"The Day is Not Yet Come...": Book-Jackets in Library Catalogs

In 1971 the eminent American scholar G. Thomas Tanselle wrote: “the day has not yet come when one can learn anything of a library's holdings of jackets by consulting its catalogue.” Forty-four years later, library catalogs still do not allow that. Book-jackets, whose “original sin” is their being physically separate from the book, are nevertheless essential documents for the history of publishing. This article aims to show the necessity for access to the information about a single book's book-jacket directly from the library catalog; it considers the reasons why catalogers usually “distrust” book-jackets; and it aims to determine whether there is any change in attitude about taking book-jackets into account in cataloging.