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Re: Sentimentality and Card Catalogs



For as many times as I have marvelled at the beauties of the online
catalog (such as long-distance searching and being able to take printed
search results into the stacks), I have also lamented the vanishing of
card catalogs.  For instance, when the system is down, or the network so
clogged that it seems to take eons to do one eeezy, leetle title
search... sheesh!

Give me the choice between drumming my fingers in boredom or impatience
while staring at one screen and waiting for another to come up (yawn!),
or busily browsing through dozens of cards, often making some
interesting or serendipitous discoveries along the way . . . I'd take
the latter.  Unless I'm already tired or my feet hurt.

Back in the '80s, my undergraduate college library still had some of its
handwritten, 19th-century cards, interfiled with the typed and printed
ones.  They were lovely, and there was something about finding tangible
evidence that a book had been there, available to others like me, so
many generations before. (This was a women's college, and I had been
raised in a fairly conservative environment, where bookish girls like
myself were viewed as a relatively modern and freakish phenomenon.)  The
handwritten reference cards were like touchstones, instant connections
to generations of other bookish women.  Sometimes, just out of
curiousity and for the sake of the sentimental detour, I went to the
stacks to find the books, even if they weren't exactly relevant to my
original search.  I'm sorry to say that the online catalog has never
inspired me in the same way.

Not quite a Luddite.  Only now and then.

Terry Taylor

University Archives
Kennedy Library
Cal Poly, SLO

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