Thomas jefferson

             chased. Though the debate was partisan and often rancorous, Congress ap-.
             proved the purchase of the collection in early 1815 for $23,950.
             In March, only weeks before Jefferson's books were to be hauled in wagons.
             from Monticello to Washington, George Watterston was appointed Librarian.
             of Congress by President James Madison on the recommendation of Joseph.
             Milligan, the Georgetown bookseller who had appraised Jefferson's books for.
             Congress. Watterston's most pressing duty was to oversee the transfer of the.
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             Jefferson books and to install them in the temporary Capitol building. He later.
             wrote that he single-handedly labeled and arranged the books on shelves when.
             they arrived in Washington.
             When Jefferson offered his library to Congress in September 1814, he sent.
             along his handwritten catalog for the inspection of the congressional library.
             committee. Not only did this catalog arrange the books in subject categories,.
             but the categories themselves were part of an overall classification scheme that.
             was adapted from the second book of Francis Bacon's The Advancement of.
             Learning. "One of the most systematic of men," Dumas Malone has written of.
             Jefferson, "he was in character as a cataloguer." Perhaps no activity so repre-.
             sents the man and his distinctive mentality as the cataloging and classification.
             of books.
             In The Advancement of Learning, Bacon had organized all knowledge into.
             the categories of Memory, Reason, and Imagination. Memory was divided into.
             four parts: natural (which consisted of technology and information about inan-.
             imate and animate things), civil, ecclesiastical, and literary. Reason was broken.
             down into divine, natural, and civil sections. Lastly, Imagination was arranged.
             according to narrative, representative (drama), and parabolical (allegory). Jef-.
             ferson renamed Bacon's three categories History, Philosophy, and the Fine Arts.
             In the section devoted to History, Jefferson relegated Bacon's major division of.