Dan,
What is the "library card catalog"? ;-)
Does it have Ctrl-F in it or can you just google it? ;-)
:D
It sounds along the lines of "LP records", "DIALING a phone",
"TAPING a conversation/interview", ...
Actually, many science students (including graduate ones), when asked to
do a literature search start with googling first, instead of going to a
dedicated bibliographic engine, like Web of Science or INSPEC.
(And, unfortunately, some even stop there...)
But, on another hand, the fuzzy search implemented by Google, sometimes
helps finding some results based on vague information.
Around 1992-1993, I heard this story from a friend-librarian. She saw some
inter-library request form that went through a bunch of major
international libraries (in the US and Europe) without much of success:
they couldn't find the source requested. At the Russian State Library (the
national library located in Moscow, that used to be called "Lenin State
Public library of the USSR"), which by the function is similar to the US
Library of Congres in the US, they found the source. The reason for
success was that in 1992-1993, they were still using manual catalog
search in Moscow, and the human essentially performed a "fuzzy search",
while the computer-based catalog searches performed at other major
libraries in the world failed.
BTW, I had fun looking at your photo.
Igor
Daniel J. Matyola Sat, 02 Jan 2016 07:32:57 -0800 wrote:
The "Cabinet of Mysteries" in my earlier PESO was indeed a library
card catalog cabinet, as Paul and others noted. It was were all
research was done, back before library books became computerized. The
one in my PESO is a relic, saved and now used to catalog the back
issues of The Daily Dartmouth, the student newspaper of my alma mater,
which is America's oldest college newspaper, published continuously
since August 27, 1799.
In my day, the main hall of Baker Library at Dartmouth was crammed
with hundreds of these cabinets, all overflowing with index cards
containing information on the more than 1,000,000 volumes kept in the
stacks and special collections. I spent many hours searching through
the cards, especially when working on my thesis.
This is what that main hall looks like today:
http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=18151516
To me, it appears almost vacant, compared to the days when one could
hardly move between the catalog card cabinets.
Most young people today would have no idea how to use a library card
catalog.
--
PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List
PDML@pdml.net
http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow
the directions.
