Recent Book Catalogs of University Libraries of Japan in all their Aspects

Abstract

Many of the University Libraries in Japan have begun to issue book catalogs in recent ten years. The reappearance of book catalogs in Japan seems to be just the same in U.S.A. But the circumstances are quite different between two countries. In Japan, the librarians and faculties have simply believed in the usefulness of book catalogs in spite of their disadvantages, as well known as its advantages, and they never gave up making book catalogs, and to print catalogs of their libraries is one of their usual practices. So they have been trying to get a budget of printing library catalogs and nowadays most universities secure some money and have only enough to make a supplemental catalog of new acquisitions every year or every couple of years, or to print a catalog of someone’s collection added to the library, but have not enough to make the full catalog or the cumulated catalog. The writer is doubtful about the object of printing of so many catalogs of general collections or of minor collectors’ collections, because those catalogs would be used only by faculties and students for a few years and have little value as bibliographical tools, for the collections seem not to be sufficiently specialized and of notable distinction. Accordingly, he would like to say that those book catalogs of local universities will only waste the industry and labor of catalogers and that the catalogs should not be printed so frequently. Besides, they do not look as good as a bibliography should.