Jacobs, Jane W wrote:
> However, it is worth noting that the Card catalog did have consistent "look and feel" from library to library. It provided customers with a familiar looking interface, a certain level of comfort and the illusion that they knew what they were doing when they searched it.
Jane confessed to no nostalgia for the card catalogue, not I'm not
disagreeing with her in any serious way.
... but
The notion that the card catalogue had a consistent look and feel, in
the libraries where I worked pre-automation has all the validity of the
notion that all green screen systems were the same because of VT-100
emulation, ... or that all web browsers work the same. (The last time
*that* statement was true was the night before Mosaic was released.)
Don't confuse physical form and the mess that folks choose to inscribe
upon it.
I worked in systems that featured every rule set issued by a cataloguing
authority from 1920, and just about every conceivable (and a few
inconceivable) variations: hand written cards; cards with no tracings
so the subject cards were effectively abandonned in the drawers;
non-fiction with no subjects (or "local" ones); with placement of this
information on the card as variable as its selection. Not to mention
rules on the truncation of information to fit on one (rarely two) cards.
(Heaven forbid there be more than three subjects). Not to mention the
blatant disregard for the ALA filing rules. Look closely inside many,
many card catalogues and the skeletons were dancing.
To date the best suggestion I've seen for one of the card catalogue
units was repurposing as a Barbie (tm) morgue.
Just give me a system where all reasonable traces of a discarded/lost
item really *are* removable from the system so my reference staff aren't
lying to the users.
Walter Lewis
Halton Hills
who feels only positive relief at the demise of the card catalog(ue)
Received on Fri Jun 16 2006 - 07:53:02 EDT