The processing of excerpts follows the simplest algorithm: 1. When reading, everything of importance and whatever appears useful should be copied onto a good sheet of paper. 2. A new line should be used for every idea. 3. “ Finally, cut out everything you have copied with a pair of scissors; arrange the slips as you desire, fi rst into larger clusters which can then be subdivided again as often as necessary. ” 21 4. As soon as the desired order is produced, arranged, and sorted on tables or in small boxes, it should be fi xed or copied directly. 22

The second volume of the Bibliotheca Universalis , published in 1548 under the title Pandectarum sive Partitionum Universalium , contains a list of keywords, ordered not by authors ’ names, but thematically. This intro-duces a classifi cation of knowledge on the one hand, and on the other hand offers orientation for the novice about patterns and keywords (so-called loci communes ) that help organize knowledge to be acquired.

Gessner, however, examines every single book meticulously to gather complete specifi cations of format, title, authors (provided they are named or discoverable), place of publica-tion, and year of publication. 7 Then he appends a content description. Hence, Konrad Gessner can rightly count as the father of the modern bibliography.

Conrad Gesner, the German author of the founding work of modern bibliography, the boldly titled Bibliotheca Universalis, claimed to list all known extant books in learned languages (Greek, Hebrew, and Latin) of eighteen thousand indexed authors. While he complained of a “harmful abundance of books,” he nonetheless gained his fame by cataloguing them.