The Philosophy Catalogue

A total of 250 pages, the catalogue features handwritten entries of individual books ordered alphabetically by the last name of the author. Each entry contains (in the following order) an index number (such as Ф229), the author’s last and first names, the book title, number of the edition or the part within a series, the place and year of publication. The source of the books (i.e. donated or purchased) is not included. The index numbers range from 81 to 1459, yet they do not cover every integer within this range and are not sequentially organized; thus, it would have been easy to search for the index number according to a known book title/author (i.e. to register a borrowing event), but not vice versa (i.e. to reconstruct a borrowing event). Such a practical system would have been convenient for the librarian at the time, though not to the members themselves who might have wanted to keep track of what books they have read in the past year, or to historians seeking the same information.

The philosophy catalogue is not dated, so one could only deduce the timeline of its making from the publication dates of the recorded books: most of them range from 1860s to 1900s. Among the first set of entries (with the elegant handwriting), the latest publication date is 1911; among all entries – 1929. This suggest that the library has started to create this catalogue as early as in 1911, and the endeavor continued till at least 1929. It could be possible that the library transitioned to a new catalogue or a different cataloguing system in the 1930s that we are now unaware of. The belletristic catalogues that we eventually did acquire are also dated till 1929, which speaks to either a systematic change within the library and/or a systematic loss of post-1929 archival materials.

While the great majority of entries within this catalogue are philosophy titles (indexed as Ф + number), there are a few exceptions. For example, an entry indexed as “П1043” appears underneath two standard Ф- entries, referring to a psychology book written by the same author as the two philosophy books. Only the last name of the author is recorded: “Филиппов”, which presumably refers to Mikhail Mikhailovich Filippov, a polymath whose most famous work Философия действительности (1895) is featured amongst the three entries. The inclusion of his psychology monograph within the philosophy catalogue points to a principle of integrality in the library’s practices. It would have facilitated the readers who, upon seeing or borrowing one book by Filippov, might want to consult about his other titles, even those outside the field of philosophy. Depending on whether the same titles (both the П1043 and the two Ф- entries by Filippov) are included in the psychology catalogue as well, one could suggest whether the library prioritizes the integrity of authors or of genres in the organization of its holdings. If these entries are featured overlappingly in both catalogues, it would highlight the library’s intent to serve its readers – by not only fulfilling the practical duty of book circulation but also encouraging the broadening of knowledge beyond disciplinary boundaries. It then raises the question of how books were physically organized within the library versus in the catalogues – the same entry could appear in two catalogues, but not the same book in two different locations. Since the psychology catalogue has been lost, and the spatial layout of the library was never recorded, the exact system of the storage and retrieval of both tangible books on shelves and their intangible stand-ins in catalogues remains speculative.

As part of this system, the catalogue can be viewed as both a product and a process: during interaction with the patrons (i.e. borrowing events), the catalogue serves as a canon, something finished and fixed; in the backstage activities of the library (i.e. acquisitions), the catalogue acquires a fluidity, which is visually manifested in its pages. At least four or five different handwritings are observed within the catalogue: the initial set of entries were written with a particularly neat and elegant cursive calligraphy, with an average of two to four lines of space left between entries, depending on the gap between the relevant alphabetical letters. Later entries, added in multiple rounds with different inks and handwritings (generally more casual and utilitarian than the initial one) to fill in these gaps. It turns out that sometimes, the left-out space is not enough for the new entries, which results in additions written in smaller letters, or squeezed within top or bottom margins of the pages. In other cases, there is still ample space, even entire pages, to be filled by future entries. The function of the catalogue mirrors that of the library and other institutions or objects of knowledge, such as encyclopedias or bibliographies, where the storage and circulation of knowledge takes place concurrently and alternatively.