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A Visionary Library Cataloguing Scheme for the Bibliothèque du Roi that Was Not Realized

1698
Second edition of de Rostgaard

Second edition of de Rostgaard's proposal for a new library catalogue system for the Bibliothèque du Roi, predecessor of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

In 1684 the librarian of the Bibliothèque du roi in Paris, Nicolas Clément, completed a catalogue in manuscript of the library according to a classification system of Clement's design. He classified manuscripts by language, format and materials within formats. Printed books he arranged in 23 classes by a letter of the alphabet. This basic system, known as "lettrage Clément," was maintained by the Bibliothèque nationale de France until 1999.

By 1688 the growth of the collections in the Bibliothèque du roi made Clément's catalogue inadequate, and he and his staff embarked on the project of compiling a new one, which was eventually completed in 1714. In an attempt to create a more useful catalogue in 1698 Danish scholar Fredéric de Rostgaard proposed a new method for arranging a library catalogue in a letter to Clément. This was published as a pamphlet entitled Projet d'une nouvelle methode pour desser le catalogue d'une bibliotheque selon les matieres avec le plan. Relatively few copies were printed but the pamphlet appears to have undergone two editions in 1698. The second, augmented edition was reprinted by Johann David Köhler in Sylloge aliquot scriptorum de bene ordinanda et ornanda bibliotheca studio et opera (1728). Rostgaard's scheme never seems to have been implemented; however, it may be summarized as follows:

Rostgaard called for a subject arrangement subdivided chronologically and by format. His goal was to organize the catalogue so that authors writing on the same subject and all editions of the same work were found together. These goals he proposed to achieve through a printed catalogue. Printing the catalogue of a large institutional library was itself a radical idea in the seventeenth century as the Bibliothèque du roi and other institutional libraries traditionally maintained their catalogues in manuscript volumes, which had to be consulted in the library.

Rostgaard illustrated examples of his cataloguing scheme in his pamphlet, showing the spread of two facing pages divided into four parallel columins, each column containing books of a certain format arranged so that books of various formats published on a certain subject within the same year would appear opposite one another in parallel columns. He also called for a secondary arrangement in which books which entirely concern a subject appear before those in which only a part concern a specific subject.

At the end of his proposed catalogue Rostgaard provided instructions for an alphabetical index of subjects and authors, with authors entered by surname. He expected works bound together to have separate entries for each title, and expected the word order of titles as found on the title page of each work to be preserved in the catalogue. Whenever authorship of anonymous works was known he expected that to be identified in the catalogue

Strout, "The Development of the Catalog and Cataloging Codes," Library Quarterly 26 (1956) 254-275.

Delisle, "Notice sur les anciens catalogues des livres imprimés de la Bibliothèque du roi," Bibliothèque de l'école des chartes," 43 (1882) 165-201.  

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