What is a Cotgreave Indicator?
On the second floor, you might spot a curious case (seen in the photo below). It’s an early library cataloguing system called a Cotgreave Indicator. The Cotgreave Indicator was invented by Alfred Cotgreave, an English librarian and inventor. As a young man Alfred Cotgreave spent time in the USA, and, much like Thomas Guille, had been greatly impressed by the libraries he’d encountered. After returning to England, he worked in various institutions around the country, and invented a number of devices to aid librarians and library users, including the Long-Arm Reacher for reaching books on the highest shelves, and the Cotgreave Indicator.
Each slot contains a tiny ledger (like a notepad) with a reference number, linking to a book in the Library. When someone borrowed a book, the Librarian would take out the corresponding ledger, filling in the date and the borrower’s membership number. The trays have a blue end and a red end, which was turned to indicate if the book was in or out – blue was out, red was in. The system’s flaw was the huge amount of space it took up – in a big library in England, the Indicator might have to be forty feet long to represent the whole collection. Partly as a result, the Cotgreave Indicator fell out of use in most English libraries around the turn of the century, but it remained in place at the Guille-Allès for many decades. It was finally removed in 1962 as the Library became open access, following the lead of libraries around the UK.
Alfred Cotgreave in Guernsey
Cotgreave was ‘headhunted’ by Guille and Allès to compile the Library's first catalogue. They bought him over to Guernsey in 1888 and he was made the Library's first Chief Librarian. He was something of a celebrity in the library world, and his appointment was considered a ‘coup’ for the fledgling Guille-Allès, bringing national attention to a library that was unusually large and ambitious for such a small place – in the words of Cotgreave himself, “Our contemporaries seem surprised that an island like this should possess such a splendid institution.”
Once that work was complete, Guille & Allès decided Cotgreave’s services were no longer required – displaying the hard-nosed edge that had served them so well in their New York business. Cotgreave left Guernsey in 1890, with a gift from Library staff of an engraved Binocular Field-Glass. He became Chief Librarian in West Ham, but later wrote rather wistfully that his time in Guernsey had been the best years of his life.
You can find the Cotgreave Indicator, with further photos and archive items related to Alfred Cotgreave, on the second floor landing.
(LEFT) Alfred Cotgreave and his invention - the Long Arm Reacher and (RIGHT) one panel of the Cotgreave Indicator on the first floor of the Library in the early 1900s.