When comparing the Bibliotheca Americana Catalogue of the John Carter Brown Library with the Church Catalogue yesterday while covering Americana, we looked at yet another interesting juxtaposition of Librarians and Booksellers/Collectors. This one concerned the content of the descriptions and bibliographic detail of the entries for books.

Church (and George Watson Cole, specifically) says something interesting about each work, letting you know why it is important as a book, why we as librarians and collectors might care about it. The Bibliotheca Americana is more detailed bibliographically and the descriptions are accurate, but it doesn’t tell you why the work is important, or why we should care about it.

The same could be said for library catalogues vs. sales or exhibition catalogues. One is attempting to be an accurate and as detailed as possible description of the item. The other(s) is in part a PR document meant to both educate and generate interest on the part of the reader. If there is one thing that tends to supress rather than generate interest in the general public for something, would it not be the Library Catalogue?

From personal experience of preparing for and conducting seminars on some subjects I was not exactly an expert in, to put it kindly, I would much rather be able to reach for a catalogue or bibliography that gives rich context for the bibliographic details of the work and its importance, than a supremely accurate bibliographic description. I say this not to disparage the knowledge and work of rare book catalogers and bibliographers (I’m not worthy!), but to think through this for my own work as a public services librarian.