Early Periodical Indexes: Bibliographies and Indexes of Literature Published in Periodicals before 1900 (review)

Cumulated indexes began to appear in journal literature almost from the very beginning. The first volume of the Philosophical Transactions (London: 1665-67), published under the auspices of the Royal Society of London, ended with a subject index and an alphabetical index of all the titles of articles in the volume. This kind of index was produced in great numbers in the ensuing centuries and provides a valuable resource for historians working in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and particularly in the nineteenth century, when research became more institutionalized.

Robert Balay is also the editor of the most recent and expanded edition of the Guide to Reference Books (11th ed., Chicago: American Library Association, 1996), from which the present work to some extent is a distillation, except that he has taken care to examine most of the four hundred titles included. It covers titles across a broad spectrum of subjects arranged in major groups in a classification adapted from the Guide. As an aid to access, OCLC and in some cases ISSN numbers are included. Many of the annotations seem to be amplifications of the entries in the Guide. For example, the annotation for Poole's Index to Periodical Literature (AB15, pp. 21-28) is more than four times the length of the one in the Guide.

The entry for the Allgemeines Sachregister (AB32, Leipzig: 1790) of J. H. C. Beutler and his coauthor, J. C. F. Gutsmuth (whose name is not included in the entry), is cited as the earliest example of a cumulated periodical. This ignores the voluminous work of Cornelius à Beughem that antedates Beutler by more than a century. Balay wisely makes it clear that he has "not seen everything that might have been included, but even from my narrow interest in the history of science and medicine in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there are still many areas to investigate." The historian and bibliographer Thomas Besterman is not included in the "Source Bibliography" (xxiii-xxx), although his many titles likely would yield many additional entries. Albrecht von Haller, one of the most famous scientists and poets of the eighteenth century, produced many voluminous bibliographies on medicine and science. They were received enthusiastically at the time they were published, and, although difficult to use, they treat journal literature as a separate entry under the subject divisions. The author indexes to each of these bibliographies enhance their utility. The subject interests of these eighteenth-century physicians ranged widely over the scientific subjects of their periods. Another bibliographer who contributed considerably to citing journal articles in his period is the Danish physician Adolph Carl Peter Callisen, whose Medicinisches Schriftensteller-Lexicon der jezt lebenden Aerzte (33 vols., Copenhagen and Altona: 1830-45; reprint, Nieuwkeep: DeGraaf, 1964) covers the literature from about 1780 to about 1830. Another bibliography that merits exploring is that of Joseph Banks. The catalog of his extensive library in five volumes edited by John Dryander (Bibliothecae Historico-naturalis, London: Balmer, 1798-1800) includes an author index to the entire series as well as periodical citations. All three of the series cited above are available in reprint editions. There were also a number of physicians in the eighteenth century who published contemporary serial bibliographies. These are not quite as accessible but can also be considered for inclusion.

These additional sources represent a limited part of the spectrum of subjects included in Robert Balay's bibliography. In his introduction he refers to a file of titles that he has not yet examined (xviii). This implies that Early Periodical Indexes is a work in progress that can nevertheless serve as a useful source for historians. We can look forward to a new edition.