"What can be more easy (those lacking understanding say), having looked at the title pages than to write down the titles?" But these inexperienced people, who think making an index of their own few private books a pleasant task of a week or two, have no conception of the difficulties that rise or realize how carefully each book must be examined when the library numbers myriads of volumes. In the colossal labor, which exhausts both body and soul, of making into a alphabetical catalog a multitude of books gathered from every corner of the earth there are many intricate and difficult problems that torture the mind.
--Sir Thomas Hyde’s Preface to the Catalogue of the Bodleian Library (1674) from Svenonius. The Intellectual Foundation of Information Organization
