Anatomizing early printed books in Trinity College, Dublin

Abstract

CHOLARS WORKING IN DUBLIN are lucky to be in easy reach of at least ten libraries with important holdings of books printed before 1900. Access to these books is often difficult due to deficiencies in the catalogues of these libraries, though author catalogues of varying quality exist in each. This paper deals with the cataloguing treatment given to books in the Department of Early Printed Books in Trinity College Dublin, and indicates the variety of approaches to the information contained in the books which this very detailed cataloguing makes available. Trinity College Library is the largest library in Ireland. It holds the country's largest collection of books printed outside Ireland before 1900 (due in considerable measure to the benefit of the Copyright Act, 1801), and vies with the National Library of Ireland in the importance of its holdings of books printed in Ireland. The catalogues reflect the college's history of bursts of prosperity interspersed with long bouts of financial stringency. A consequence is that the reader checking for a book printed before 1872 is obliged to search four alphabetical sequences. The earliest of the catalogues now used contains books catalogued up to 1872. It was the outcome of a complete recataloguing of the library begun in 1835. This Catalogus librorum impressorum qui in Bibliotheca Collegii Sacrosanctae et individuae Trinitatis Reginae Elizabethae, juxta Dublin, adservantur, (Dublinii: E typographeo Academico, 1864-1887), popularly referred to as The Printed Catalogue, aimed, according to the first editor James Henthorn Todd, 'only at being a finding-catalogue, giving the titles of all books under their authors' names, in alphabetical order, or, when the authors cannot be ascertained, under such headings as a reader in search of the work would be most likely to look for'.2 According to