I have a question about catalog cards -- a retro-request; do you have a complete set of catalog cards describing a single book?
In an analog environment, the card catalog is/was pretty cool. Have an item in hand. Determine things like author, title, subjects, added entries, and call number. Using a standardized layout, type all of this information on a set of 3x5 cards. File the cards with all of the other cards describing a library's collection. Allow patrons to search/browse the cards as surrogates for the real items.
The really cool part of this system is/was the tracings. Look up a title. See that it is written by a particular author and has been given a number of subject headings. Follow the author tracing to find other works by the same person. Follow the subject tracings to find "more like this one". Ironically, it really wasn't until I went to library school that I learned how to take advantage of this system.
For more than twenty years I have desired to illustrate the coolness of this system by framing an entire set of catalog cards describing a single work. At the top I would put the main entry card(s). Below that I would put the subject, author, added entry, and self list card(s). The whole thing would look much like a two-diminsional pyramid when I'm done, and it would literally display how the cards were inter-related.
Does anybody here know where I can get a complete set of catalog cards for any given work? A set with only one or two added entries and two or three subjects would be ideal.
--
Eric Lease Morgan
University of Notre Dame
Received on Thu May 27 2010 - 11:00:26 EDT