Abstract This was a period of much argument over the relative virtues of classified and dictionary catalogs not only among librarians but among readers and scholars in general and even in reports to the House of Commons. Feelings ran very high on the subject, and rather emotional arguments came forth on both sides of the issue, from the statement that classified catalogs and indexes were not needed because living librarians were better than subject catalogs to the opinion that any intelligent man who was sufficiently interested in a subject to want to consult material on it could just as well use author entries as subject, for he would, of course, know the names of all the authors who had written in his field.