Paper Machines: About Cards & Catalogs, 1548-1929

Chapter 5. American Arrival

5 American Arrival Have you a catalogue? —William Shakespeare, Coriolanus How, then, does the library card index reach the New World, and how does it also develop into a card index system for business use? On the one hand, American librarians travel around Europe throughout the first half of the nineteenth century to study—and later to import—library technologies for their own, rapidly developing libraries, particularly in New England. Wellknown and influential American librarians like Charles Coffin Jewett (1816–1868), who maintains a close connection with Anthony Panizzi at the British Museum starting in 1845, or Joseph Green Cogswell (1786– 1871), who studies at Göttingen for several years and later manages the famous library of Harvard College, exemplify the contemporary reception and dissemination of library science. However, this technology transfer between Old and New World relinquishes its European roots all too soon, and the paper slip system is soon claimed as a home-grown method. Yet this repression was unnecessary, for North American library history can lay claim to its own developments in matters of efficient cataloging. What follows is a reconstruction (from the archives at Harvard) of the independent “invention” of an old European paper slip technique in the New World. An eccentric protagonist stands at the ready; here we encounter a curious chapter in index card history that the standard American library history, concerned with its reputation, tends to keep under wraps. Do Not Disturb—William Croswell I have dearly paid for all the honor that success can give. —William Croswell 70 Chapter 5 On August 4, 1812, the Harvard Corporation hires a new library employee. His task for “not less than three months”1 consists of cataloging the extensive book collection at Harvard College. “When my employment at Cambridge commenced, I professed no skill in the arrangement of Library Catalogues. I had other qualifications, and I expected that a proper Plan would be furnished. A Latin Plan had been compiled for the Library Catalogue by a former Librarian. This Plan was delivered to me; and about one fourth of the entire books in the Library were designated according to it.”2 As a former mathematics teacher who dabbled in astronomy and project management, William Croswell embarks on his career as a library assistant without the slightest experience with bibliographies or cataloging.3 In his own words, his qualifications consist in the fact that he is “acquainted with ancient and modern languages, [trained] to write a fairly hand [i.e., a fair hand], and ready in detecting literal errors.”4 The work on the catalog starts well, but after only a few dull months of copying titles into a register, the execution of the simplest working algorithm falters. However, the gradual waning of bibliographical productivity is accompanied by a noteworthy process, and one that—albeit joyless for Croswell and his supervisor , Harvard College president John Thornton Kirkland—will result in a major achievement for American information management technology. William Croswell endows the largest library of his country and his time with a paper slip catalog that, as a prototype of the card index, will find its way into the offices and management systems of the prospering economy around 1900. “I examined the Library attentively. I opened every volume of every Set and noted whatever appeared irregular. I spent about three years in entering the entire books and also the Tracts in the four first Alcoves: the remaining Tracts were entered at Lodgings.”5 The book collection in Harvard Square in the heart of Cambridge, Massachusetts, is not only one of the oldest in the United States (founded 1639), but also the largest; around 1800, the library includes nearly 20,000 volumes.6 Considering this fact, it makes sense that indexing the entire holdings of the collection within three months, and without the help of assistants, is virtually impossible. Which technique of cataloging does the completely inexperienced librarian Croswell select? First, he starts a library diary in which he enters each individual working step. This diary is extant in two versions .7 One is more detailed, with an appendix of additional remarks, and was written as Croswell worked. The other version summarizes the events American Arrival 71 and was presumably written as a later justification. Both are marked by sporadic and short entries, particularly in comparison to the accurate and long-winded discourse of his successors, such as...