Book Catalogues: Their Varieties and Uses

The catalogues of printed books of the British Museum, the Bibliothèque Nationale, and, since the War, the Library of Congress, have become such indispensable tools for scholars, librarians and booksellers that it is difficult to imagine the situation before these fundamental works of reference appeared. Although Professor Archer Taylor, in his latest work, Book Catalogues, their Varieties and Uses (the Newberry Library, Chicago) covers the whole range of book catalogues existing in printed form he devotes a generous part of his survey to the catalogues that appeared before the mid‐19th century, most of which are today neglected except by a few specialists. Professor Taylor has convincingly argued that, when treated with due allowance for their limitations, these catalogues can still have much to tell us.