Author-numbers, or book-marks The books in a given group or class should stand on the shelves in the alphabetical order of their authors' names, though this is not necessary in a small library.

This result is best secured by adding to the class-mark of every book another mark, called an author-number or book-number or book-mark, made up of the first letter of the author's name and certain figures.

Books bearing these author-numbers, if arranged first alphabetically by the letters, and then in the numerical order of the numbers following the letters, will always stand in the alphabetical order of the authors' names.

Different books by the same author are distinguished from one another by adding other figures to the author-number, or by adding to the author-numbers the first letter of the title of each book.
These book-marks cannot be chosen arbitrarily.

They should be taken from the printed set of them worked out by Mr Cutter, and called the Cutter author-tables.