Catalog of Dictionaries, Word Books, and Philological Texts, 1440-1900

The Cordell Collection of Dictionaries is the world's largest, with over 5100 pre-1901 titles and several thousand more from the twentieth century. A short-title catalog and a compilation of English-language holdings for the pre-1901 materials have been published previously, but here, for the first time, is an extensive conflated listing which interfiles foreign and English-language materials, and gives access to holdings through a date index, a language index, and a subject guide. Organized alphabetically by author (or by title for main-entry titles), the catalog's arrangement by-date under the main entry offers a sense of publishing history for individual lexicographers. The catalog not only contains exact information on the holdings at Indiana State University, but also provides guidance for the use of sources that may be available in other collections. The Warren N. and Suzanne B. Cordell Collection of Dictionaries, housed at Cunningham Memorial Library, Indiana State University, is the world's largest collection of dictionaries, with over 5100 pre-1901 titles and several thousand more from the twentieth century. A short title catalog and a compflation of English-language holdings for the pre-1901 materials have been published previously, but here, for the first time, is an extensive conflated listing which interfiles foreign and English-language materials, and gives access to holdings through a date index, a language index, and a subject guide. Organized alphabetically by author, editor, or compiler (or by title in the case of main-entry titles), the catalog's arrangement by-date under the main entry offers a sense of publishing history for individual lexicographers. The catalog not only contains exact information on the holdings at Indiana State University, but also provides guidance for the use of sources that may be available in less extensive collections. Aside from obvious utility in the areas of languages, linguistics, and lexicography, the catalog provides valuable information for research in other fields, particularly Western European political history and social anthropology. Designed for researchers and collectors alike, the work has been compressed into a convenient format. As descriptive information on individual titles has been sacrificed for completeness, researchers on English-language dictionaries may also wish to consult English-Language Dictionaries, 1604-1900, cataloged and compiled by Robert Keating O'Neill (Greenwood Press, 1988).

DAVID E. VANCIL is Head, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Cunningham Memorial Library, Indiana State University. A specialist in lexicography and rare books, he has published articles on these subjects in Antiquarian Book Monthly Review, AB Bookman's Weekly, and other sources. He also teaches poetry writing and has published a poetry chapbook, The Art School Baby (1992), as well as fiction and poetry in magazines and journals.