button to main menu  Gents Mag 1855 part 2 p.278
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Gentleman's Magazine 1855 part 2 p.278
This appears a large Catalogue, but it will be found rather under than over the number required.
The board should be printed in large captials, for distant view; under it should be placed a date box, with moveable cards.
Yours, &c. E.G.B.

THE LIBRARY CATALOGUES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

MR. URBAN, - I think that the change of the present Alphabetical Catalogue at the British Museum for a Classified one, as proposed by Dr. Bell in your last agazine, is one that ought to be considered with great care and much deliberation before it is put into execution. If I understand Dr. Bell's letter, he proposes that a classified catalogue should entirely superseded the present one. Now, although I consider that a good catalogue, on the plan suggested by Dr. Bell, would be a very acceptable acquisition to the Reading Room, and much desired by many readers, yet I believe the majority of thoses who frequent the Museum would prefer the catalogues at present in use to those arranged by classification of subjects.
Dr. Bell lays some stress upon the difficulty experienced by a person searching for a book by an auther of whose name he knows only the pronunciation, and not the orthography. But in a classified index a difficulty occurs as great, if not greater, than this, for many works bear titles so at variance with their contents, that a person knowing the title, but not the nature of the work, would be utterly at a loss in searching a classified catalogue.
Most frequenters of the Museum, who are engaged in genealogical and biographical pursuits, are continually looking for works published by a particular author; but if those works are upon various subjects, of which the inquirer is ignorant, it is vain to endeavour to discover them in any catalogue compiled on any system other than the alphabetical.
Yours, &c. N.R.
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