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College and Research Libraries
July 1997, Vol. 58, No. 4

Book Review

The Printed Catalogues of the Harvard College Library 1723-1790. Eds. W. H. Bond and Hugh Amory. Boston: Colonial Society of Massachusetts. Distributed by Oak Knoll Press, 1996. 710p. $75. ISBN 0-9620737-3-3. LC 96-14236.

In the past fifteen years, the scholarly community has become more interested in the "history of the book"--the social, intellectual, cultural, and economic history of the way books and other printed materials are written, published, and read. William H. Bond, librarian emeritus of the Houghton Library, and Hugh Amory, retired principal rare book cataloger at Harvard College Library, have produced a valuable addition to the study of the history of the book. Bond and Amory have reprinted Harvard College Library's first three printed library catalogues from the eighteenth century. They include supporting material explaining the creation of the catalogs as well as providing important tools for their effective use.

The book is divided into three sections: an introduction with two appendixes; facsimile reprints of the catalogs from 1723, 1773, and 1790; and an index. The introduction is divided into three parts. In the first part, Bond describes the history of the library, its physical arrangement, and the January 14, 1764, fire that destroyed the library. The second part is a brief description of the catalogs and their organization. In the third part, Amory describes the printing and publication history of the three catalogs, as well as how and to whom they were distributed.

The catalogs were digitized in color from the originals and reduced to black-and-white images. Missing or illegible letters due to faint inking or print-through in the originals were corrected in the reprint. An "apparatus" that appears at the end of the facsimiles lists what corrections were made. However, actual errors such as typographical ones were left uncorrected.

The 1723 catalog was the first college library catalog printed in the United States. Three supplements from 1723, 1725, and 1735 also are included. The 3,000-volume catalog is organized first by size (folio, quarto, and octavo). Within each size, the books are arranged alphabetically for the first letter of the author or title with no further alphabetization. For example, Poole is followed by Picatoris, Preston, and Practice. Each entry includes the author's last name and an abbreviated first name, a title, the place and date of publication, and shelf location.

The 1773 catalog was the first to explicitly select books appropriate for use and study by undergraduates. This catalog is organized by a single alphabetical sequence based on the author. Each entry includes the author, title, format, and shelf location.

In 1790, in an attempt to make the catalog more useful, Harvard organized the catalog by subject. This catalog is divided into two parts: one for books and one for pamphlets. "Pars I" catalogs books alphabetically under fifty-four subjects, and "Pars II" catalogs pamphlets alphabetically under fourteen subjects. Each entry includes author, title, edition, number of volumes, and place and date of publication. No shelf locations are included, probably because of the size of the catalog.

This volume is successful because of the comprehensive index the editors created. Without it, this would just be a very nice facsimile of three early library catalogs. This index addresses many of the difficulties of using the original catalogs. In the 1723 catalog, the books are organized by size, which makes locating a title difficult. In the 1790 catalog, if there was no obvious subject heading, the title was put under the heading "Miscellanea," which consists of more than twenty-four pages. To create this index, Bond and Amory used Harvard's card and online catalogs in order to identify each entry. This allows the user to search all three catalogs by author. Varying forms of names in the catalogs are cross-referenced to a modern form, usually based on the pre-1956 National Union Catalog. Anonymous works are listed by title and cross-referenced to the author if he or she can be identified. Incorrect titles are cross-referenced to their correct form. Finally, the authors cross-reference translators to the original author. Each entry in the index also includes a page reference preceded by a letter indicating which catalog to search. For example, C33 is page 33 of the 1790 catalog.

Unfortunately, this book will appeal to a limited audience. However, for those interested in the history of the book, early American history, or the history of libraries, this book will be an exciting and worthwhile resource.—Edwin C. Schroeder, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.