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Boiled eggs, card catalogues, etc.
My seventh grade home ec teacher from Georgia confused lots of non-Southern
military folks with her references to balled aggs. Frankly, I thought they
were pretty good for breakfast...
__________________
It's Friday afternoon and since everyone else is either off or at a meeting,
I'm at the front desk. Not the archives desk. Though come to think of it,
the particular software we use for checking books in and out is antique. So
is the online catalogue. Fortunately there is also a web interface for the
catalogue-and I direct all students and faculty to that. There are, however,
a few faculty who believe that the students must use the antique catalogue to
do assignments, and have actually written assignments out with instructions
such as "type An and then a space, then type in the author's name." If
you're going to go into that much detail, tell them to put in the last name
first. Better yet, just let them use the point and click web version. Kids
today get confused with command driven programs. Point and click menus are
where it's at. You'd think they'd understand PC's better than they do. But
sometimes I tire of being the one everyone looks for when they can't open
their WordPerfect file on the college's Microsoft Word setups.
(I hope y'all appreciate the work I'm putting into keyboarding this. For a
week now I've been suffering from a pinched nerve and can't use the A and S
fingers. My right hand still touch types and the left hand does a warped
"hunt and peck" routine. Who had that theory about schizophrenic manuscript
cataloguers?)
This place has two catalogues in a matter of speaking-the old character based
antique software and the newer variant web version. I perhaps shouldn't
mention that there's a shelf list in a traditional card catalogue cabinet in
my office. Obviously something like that belongs in the archives… Perhaps I
also shouldn't mention the card catalogue cabinet at my home office holds a
card catalogue of the family library. If you can imagine doing communion
backwards then you'd understand how I'd feel to confess that I catalogued the
stuff on the PC first then printed out the cards to file in the cabinet.
Kinda sacrilegiously backwards.
Who would catalogue their home collection? It's a long story I won't go
into, but family obligations can put you up to things you'd have never
considered otherwise. Keeping track of 189x volumes that Grandma's British
friends sent to the children back in the 192x's is something that can please
parental units. But perhaps not N Baker. I did it backwards, remember.
So I browse this 1939 issue of Wilson Bulletin looking at an ad for copies of
the newly revised Jenkins manual on archives to be shipped free from Britain
to interested libraries and wondering if the offer still stands. There's
also the Union List of newspapers. Should I pass the info on to the guy with
a thing about newspapers (and card catalogues)?
Perhaps not; I'll just call it a Friday afternoon and go home.
Holly Hodges
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