Apologies for cross-posting, but I thought both groups may be interested.
Periodically, I play around with the Google Ngram Viewer. It has been
much improved since its first appearance.
I decided to search it for usage of the terms:
"book catalog", "card catalog", (US and British spellings)
"OPAC" added with "online catalog" and "electronic catalog" (not with
British spelling)
and then to compare these with the usage of "keyword search" or "online
search" (with -ing variants).
I started from 1875 because results before then were negligible. It is
easy enough to change the dates. The results are at: bit.ly/Zraoxc
<http://bit.ly/Zraoxc>
"Book catalog(ue)" has never been used extensively.
"Card catalog(ue)" is still used widely, although it has dropped off
precipitously since the early 1980s, obviously reflecting the
introduction of online catalogs. I have noticed that people (even young
people) often ask for the "card catalog" even though they have never
seen one in their lives. It may be like people asking "Do you have any
films?" when they are not thinking of film itself, but of DVDs or
streaming video.
"OPAC, etc." rose while "card catalog" fell, but nevertheless topped out
in 1994 and has dropped off dramatically.
"Keyword search(ing)" and "online search(ing)" rocketed up during the
later 1970s to outstrip everything by the mid-1980s but has fallen
almost as sharply since then, even falling below "card catalog(ue)".
Only in 2005 did it once again overtake "OPAC, etc."
This next graph focuses on the use of "OPAC" "online catalog" and
"electronic catalog" bit.ly/YP7dll <http://bit.ly/YP7dll> This reveals
that "OPAC" was popular for awhile during the mid-1990s but has declined
in favor of "online catalog". "Electronic catalog" never was very
popular. I didn't include "digital catalog" because it didn't register.
When I add yet another term however, the result is even more intriguing.
bit.ly/16juAHS <http://bit.ly/16juAHS> The term "search engine" blows
everything else away. It first appeared in the early 1990s and already
by 1995 had overtaken "card catalog" and "OPAC, etc." although it fell
slightly in the last couple of years.
Of course, it is impossible to draw any real conclusions, but since this
shows the relative use of the terms within the Google Books corpus, it
should reflect more or less what has been published. This may reflect
the relative importance of the different technologies in the public
perception, in other words, that search engines are *several times* more
important in the public perception than are the various library-created
tools.
Such a result shouldn't be surprising but I thought was interesting
enough to share.
A caveat, the ngram viewer works only with exact searches, so
capitalization and plurals make a difference. I didn't bother except for
the word OPAC. Of course, OCR is also not completely reliable.
--
*James Weinheimer* weinheimer.jim.l_at_gmail.com
*First Thus* http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/
*Cooperative Cataloging Rules*
http://sites.google.com/site/opencatalogingrules/
*Cataloging Matters Podcasts*
http://blog.jweinheimer.net/p/cataloging-matters-podcasts.html
Received on Sun Mar 10 2013 - 11:56:55 EDT