"The time will perhaps come when our views upon this subject will be extended, and either Government or some public society will undertake the systematic cataloguing and indexing of masses of historical and scientific information, which are now almost closed against inquiry" (1st ed., vol. ii., p. 405; 2nd ed., p. 718).
In the following year Mr. Edward Solly and I, without having then seen this passage, consulted as to the possibility of starting an Index Society, but postponed the actual carrying out of the scheme for a time. In July of this same year, 1875, Mr. J. Ashton Cross argued in a pamphlet that a universal index might be formed by co-operation through a clearing-house, and would pay if published in separate parts. In September, 1877, some letters by Mr. W. J. Thoms, who signed himself "A Lover of Indexes," were published in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, in which the foundation of an Index Society was strongly urged. In October, 1877, Mr. Cross read a paper before the Conference of Librarians, which was a revival of the scheme previously suggested. Mr. Robert Harrison, late Secretary of the London Library, in a report of the Conference of Librarians published in the _Athenæum_ for October 13th, 1877, wrote:
"Could not a permanent Index Society be founded with the support of voluntary contributions of money as well as of subject matter? In this way a regular staff could be set to work, under competent direction, and could be kept steadily at work until its performances became so generally known and so useful as to enable it to stand alone and be self-supporting. Many readers would readily jot down the name of any new subject they met with in the book before them, and the page on which it occurs, and forward their notes to be sorted and arranged by any society that would undertake the work."
Mr. Justin Winsor, the late distinguished librarian of Harvard University, writing to the _Athenæum_, said:
"We have been in America striving for years to get some organised body to undertake this very work."
Following on all this correspondence, the Index Society was founded; but after doing some useful work it was amalgamated with the Index Library founded by Mr. Phillimore, having failed from want of popular support. This want of permanent success was probably owing to its aim being too general. Those who were interested in one class of index cared little for indexes which were quite different in subject.