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If you are skilful, you can easily do two things at once, for example, answer your idler friend or your bore, and revise title-cards, or mark a catalogue, or collate a book, or look up a quotation, or write a letter, at the same time.
The title-cards should be always of uniform size, and the measure most in vogue is five inches in length by three inches in breadth. They should not be too stiff, though of sufficient thickness, whether of paper or of thin card board, to stand upright without doubling at the edges.
If there still remain a great many titles to distribute into a closer alphabetic sequence, the third operation will consist in arranging under the third letter of the alphabet, e. g., Abb, Abc, Abd, etc. The same method is pursued throughout the entire alphabet, until all the title-cards are arranged in strict order.
This adds indefinitely to the labor of the cataloguer, who must spend time to analyse to some extent the contents of the book, before he can classify it. This must be done to avoid what may be gross errors in the catalogue. The work of alphabeting a large number of title-cards is much simplified and abbreviated by observing certain obvious rules in the distribution.
To this is added the inconvenience of constant insertion of new title-cards by members of the library staff, and the time-consuming process of working the rods which keep the cards in place, if they are used, and if not used, the risk of loss of titles, or misplacement equivalent to loss for a time. Says Mr.
It requires immeasurably more room than a printed catalogue, and in fact, exacts space which in some libraries can be ill afforded. It obliges readers to search the title-cards at inconvenient angles of vision, and often with inadequate light.
Under much usage of the volumes, however, they must occasionally be renewed. When the books being prepared for the shelves have all been duly collated, labelled and stamped, processes which should precede cataloguing them, they are next ready for the cataloguer. When this is done, the title-cards can be withdrawn and alphabeted in the catalogue drawers.
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