How to Catalogue a Library

A still useful book on nineteenth-century theories of organisation of knowledge and information retrieval, first published in 1889.

How to Catalogue a Library, first published in 1889, was aimed at the curator of a small to medium-sized collection. Wheatley, a founding member of the Library Association, sheds valuable light on nineteenth-century theories of information organisation and retrieval in discussing the requirements of smaller collections.Henry Benjamin Wheatley (1838–1917) was a prolific writer on bibliography, literature and the arts. As founder of the Index Society, and editor of The Bibliographer, he was also involved in the foundation of the Library Association. In that context he wrote several works on library topics. How to Catalogue a Library (1889) was aimed at smaller library collections, as existing systems, such as the manuals of the British Museum library or the Library of Congress, were too elaborate for smaller collections. Wheatley begins by defining the differences between catalogues, indexes and bibliographies, and then compares the existing rules. He discusses the physical form of catalogues and lists the minimum requirements for the catalogue of a small library. He also discusses cataloguing manuscripts and cross-referencing, and provides a useful index of Latin place names. The book contains much on the theory of organisation of information still of relevance today.