21 Matching Annotations
  1. Mar 2025
  2. Feb 2024
    1. , one of the reasons that the New York Public Library had toclose its public catalog was that the public was destroying it. TheHetty Green cards disappeared. Someone calling himself Cosmoswas periodically making o with all the cards for Mein Kampf. Cardsfor two Dante manuscripts were stolen: not the manuscripts, thecards for the manuscripts.
    2. book at a public phone rather than bothering to copy down anaddress and a phone number, library visitors—the heedless, thecrazy—have, especially since the late eighties, been increasinglycapable of tearing out the card referring to a book they want.

      The huge frozen card catalog of the Library of Congress currently suers from alarming levels of public trauma: like the movie trope in which the private eye tears a page from a phone

    3. “Atthe end of this project,” Dale Flecker told me, “there won’t be cardcatalogs left in the university.” I asked him if there were any cardcatalogs, anywhere in the world, that he thought worthy ofpreservation. “In general, they’re being discarded,” he said. “I’m notsure I know of anybody who’s decided to preserve them as physicalobjects.” Maureen Finn said much the same thing to me: “Theinstitutions still want the cards back, and then I think they’re storingthem. But most library managers that I talk to will say, ‘We arestoring them because it makes the sta feel good, and we will begetting rid of them.’ ”

      Interesting psychology being played out here....

    4. Chancellor Edward N. Brandt, Jr., wearing ared T-shirt that said “The Great Discard,” chose a drawer of thecatalog and pulled it from the cabinet. With the help of a beamingCyril Feng, who was then the director of the library, he drew theretaining rod from the chosen drawer and let its several hundredcards ceremonially spill into a trash can decorated with coloredpaper.

      The intellectual historian in me: 😱

    1. The information neatly typed on the cards – which library workers sometimes supplemented with handwritten notes on front and back – includes details that in many cases are not typically part of the electronic catalog system, Virgo, that the University Library switched to in 1989. At the time, the catalog was transferred by scanning that captured only the front of the cards.

      Libraries may have handwritten notes on the back of library card catalog cards in the 20th century, a practice which caused data loss in the case of the Alderman Library which only scanned the front of their cards in 1989 when they made the switch from physical cards to a digital catalog.

  3. Jan 2024