5,000 copies; a subsequent revision was published in 20,000 copies—a testament to the unprecedented public interest in the new catalog. For all its tribulations, Panizzi’s catalog would go down as a landmark in the history of library science. Walk into any public library today and you can still see the visible echoes of Panizzi’s revolution at work.

As the industrial wave extended across the Atlantic, American libraries experienced the same growing pains as their British counterparts. Unlike the established great libraries of Europe, America’s libraries had no lingering aristocratic class to contend with. From the outset a populist ethos would guide the development of American library catalogs.

In Boston the great American cataloger Charles Ammi Cutter pioneered a new way of cataloging books for the public. A devout populist and egalitarian, Cutter believed that the highest purpose of a library catalog should be to serve “common usage,” a philosophy that stood in stark contrast to the predominant European view (Panizzi notwithstanding) that library catalogs existed primarily to serve the needs of scholars. Like Panizzi, Cutter viewed his library calling as the fruition of a higher purpose. But Cutter was no political firebrand; he saw cataloging as more of a spiritual pursuit. A former divinity student, Cutter envisioned himself as one of the “humble servants of the Gospel of learning, of knowledge, of science” and espoused his commitment to the “pastoral side of librarianship.”
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First as a librarian at Harvard and later at the Boston Athenæum, Cutter introduced a series of innovations. Like Panizzi, Cutter embraced subject cataloging as the key to liberating the contents of the catalog and making them accessible to the common reader. He recognized that unlike scholarly readers, many public library patrons did not arrive with lists of specific book titles; rather, they often came with nothing more than a vague question in mind. The library, then, would succeed or fail based on the usability of its subject catalog.

In his
Rules for a Dictionary Catalog
, Cutter proposed a new multidimensional catalog system, which he dubbed the Expansive Classification System. It was more sophisticated than Panizzi’s system. It
provided a mechanism for describing books by author, title, and subject, but its main feature was an elaborate multitiered subject scheme. Cutter’s system drew distinctions between high-level “classes” (like, say, history) and “individual subjects” (say, the history of the Peloponnesian War). Using this system, librarians would assign call numbers using letters of the alphabet in one- or two-letter combinations, each letter or combination of letters representing a particular subject; more granular topics could be assigned using sequences of numbers. For example, WP83 stood for United States Painting: “W” for Fine Arts, “WP” for Painting, and “83” for United States.

Cutter’s system also recognized the practical limitations of a onesize-fits-all system, acknowledging that different-sized libraries called for different cataloging solutions. He designed his system to scale up or down by releasing it as a seven-tiered system, with the lowest level of classification appropriate for small libraries and the seventh level for large research collections. Despite his hope for a system that would work equally well for small public libraries and large academic collections, Cutter would see his scheme eclipsed by the subsequent success of the Dewey Decimal System, which became the established standard for public libraries. But Cutter’s framework lives on in the form of the Library of Congress catalog, also the de facto standard for academic libraries, which use a two-letter scheme derived directly from Cutter’s work. Today, academic library catalogers still assign “Cutter numbers” to new books.

In addition to his breakthrough cataloging work, Cutter introduced a technical innovation that would soon take hold in libraries worldwide: the card catalog. While he did not invent the card catalog,
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he recognized its value and advocated it as a logical replacement for the traditional bound catalog. Cutter developed his own makeshift card catalog for the Boston Athenæum. The device would soon gain a wider following, thanks to the energetic efforts of Cutter’s friend and eventual rival, Melvil Dewey.

While Cutter ranked as perhaps the preeminent librarian of his day, his historic contribution has long since been overshadowed by Dewey, whose eponymous decimal system is now in use at almost every public library in the United States (and many abroad). While most nonlibrarians know of Dewey only by virtue of his ubiquitous call numbers, the man’s legacy casts a long shadow over the whole enterprise of modern librarianship. Almost single-handedly, Dewey exerted a profound influence over the trajectory of American libraries. He founded the first library school at Columbia, cofounded (with Cutter) the American Library Association, and set in motion a process of standardization that would enable the great expansion and
influence of libraries in American life. Paradoxically, his industrious efforts on behalf of American libraries were predicated in no small part on curtailing the power of librarians.

One of his most visible achievements, the standardized card catalog, serves as a perfect metaphor for Dewey’s legacy. Dewey saw the catalog, like the library, as in essence a great machine. By standardizing its operations—introducing interchangeable parts, establishing consistent standards and practices, and normalizing variations—he saw the hope for a more perfect system. Catalog cards, like librarians, would function as distributed cogs in a great national system of Dewey’s devising.

Dewey was obsessed with efficiency. He even changed his name from “Melville” to “Melvil” as a time-saving gesture and briefly even changed his last name to “Dui.” He once scolded his secretary for wishing him a good morning, admonishing her for such a frivolous use of time that could otherwise have been spent doing work.

In hopes of recruiting more pliant librarians willing to follow directions and conform to his desire for implementing a centralized scheme, Dewey actively encouraged the recruitment of women into the profession. He believed that women were more likely to acquiesce to implementing his system rather than devising their own (Dewey was, by modern standards, an unreconstructed chauvinist). However offensive such sentiments might strike many of us today, his strategy seems to have worked, at least in part: Today women make up the overwhelming majority of American librarians.