Berwick Sayers on Annotation I

A  pamphlet for librarians that is still relevant in the days of the web. People still need to know how to annotate information in catalogues. As Berwick Sayers says, annotation is elucidation - but he is down on the annotator who adds information needlessly. A real offender is a cataloguer who in noting the plot of a novel gives away the whole story.  Internet booksellers  break B-S's rules every day. For example, if the information is obviously there already do not annotate-- we do not need to know that Wood's British Trees is 'a handbook to trees growing in Great Britain' or Harrison's The Boys of Wynport College is a 'a schoolboy story.'

He also points out a fault of which many cataloguer is now guilty - giving irrelevant details about the author: for example, if a man writes a book on The Fertilisation of Soils it is of no consequence to the reader to know that "the author was Chancellor of the Exchequer." There are of course different rules for sellers; a librarian is not trying to get someone to buy the book. B-S's rules however apply to the world of Wikipedia where they are often broken - giving opinions, recommendations, irrelevance, shallow research and, conversely, faults that '..arise from too great a devotion to this work. The introduction into catalogues of fine writing or elaborate language is an abuse greatly to be deprecated.'

 In the case of undesirable books B-S notes that drawing attention to them by 'danger notes' is self-defeating - "to say that a book is 'not written for girls' schools' must really be frightfully tantalising to any normally built schoolgirl."  To be continued with info on the life and writings of the great librarian-- a book on card indexes, mountaineering, songs, poems and a history of his borough Croydon..

FIRST STEPS IN

ANNOTATION IN CATALOGUES

by

W.C. BERWICK SAYERS, F.L.A.

NOTE

The first draft of this paper was submitted to the examiners in cataloguing in the Library Association Examination in 1906. It appeared shortly after in the Croydon Libraries staff magazine, a typewritten periodical founded by Mr. H. Rutherford Purnell. In 1918 it was published in a revised form as No. 9 of the Library Assistants' Association Series. I am assured that it is still of interest to beginners in cataloguing, and, at the request of the A.A.L. Section, I have retouched it for this reissue, which I send forth with the caution that it is what it is called, "First Steps," and not a treatise on all annotation.

W.C.B.S.

Croydon,
    1932.

First Edition .. 1918

Second Edition .. 1932

Reprinted (revised) .. 1948

1.  So rapid is the output of the modern book press, and so swift are the strides that discoveries in all fields of science and art are making, that the current truths of one hour may very well be the exploded theories of the next. Librarians perhaps more than any people are conscious of the fluctuating state of knowledge; and the knowledge that is preserved in books demands constant watching. Moreover, this is a day of specialisation