The Pilgrim Trust provided finance for the project and in March 1944 Miss Hands started work at Worcester Cathedral where she worked until August of that year, cataloguing 3230 books printed before 1701. It was originally intended that all entries should be made in duplicate so that a copy could be left for each cathedral. This proved to be too time-consuming, though as late as 1956 Miss Hands was still trying to devise a way of providing such a record. The Society can now make good this debt through publication of the Catalogue, something which was only tentatively considered at the beginning of the project.
Miss Hands estimated that there were approximately 20,000 -- 25,000 books to be catalogued and that the work could be completed in six years. In fact, this estimate must be doubled (at least) --- this first volume contains about the same number of entries simply for the English books and the number of individual copies is far in excess of this. Consequently, when the grant from the Pilgrim Trust finally ran out after twelve years in 1956, Miss Hands had catalogued the early printed books of twenty-eight cathedrals. Several of the remaining libraries were known to be very large and the Society was for many years perplexed as to what steps it should take to see the catalogue completed.
The catalogue boxes were made available to scholars in the North Library at the British Museum Library, while the Society made frequent efforts to renew the impetus. Miss Hands had married (becoming Mrs McLeod) and a sick husband prevented her giving much time to the catalogue. In 1966 after his death she returned (at the age of 79) to deal with Carlisle Cathedral. Thereafter she still managed to continue with editorial work on the catalogue in the North Library. She died quite recently, in June 1979 (obituary in The Library, 6, ii, 1980, p.86). Present workers on the Catalogue would like to record their admiration for her astonishing achievement, the fruits of which they have inherited.
Before she died, Mrs McLeod was able to learn that the Society had at last managed to obtain a new source of subsidy for the project. The newly established British Library had been empowered to make grants to historical cataloguing projects and in 1976 the Society was successful in obtaining a grant to catalogue Salisbury and Wells. This work was undertaken by Miss Suzanne Eward (now Librarian at Salisbury) whose initial work at Salisbury in 1977 had been financed from the Society's own funds supplemented by a donation from the late Dr N.R. Ker and a grant from the British Academy. Some work at York was also undertaken as part of the British Library grant.
At the same time, the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury Cathedral obtained a British Library grant to catalogue the pre-1801 books at Canterbury, with a condition that cataloguing information should be supplied to the Cathedral Libraries Catalogue. Work at Canterbury was started in 1978 under the direction of Mr W.J. Simpson, the University Librarian, and Dr D.J. Shaw, a lecturer in French at the University and a member of the Bibliographical Society's Council. Mrs M. Brown and Miss K. James worked on the Canterbury material until mid 1980, preparing a MARC catalogue (MAchine Readable Catalogue) which is stored on the University computer at Canterbury.
Durham Cathedral also successfully asked the British Library for a cataloguing grant for the pre-1801 books, to be supervised by Dr A.I. Doyle, Keeper of Rare Books at Durham University Library, who was at that time Chairman of the Bibliographical Society's Cathedral Libraries Committee with Dr Shaw as his Secretary. The grant was again made conditional on submission of data for incorporation into the Union Catalogue. The work at Durham was done mainly by Miss S. Strongman (now Mrs Hingley), Mr R. Kornicki and Mr D. Pearson (who had previously given some voluntary help at Canterbury), directed by Miss E.M. Rainey.
By 1980, it was clear that completion of the Catalogue was sufficiently certain for thought to be given to publication. The outstanding tasks were to complete the cataloguing of the York material and to incorporate this and the Canterbury and Durham material into the catalogue boxes which Miss Eward had inherited at Salisbury and Wells. It was realised that the material would also require considerable editing, since it had its origin in several independent catalogue projects.
The Bibliographical Society once again applied to the British Library and was awarded a grant to edit the Catalogue and publish it in two volumes --- a finding list of STC and Wing books (the English material), and a short-title catalogue of the continental material. The project was offered accommodation in the University Library at Canterbury and was to be processed on the University computer using the programs which Dr Shaw had developed for the Canterbury Cathedral project. Dr Shaw was asked to be Editor-in-Chief and Miss James transferred from the Canterbury Cathedral catalogue to work on the project as Editorial Assistant. The catalogue boxes were moved to Canterbury and work started on the English material in early 1981. The problem of the York material was soon resolved. The Bibliographical Society found monies from its own funds to have a list (rather than a catalogue) prepared for the pre-1701 English material for Volume One of the Catalogue. This work was done by David Pearson before he moved to Durham.
This account brings us to the publication (jointly by the Bibliographical Society and the British Library) of the first part of the Catalogue. There had been an earlier intention to produce a microfiche catalogue of Miss Hands's hand-written slips, but the addition of the Canterbury, Durham and York material, all on slips of different physical size and layout, made this impracticable. We hope that the present solution of splitting the catalogue into English and continental sections and using computer methods to store and print the catalogue will offer scholars a usable end-product at an acceptable price.