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Suggests an organisational set-up for the Indian NationalBibliography. Recommends that each instalment of the Bib-liography should consist of independent, but co-ordinatedvolume s of fascicilles for each ofthe language s in which booksand periodicals are published in the country. The concernedlanguage fascicule s to be produced by the appropriate State sand tobeco-ordinated by the National Central Library. Exa-mines the impracticability of multi-lingual bibliography in asingle sequence in relation to mar ket ing, classification andcataloguing, time factor, etc. Stresses the need for follow-ing an appropriate catalogue code to suit our needs and aversatile analytico-synthetic scheme for classification. Sug-gests the bringing out of another experimental fascicule of theBibliography arranging the entries by CC numbers to make,an objective comparative study of the helpfulness of the ar-rangement of the entries.

1 INTRODUCTION

It is a matter for gratification that the Gov-ernment of India has arranged for the produc-tion of a National Bibliography of the currentpublications of India, on a periodical basis.However, the way in which the work is plannedand organised does not appear to be happy. Analternative scheme, likely to be more economi-cal, efficient, and prompt is suggested in sec-tion 2 of this paper and its subdivisions. Thereasons for the alternative scheme are setforth in section 3 and its subdivisions. Sometechnical items, which need attention immedi-ately or eventually, are also touched upon inthe later sections.

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2 ORGANISATIONAL SET-UPSUGGESTED

The considerations set forth in section 3and its subdivisions indicate an organisationalset-up along the following lines. The set-upis made elastic enough to meet the changes inhistorical geography likely to occur in India,and the new responsibilities which the bibliog-raphical organisation of the country will haveto discharge, if India is to fall in line with theworld-trend in the matter. It may be statedhere that this trend has been prompted and in-fluenced not a little by Indian research in thissubject during the last two decades. The es-sential feature of the proposed organisationalset -up is the making of each instalment of theIndian National Bibliography consist of independ-ent, but co-ordinated, volumes or fasciculesfor each of the languages in which books and pe-riodicals are published in the country. The a-gency proposed makes full use of the resourcesand facilities obtaining in each of the constitu-ent states and avoids all avoidable duplicationof work as between the Centre and the States.

21 One Language, One State

Each of the seven languages - Tamil, Mala-yalam, Kannada, Telugu, Oriya, Bengali, andAssamese - is the only state language in its

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st at e , and it is also confined more or le s s toone st at e , The Ii ngu ist ic fascicules or volumesof the Indian National Bibliography for theses even languages are best left to the car e of ther es pe ct iv e State Central Libraries. Jv1adrasand Andhra Pradesh have already State CentralLibraries maintained in accordance with thePublic Library Act (see Sections 4 and 19 ofthe Madras Pub-Library Act of 1948). Rules7:d) and 7(e)i under the Madras Act provide fort~e State Central Li.br ar ie s taking responsibil-ity for the respective Copyright Lists and ~tateBibliographies. A similar arrangement wi llcome into force in the other states, as andwhen they have Library Acts. Till this hap-pens, the Registrar of Books or any other cor-r as pond ing officer of each of the states may boetemporarily errt ru st ed with the task of pr-oduc ingt he Ii ngu.is tic volume or fascicule for the state.How far Punjab will admit of a similar set-upneeds examination. The publication of a fewbooks in a language outside its own linguisticsta.te can be taken care of quite easily.

22 Two Languages, One State

Bombay is the one state wl-ich comprehendstwo different linguistic areas Mar at hi andGujarathi. But the Gov er nrn ent of Bombay hasa1r.eady established different 'Zegional Libra-ries for these two languages r.t Poona andAhmedabad respectively. T'ht s e libraries havecopyright privileges; and they already pr epa r etheir respective catalogues fOJ:their copyright,collections. The conc er ne d language fasciculescan be easily produced by them.

23 One Language, Many States

Hindi is the one language which spreadsover several constituent states. 0 It is a mootpoint whether each of these states should pro-duce its own Hindi fa rc icule , or whether a i,these states should agree to maintain a singleHindi Regional Centre for producing a singlecommon Hindi fa.sc+c.ul c , Economy will indi-cate the Ia tt er alternative, convenience ofusers - readers as well as booksellers - willalso support a single common Hindi fascicule.The geographical contiguity of the Hindi Stateswill minimise the consequences of the large-ness of the area of the region.

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24 Languages Scattered AllThrough India

Books and"periC'dicals in English and S~ns-krit are being produced in equal measure 10several of the constituent states. It would helpeconomy in production and convenience in useif the English and Sanskrit fascicules of th~Indian National Bibliography are produced mone All-India Centre. The location of thiscentre should, ultimately, be at the NationalCentral Library to be established. The ar-rangement for the Urdu faeci~ule should p~r-haps be made along similar hnes, oU1l1~s s 1thappens that most of the Urdu publ.icat ion s areproduced in one or two states only.

25 Co-ordinating Function

The elements of heterogeneity incidental todecentralisation of the pr oduct ion of the differ-ent linguistic volume and fascicules can andshould be eliminated by proper co -ordination.The appropriate agency for this essential cor-rective by co-ordination is the National CentralLibrary. A directive about this work of co-ordination is given in sections 381 and 3911 ofthe draft Union Library Act, occurring in pages191 and 192 of Ranganathan's J.,ibrary develop-ment plan: Thirty-year programme for I:-:tdia,with draft library bills for the Union and theconstituent states, 1950 (Delhi University pub-Licat ions , library science series, 2). TheseseCtions read as follows:-

"381 The National Bibliographical Bureaumay admit into its work other agencies in thecountry like the Department of the Government,the State Bibliographical Bureaus of the con-stituent states, and the learned bodies in thecountry, on such conditions as may be mutu-ally agreed upon".

"391 i The National Bureau of TechnicalService may collaborate with similar bureausin the State Central Libraries of the constituentstates, and co-ordinate the technical treatmentof books in the entire library system of thecountry" •

There is also a similar directive in sections552 and 562 of the draft State Library Act, oc-curring in pages 394 and 395 of the same book.

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These sections read as foUows:-

wThe State Bibliographical Bureau may col-laborate with similar bureaus and agencies ofthe other states and the Union Government, andundertake such bibliographical work as may fallto its share by mutual agreement among theparticipating bureaus and agencies".

wThe Bureau of Technical Service may col-laborate with similar bureaus of the otherstates and of the Union Government, and under-.take such technical work as may fall to itsshare by mutual agreement with the participat-ing bureaus".

26 Man-Power and Finance

A preliminary piece of work on the man-power and financial resources needed for theseveral state fascicules was done in 1951 byShri K. D. Puranik and S. P. Phadnis. Theidea of the economic co -o r dirrat ion of the re-sour c e.s of all the states and of the Union hadnot taken shape in that year. Subject to thisremark, the figures arrived at by the authorsmay prove tob e of value. This paper occursin pages 151 to 157 of the Public provision anddocumentation problems: Papers for discus-sion at the Ninth All-India Library Conference(1951) led by S.R. Ra ng arra t ha.n, These figureswilt need correction in the light of the advancein the ideas about the subject and of the changein the value of money and its purchasing power.

3 PROS AND CONS

31 Wrong Analogy

The organisation for the Indian Bibliographyset up about a year ago appeared to have beeninfluenced by the experience of nations havingonly one language as the main medium forbooks. Nor has the vastness of the area ofIndia, as compared to the area of such coun-tries, been apparently given due weight. Theprevalence of ten different scripts and even alarger number of languages of literary statusshould obviously make the organisation for theproduction of National Bibliography in India dif-fer from the one for a smaller country with asingle language and a single script. We mustbeware of wrong analogy.

Sep 1957 V 4 N 3

32 Right Analogy

The right analogy is to be looked for in aquasi International Bibliography. say of a con-tinent. Fr:>m the point of view of National Bib-liography, the polyglot nature of India makes ita continent. A considerable professionalthought has been turned, during the last threecenturies, on the preparation of an exhaustivebibliography of books in several languages. Amultilingual national or regional bibliography isnot best built on a monolithic basis or in a sin-gle sequence - whether alphabetical or clas si'-fied. When the script of all the languages isone and the same, a monolithic bibliographymay be possible; but it will not be practicableat a reasonable cost. Nor will it be helpfulfrom the angle of the common user. It is nowpractically accepted that the cheapest, the mostserviceable, and the most practicable form ofmulti-lingual bibliography is one in several vol-umes or fa s ci c ul e s , each of which is devotedto one and only one language. It is not neces-sary for India to fritter away its all-too-smalllibrary finance and man-power in starting theexperiment over again corit r ar y to the above-mentioned finding arrived at after years ofthought and practice.

33 Impracticability of Multi-ScriptBibliography

With the methods of printing now in vogue,it is physically impossible to print in one se-quence, or even in one volume, the entries inten different scripts. Any attempt to force asingle script on the Indian National Bibliogra-phy will be wasteful and rouse undesirable con-troversies. Recourse to transliteration into asingle script is also beset with many technicaldifficulties, which have not yet been solved sat-isfactorily. The resistance to a s ingi.e scriptwill be even more formidable if the alienRoman script is adopted. Surely it will be a naffront to cherished national sentiments. Thesmall percentage of us who have been broughtup on the Roman script shou ld riot overlook theformidable difficulties which \"i11 be put in theway of the masses by its adopt ior.. We shouldnot close our eye s to the diffic ultie s of themasses of our count r y in acquiring the reflexaction necessary to read through the ent r i c sin an alien script. Tnus a single bibliogr aphy

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in a single sequence for all the books in all thescripts in India is Lrip r act i.cab le ,

/ Unserviceability of Multi-LingualBibli06raphy

Even if all the languages have the samescript, a single bibliography for the currentbooks in all the languages will serve little use-ful purpose. Such a bibliography has not beenseriously attempted anywhere. However, ithas been subjected to some intellectual experi-ment and theoretical investigation. The find-ing has been against it. An exhaustive currentnational bibliography has to serve three mainpurposes. It has:

to serve the cultural purpose of being arecord of all the literary output of thecountry;

2 'to serve the economic purpose of beinga location register of publishers in the'.~,.ds of book-sellers; and

:'\ to serve the social education purpose ofbeing the source for book-selection forlibraries as well as for individual read-ers.

it is the last of these uses that is the widestthe most immediate, and the most potent fo:the betterment of society. Hardly any readercould read all the thirteen literary languagesof India. It would be irritating, if not scaring,to a reader to find the entries of the books in'his own language scattered, and perhaps evens rnot he re d , by a plethora of books in the otherlanguages. A measure of this irritation andunserviceableness can be got if we rememberthat a monthly instalment of the Indian Natio.na.lBibliography will have to cover about 5,000 'books, that the publication in anyone languagew il l be only about 400, and that their entrieswill be diluted among 13 times as many entriesi n unwanted languages.

Perhaps even booksellers would prefer tohave separate fascicules for the different lan-guages. The cultural purpose of listing all thepub licat ion s in the country will not be thwartedin any way by making the national bibliographycon s i s t of separate volumes of fascicules foreach of the languages.

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35 Marketing the Bibliography

To serve the last two of the pur po s e s to beserved by the National Bibliography, its currentissues and cumulative volumes should admit ofwide marketing. As a matter of fact, the publi-cation of the National Bibliography is nearlyself-supporting in most countries. India shouldnot make its national bibliography a permanentliability. Nor is it sound marketing principleto expect any person to pay forcedly for mate-rials in which he has no interest. Few will bethe readers, book-sellers, publishers, or evenlibraries who will be interested in buying thebibliography covering the books in all the thir··teen la-.guages of the country. Moreover, -t h ;cost of an omnibus national bibliography - ev e:;the monthly s uo: ':r)t.lal1 for it - will be toohigh for many of the probable buyers, On theether hand, the cost of each 01 the linguisticvol um e s or fas cic ule s , rna kinr, IIp the nationalbibliography, w iil he w e l.! \<iithlll -the means ofmost of t h- b;}.\,·,,~r-.s Thus "C, .. " problem of find-ing a market a is o indicates 0 rga ni.sat ioria lset-up for the >-<>" Na t iona . i:;'l"i.ography tobe ba s ed on the concept of irid epende nt but co-ordinated Ii ng ui st ic volumes and iascicules.

36 Facility for Classificationand Cataloguing

Assuming that the National Bibliography isp r oduoe d in the form of separate volumes orfascicules for each language, let LIS examinethe agency for their production, which cancorn rnand the greatest possible f a ci li t ie s in thetec.hnical work of classification and cataloguing.Th1s t echn ica l work will now and then requireconsultation with scholars in the language con-cerned. Facilities for this will be available ina centre within the linguistic region more read-ily and fully then in a distant All-India centre.This is an important detail in organisation,which should not be lost sight of.

37 Facility for Physical Productionand Distribution

The facility for the printing of a linguisticvolume or fascicule will be greatest in the lin-guistic state or region concerned. It is organ-isationally unsound to have the printing press

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for all the thirteen languages of the country inone and the same place. It is desirable to havethe printing press for each of the languages tobe had in the linguistic centre concerned.

Again the largest number of copies of a lin-guistic volume or fascicule of the National Bib-liography will have to be distributed only withinthe linguistic region concerned. Therefore,the cost of physical distribution and the pres-sure on the postal and the transport system ofthe country will be the least, only if the centrefo r its production is within the linguistic re-gion.

38 Time Factor

Section 4 describes the scheme for supplyof printed catalogue cards to all libraries forthe books of Indian origin, acquisitioned bythem. The time -lag in the supply of cataloguecards to libraries has been reduced to 24 hoursby the British National Bibliography. Apartfrom the careful organisation and mechanisa-tion of the work of making copies of the cata-logue cards on demand, the centre for biblio-graphy being within a night's rail journey fromthe various libraries is decisive in making thesupply of the cards so prompt. India is a vastcountry of great distances. The distance ofmany of the libraries from an All-India centrewill be such as require a rail journey of 48hours, even by the fastest trains. On the otherhand, the distance within most of the linguisticregions can be covered more or less within Onenight. Thus, except for the cards for books inSanskrit and English, which will be best pro-duced in an All-India centre, the cards for thebooks in the current languages of India can besupplied without time-lag from a centre withinthe linguistic region concerned. And, in duecourse, it is books in these languages that willbe in greatest demand in the majority of thelibraries.

Again the books published within a constit-uent state will reach its State Central Librarymore quickly and unerringly than the distantNational Central Library. The enforcementmeasures for the delivery of books will also bemore expeditious On a state-basis than On All-India basis. Therefore the time -La g in thepreparation of the linguistic volum.e or fasci-cule will be less if it is done by the StateCentral Library.

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4 SUPPLY OF PRINTEDCATALOGUE CARDS

Our organisation for the National Bibliogra-phy should be sufficiently far -sighted and broad-based to allow of the supply of printed cataloguecards to the various libraries. This will resultin considerable economy in the professional lib-rary-man-power of the nation. Indeed, thiswill lead to the saving of 79% of the classifyingand cataloguing man-power of the nation. Thishas been proved in section 93 of the Headingsand canons (1955) of Ranganathan.

41 Achievement inGreat Britain

Within six years of its establishment in1950, the British National Bibliography hasimplemented this measure of national economy.Since 1956, it is printing off to order whatevercatalogue cards are requisitioned by the libra-ries in the country. There is no need to holdspace -c onsurni ng stock of printed cards. It isonly the master stencils that are stored. Thisis an improvement of what the Danish Bibliog-raphical Centre was doing about a decade ago;they used to print the cards in advance andkeep a large stock, involving all the risk oferror in the anticipation of the sale of particularcards.

42 Pre -Nat a l Printing ofCatalogue Cards

There is a still more ambitious programmeto be realised. It is denoted by the term "Pre-Natal Preparation of Cards". This programmewas first conceived and named in this way on12 August 1948 in my address to the cataloguersand classifiers of the Library of Congress in itsWhittall Pavilion. In this programme, the a-gency for national bibliography will get proofcopie s of the books about to be published and re-lease the catalogue cards in printed form sim ,ultaneously with the release of the book. In mymeeting with the Editor and the staff of theBritish National Bibliography in December 1956,an assurance was given that even this ambitiousprogramme would be put into effect in about twoor three years. I wish that this wish of mine is

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r ca lis ed i n our own count rv too in due cour se ,It is on lv t he Srate Central Lib r a r y that cancornm and the conv enienc e to do this work inrespect of the books in the state bnguage con >

ce r ned ; and mo r eov e r , we should reasonablyexpect the books in the state languages to L,-, fargreater in nurnb er than the books in English orSan s kr it , Thus the event ua l assumption of ccn-tralised and even pre-natal cent r a li sed releaseof the d'iff e r ent linguistic 'volumes and Ia sci-cules of the national bibliography and of the sup--ply of catalogue cards demands ciecent r a li sat ionof the work of national bibliography on a lin-gui st ic basis.

5 U;~IFORMITY IN CATALOGUING

One of the acts of co -o r di nat ion by theNational Central Library shouId be to persuadethe State Central Libraries to adopt cat a>loguing codes, which cohere with one another.Co ae r en c e , and not sameness, is suggested be-cause sameness in every detail in the render-ing of headings and bodies of entries is not pos-sible in all the languages. The codes of cata-loguing for the different languages can be alikeonly in respect of the choice of the headings andbodies for the entries. In respect of renderingand style of writing, the most that can be at-tempted is to make them all conform to certainnorms of a br oa d nature. The methodology forsecuring coherence in the catalogue codes forthe different languages and cultural groups hasbeen described in chapter 8 of the Headings and~ns. The methodology has alsobeen d;::-;-monstrated to sorne extent in the ClassifiedcatCl.logue code for the English language and theAnuvarga-suchi-kc.lpa for the Hindi language.

51 A False Step

It has been stated that the Indian NationalBibliography is being based on the ALA cata-loguing rules for author and title entries. If itbe so, it is unfortunate. In the first place, ithas hardly sufficient r ule s to deal with Indianpersonal narrie s , As a matter of fact, the latestedition of this code takes its rules for Indiannames, partially though, from the Classifiedcatalogue code. Secondly, the ALA cataloguingrules has m any faults and redundancies. In

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f ac t 18 rules have been shown t c be faulty; and52 r ul e s have been shown to ue redundant. ThisWiLS r oa li s ed in the meeting of the InternationalCommittee on Cataloguing held at Brussels in1955. It is c. matter for regret t ha t there shouldbe a per sis t ence , even after 1155, of t he pr2-Gariclhian mood of a cccpt ing without oue s t ionany practice coming from abroad, wit ho ut anycritical thought. Apart from sent irrient s of self-respect and patriotism, the Lndian National Bib-liography should base itself OIl the Classifieci_catalogue code on the purely non -s ent im cnt algrounds that (i) it is the only complete codeknown for a classified catalogue, (ii) it is farmore free of faults than the ALA catalozuingrules, and (iii) that it is already exercisirgapp r ec iab le influence on other codes, in spiteof the sentimental resistance of other nation'>to accept the influence of a foreign country andparticularly a country like Lndia w hi ch is justcm er girig from its long cent ur i e s of sleep andpolitical s ubo r di nat ion,

It is w e ll c kr.own that the ALA cat a logui ngrules is now in the :nelting pot. To ov cr Iookthis fact and commit the Iridian National Bib-liography, which is just being started, to thatout-moded code is r egr et t a ole , to say the l ea s t ,

Any Indian who wishes well of his country willgrant that it is early enough to give up thistrend.

52 Subj ec t Entries

It is well-known that there is no currentcode for subject headings except the Cl<:"sifiedcatalogue code of Indra , In fact, this code hasrne cha ni s ed the pr ocedu r e to choose subjectheadings. This me cha.ni s at io n has been calledChain Procedure. This procedure has beenadopted by the British Nat ionr I Bibliography. Itwas adopted at the very commencement in 1950,after a careful comparison of all the aLter-natives possible. Here are the words on thistopic of the Editor of the British National Bib-liography; those are taken from his paper onOur debt to India in the Comrrie m or at ion volumeLibrary science in India (1955).

"In 1949, I had the honour to be entrustedwith the editorship of our new British nationalbibliography. The four years spent in studyingthe works for Ranganathan, the extraordinarysense of power induced by discussions with him

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on his visits to England, and the discipline ofwriting - in collaboration with Palmer -the ex-position of his system of classification proveda wonderful apprenticeship for the task.

"Bri tain has favoured the classified cata-logue for many years and some examples al-ready existed on which the British national bib-liography might have been modelled. I had de-cided, however, to -irit r oduc e three techniquesinto the new National Bibliography which I hadlearnt from Ranganathan and which, so far as Iknow, had not been systematically used in Bri-tain before. These were: detailed featuring,chain indexing, and the imposition of the facetformula on the DC Schedules.

"All three of these techniques had been fullydiscussed by Ranganathan by 1949 in his sever-al text books. The alphabetical part of the Bri-tish national bibliography, like the systematicpart, owes its success to the theories of Ranga-nathan upon which it is built and without whicheven the variations that we have introducedcould not have been consciously done.

"An important and interesting by-productarose from the: decision to use features in theBritish national bibliography ••• and the demandfor subject headings of the conventional sort hasdiminished.

"We of the British national bibliography arepleased to acknowledge our debt to India and inparticular to Dr. Ranganathan by whose worksand inspiring friendship we have progr es sed toa new conception of the clas sified catalogue. "

Thus in the matter of subject headings in theIndian National Bibliography, the organisationwill do well to give up all outmoded techniquesgiven in the cataloguing books of the West andfollow the Chain Procedure prescribed in India'sClas sified catalogue code.

6 CLASSIFICATION

It is a matter for gratification that theIndian National Bibliography will be publishedin a classified form. The All India LibraryConference recommended that the entriesshould carry both the Decimal ClassificationNumber and the Colon Classification Number.The experimental fascicule since published has

Sep 1957 V 4 N 3

carried out the recommendation. The entries,however, are arranged by DC Numbers. Evenas it is, it is clearly evident that arrangementby CC Numbers will be more helpful. But amore satisfactory and scientific approach is toproduce another experimental fascicule arrang-ing entries by CC Numbers. Then only we shallhave suff~cient data to assess in a reliable waythe relative helpfulness of the two methods ofarrangement. Till now a comparison of thiskind has not been made on a large scale. Thispreliminary experiment on the Indian NationalBibliography provides an opportunity to do it.The authorities will do well to produce the par-allel fascicule and arrive at their final decisionby an objective comparative study of the ar-rangements.

61 Enumerative ~ Analytico-synthetic Scheme

It was accepted in the World Congress ofLibraries and Documentation Centres held inBrusselles in September 1955 that it was toolate in the day to continue an enumerativescheme of classification and that all futurework on classification would have to be analyt-ico-synthetic implementing facet-analysis.Decimal Classification, designed in Americain the seventies of the last century is an enu-merative scheme. Colon Classification de-signed in India in the thirties of the presentcentury, is the first and perhaps still the onlyone which is all-through analytico-synthetic.Perhaps it is wise to give the Decimal Numberto show deference to the pioneer Decimal Clas-sification and give the Colon Number out of def-erence to the current trend in classification.In India, the Insdoc List, being published by theIndian National Scientific Documentation Centre,had adopted both the Colon Classification andthe improved version of the Decimal Classifi-cation called Universal Decimal Classification.In view of the sequence of subjects inherent inthe Colon Classification being in better conso-nance with the sequence preferred in the schol-arly world than the sequence inherent in theDecimal Classification, the Insdoc has been ar-ranging the entries in its fortnightly List, inaccordance with the Colon Numbers. It ishoped that a similar practice will be followedby the Indian National Bibliography also.

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62 Informed Approach

The capitulation to t he pre-Gandhian prefer-ence to things foreign has to be cons ciou s Iy re-sisted. This resistance will De made easier inthe matter of Classification Scheme, if an in-formed approach is made to it. One means ofgetting at an informed approach is to study theexperience of the British national bibliography,which is the latest of National Bibliographiesof considerable coverage. This experience islaid bare fully by its editor in his contributionOu:: Debt to Indi~ already referred to. Her,'are some extracts:-

"The first problem was how to make D(Number co-extensive with the subject of ; book.This problem arises frequently with the r:c notonly because of the lack of numbers for newsubjects, but because of the structure of theclassification which makes it impossible to con-struct numbers for multi-faceted subjects.

"Even ha.d the DC Board been agreeabL:: toallowing the British national bibliography;o addits own digits to basic DC Numbers, this wouldnot have solved the problem because the DC no-tation in most cases makes expansion impossi-ble at the appropriate place. We solved thepr oblern by adding (a special symbol).

"Alphabetical arrangement of foci after (thespecial symbol) is negation of a systematicorder. This, of course, is a grave difficulty.The (special) symbol is nothing more than amakeshift. It has brought a temporary leaseof a new life to DC and made it possible notonly to introduce new subjects, but, what is per-haps even more important, to superimpose onthe errurner at iv e structure of DC the pattern ofthe facet formula. Probably few of those whouse the British national bibliography realisethat its order is determined by Ranganathan'sFacet Formula, but I am convinced that the suc-cess that the Bibliography has enjoyed is due tothe rhythm that this pattern imposes upon itsarrangement and to which the enquirer's mindinstinctively responds."

The fact is that modern trend in literarywarrant demands changing over from DC to ascheme like the Colon. But England is handi-capped and has to hug on to DC and prop it upbecause of its having widely adopted DC duringthe last seventy years. Is there any such handi-

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cap for the Indian National Bibliography? Ex-cepton grounds of uninformed approach to thep.rob lem , it is difficult to unde r st and why Indiashou ld take on itseH this vi ca r rou s suffering.

63 Realistic Approach

More than fifty percent of India's publica-tions today relate to the indological field - Indi-an literature, Indian linguistics, Indian reli-gion, Indian philosophy, Indian geography, .Indian history, and Indi ar. law. Decimal Clas-sification makes no pretension whatever in pro-viding the necessary numbers for rndo logica ls ubj ect s , Being of Arne r ic an origin, it is nat >

urally biassed towards Arner ica and deficient -.unbelievably defic ient _.in Indian subjects. Oururiive r s it v , college and school Libr a r ies , w hichform. the dominant section of the dev.sloped ~ib-raries in Indi a today, are rich only in occiden-tal books. T'h er efor e the mind of L,·,' .,orarypr ofe s siori is prevented f r om realising (he pe-culiar nature of the totality of India's own pub-lications, which baffle the capacity of the Deci-mal Classification. This factor is responsiblefor an unrealistic approach to the choice ofclassification scheme for the Indian nationalbibliography, which has to face the music ofindology. The authorities concerned should be-ware of the dangers of this unrealistic approach,and avert the incidence of a fiasco or a crash.

7 CONCLUSION

Thus the authcrities rnust consider withcare (i) the inappropriateness and unhelpful-ness to the public of using Roman script for theNational Bibliography; (ii) the helpfulness ofmaking the Indian national bibliography consistof separate linguistic volumes and fascicules;(Hi) the desirability of entrusting State CentralLibraries or their equivalents with the lingusiticvolumes and fascicules, and the National CentralLibrary with the fascicules in Sanskrit andEnglish; (iv) organising the work in such a waythat the project of National Bibliography caneventually be self supporting; (v) adoptingIndia's Clas sified catalogue code instead of theAngl.o-Arne r ic an code and (vi) arranging theentries in the classified part of the Bibliographyaccording to Colon Numbers and giving alsoDecimal Numbers for some years.

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