The Declaration of Independence Checklist is a list (check list, bibliography, catalog, catalogue,
guide, guidebook, handbook, source book, reference book) of books, pamphlets, periodicals, and newspapers, printing the
complete text of the Declaration of Independence, in English. The standard dictionary definitions of the terms checklist,
bibliography, catalog, catalogue, guide, guidebook, handbook, source book, and reference book, include (although not
limited to) the following descriptions:
A list is a series of items written one after the other.
A checklist is a list of items to be checked or considered.
A bibliography
is a list of writings relating to a given subject.
A catalog or catalogue is a list (or
publication containing such a list) of titles arranged systematically.
A short title catalog is
a bibliographical resource that identifies books on a certain subject.
A guide is something, such
aas a pamphlet, that offers basic information (e.g., a guidebook).
A handbook is a reference
work intended to provide ready reference.
A source book or reference book is a book to
which one can refer for authoritative information.
Bibliographers Ralph R. SHaw and Richard H. Shoemaker
used the term checklist in the title of their 19-volume book entitled "American Bibliography, a preliminary
checklist, 1801-1819," published in 1958. Today, the term checklist is used to describe a variety of
bibliographic works.
Fredson Bowers, in his book "Principles of Bibliographical Description," states the following:
"Descriptive bibliography is an outgrowth of the catalogue, or hand-list, a type of compilation which
will always exist as one of the basic needs of scholarship. Although certain distinctions are sometimes made between a catalogue
and handlist (or checklist), it is convenient to treat the two forms as synonymous. Their primary purpose is to make
available a listing of books in a certain collection or library, or else in a certain field, such as a specific period, a
particular type of literature, a definite subject, or an individual author."
Philip Gaskelll, in his book "A
New Introduction to Bibliography," has this to say: "'Bibliography', meaning a list of books described
in more or less detail, is an over-used and ambiguous word, for it is applied to anything from an abbreviated check-list
of references to a minutely particularized descriptive investigation....A bibliography based on analytical techniques
is not the same thing as a catalogue of particular books, however detailed the catalogue may be."
