You have to look at the results, not just the stats. Card catalogs were
very big in a wide variety of businesses and disciplines, not just in
libraries. Prior to automation, many businesses that had to keep track
of what today we would put into a database used cards.
" the Bureau has actively continued the compilation of a /card
catalogue/ of the archeological sites"
" As a result, the Bureau now possesses a /card catalogue/, each card
presenting either a brief statement of a labour event or else a summary
of an article on a labour subject to be found in other libraries"
" This Directory had its origin in a /card catalogue/ of the
professional anthropologists of the United States and Canada, begun in l926"
I do think that libraries were on the forefront of the modern
"organization by card catalog" technology, but card-like systems had
been in use in the early days of encyclopedias.[1] What is interesting
about this history is how the (re-)invention of card systems in the
early 1900's prepared us for the computer, which initially was a machine
that processed cards more quickly than humans could and in more
different ways.
kc
[1] some interesting reading: Too much to know, by Ann M. Blair, which
has quite a bit on use of techniques for indexing (before 1700), and
Paper Machine, by Markus Krajewski, which covers cards and catalogs from
1548-1929 (from a German viewpoint, missing some significant
developments elsewhere, but still interesting.)
On 3/10/13 8:56 AM, James Weinheimer wrote:
> 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.
>
--
Karen Coyle
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet
Received on Sun Mar 10 2013 - 12:34:56 EDT