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What libraries lost when they threw out the card catalog

washingtonpost.com

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Re: What libraries lost when they threw out the card catalog

#71

Post by aaron695 »

> “tagged” by category owes its existence as an organizing principle to the subject headings delineated by the Library of Congress. A national card catalogue system was the original “search engine” — one that needed no electricity, no service providers or broadband or smartphones, and that was truly democratic.

Democratic my ass. Card catalogs where as bigoted as the people who wrote them. A small subset of the population.

Things on the internet are not tagged, because as a concept it sucks. It has never worked even if Cory and Clay loved them 10 years ago.

This is such a strange article since the nostalgic side that's lost is interesting. The extended skill to use them is interesting (A lost art form) and the bias lost in their writing is interesting too. There is a really interesting article possible here.

Re: What libraries lost when they threw out the card catalog

#72

Post by edflsafoiewq »

nkrisc wrote: post #32
randomf1fan wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with your basic point, there's something to be said about anonymously searching for information in a non-dynamic fashion (that is, the catalogue is exactly the same for everyone - it doesn't rearrange itself based on your profile) I love technology and all it brings us, but I find browsing in a good bookstore often more helpful than Amazon's recommendations or GoodReads or what have you. And the best pa…

That's a good point. Though there's no reason a computerized system couldn't do that, most of them just don't. Also I don't think electronic catalogs replace human recommendations, just the card system.

With a card catalog, the fact that the system does not do that is obvious to the user.

Re: What libraries lost when they threw out the card catalog

#73

Post by bumblebeard »

ams6110 wrote: post #68

Not just the card catalog but the entire concept of library has been lost. Libraries have been transformed from places where people could come to read, research and explore into community homeless shelters that provide online porn access and bathrooms that are basically shooting galleries.

Where are you that your local library is like this?

I've been to a few public libraries in my state and none of them have been like this. Most of them aren't very busy but they're always clean and usually have a decent selection of books and media. My local library is especially good; they have an entire floor devoted to children's books and I often see families in there picking out books together.

Re: What libraries lost when they threw out the card catalog

#74

Post by bumblebeard »

magic_beans wrote: post #29
losteverything wrote: post #4

Anyone remember taking Library Class? Learning card catalogue, Dewey decimal system, how to use microfiche, film strips, difference between fiction and non-fiction? Part of cycle: home ec, industrial arts and keyboarding (elec piano)

Yes. And this was in 1998. Feels ridiculously irrelevant. Just like my third grade teacher who was adamant that we would only ever be able to write in cursive and in black ink in high school, college, and the workplace, and that to write in manuscript with pencils was not something any respectable adult would do...

I doing some work in a school just a year ago that still taught cursive to their students. I asked why and their response was pretty much just "because that's what you do in third grade." I don't get it.

Re: What libraries lost when they threw out the card catalog

#75

Post by empthought »

bumblebeard wrote: post #73
ams6110 wrote: post #68

Not just the card catalog but the entire concept of library has been lost. Libraries have been transformed from places where people could come to read, research and explore into community homeless shelters that provide online porn access and bathrooms that are basically shooting galleries.

Where are you that your local library is like this? I've been to a few public libraries in my state and none of them have been like this. Most of them aren't very busy but they're always clean and usually have a decent selection of books and media. My local library is especially good; they have an entire floor devoted to children's books and I often see families in there picking out books together.

There are news horror stories about a few major metropolitan libraries in crime-ridden areas, and the grandfather poster generalized them to all 10,000+ other public libraries in the country.

That's the only explanation I can think of, anyway.

Re: What libraries lost when they threw out the card catalog

#76

Post by smkellat »

aqsalose wrote: post #28

One problem with digital databases: What if the electricity goes out for a very long time? Or a nefarious hacker manages to destroy the database? (Or all librarians' terminals are locked by NotPetya...) Library without catalog is, while not totally worthless, much more difficult to use. The physical card catalog, like other paper-based archives, is more resistant to attacks. For it to be destroyed, you need to cause…

Frankly you get the cataloger(s) out of their office/cubicle/holding pen, sit the cataloger(s) down at the reference desk, and have them work from memory guiding people through the classification system. You won't have the same level of granularity in searching but by general subject you'll be able to get to where you're looking to go. Been there, done that, wrote the plan while I was Cataloger for a community college in an area at risk for tsunamis. Those call numbers are there for a reason and have very important meanings.

Re: What libraries lost when they threw out the card catalog

#77

Post by JCharante »

aqsalose wrote: post #28

One problem with digital databases: What if the electricity goes out for a very long time? Or a nefarious hacker manages to destroy the database? (Or all librarians' terminals are locked by NotPetya...) Library without catalog is, while not totally worthless, much more difficult to use. The physical card catalog, like other paper-based archives, is more resistant to attacks. For it to be destroyed, you need to cause…

> Or a nefarious hacker manages to destroy the database

offsite backups?

Re: What libraries lost when they threw out the card catalog

#78

Post by smkellat »

yuhong wrote: post #40

This makes me think about lending books during power outages.

Oh, there are contingency plans for that. They're pretty easy. Writing down barcode numbers and then doing a mass "check out" event on a whole list when power is back covers things.

In an extended event, some backup supplies on-hand from Brodart to handle things Jersey-style with temporary card pockets is easily doable.

Re: What libraries lost when they threw out the card catalog

#79

Post by aqsalose »

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #69
aqsalose wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>For it to be destroyed, you need to cause physical damage However, I'd like to have redundancy. Backups . Library catalogs are quite critical when it comes to using the combined amount of information the humankind has amassed: It's critical infrastructure. We maintain also backups for things like seeds [1]. You would need just an automated machinery to create printout backups once in a while. It does not necessarily…

So, you are saying the library should store some solar panels and spare computers somewhere? Creating electricity to run a computer is not really that difficult.

I do a feel a bit silly about not considering this. (Okay, the feasibility of solar depends on the local climate. But alternative local methods to generate electricity exist.)

It even also provides some form of resilience that I was calling for: assuming there is a backup system, less-electricity dependent functionality could be recreated if it's considered a worthwhile option.

Re: What libraries lost when they threw out the card catalog

#80

Post by aqsalose »

tpeo wrote: post #55
aqsalose wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If the electricity is out for a very long time I imagine that's not isolated to the library and people will have much larger problems to worry about. Well, yes. But a library rendered unusable is also a major problem, in the long run. And especially if it's not just the local library, but all of them in the country? I would probably need to read the book in question to be able to do Fermi estimates on what kind of a…

What do you mean by "in the long run"? Because a library being rendered unusable for a definite length of time wouldn't be a problem in the long run unless we're talking about a system with path dependence. And even if there is some path dependence, it's not quite obvious whether or not that's a major problem. For example, not being able to lend a book during a few hours could be only thing preventing some terminally…

>Plus, it misses the point: in the event of something able to take out something crucial to the entire US library system for any appreciable length of time, the librarians themselves would most likely have far more pressing concerns in their hands. And that would be our new single point of failure.

I'm not exactly sure if I'm following you, but the general idea of this kind of "resilience" is to introduce enough safety / backup measures at all points in the society so that there is less things that hinge on "single point of failure".

The scenario I had in mind was a national grid of a much smaller country going down. (Apparently bringing up all the power plants back online is not as straightforward operation as flipping some switches 'on'.) For example, in conjunction with other crisis (say, conventional war with cyberattack component) that would turn out to taking much longer than anticipated (because aren't they all "over by Christmas"), so there might be an adversary interested in keeping it down.

And the libraries are not the only institutions handling critical data that used to be stored on paper but now exist on computers. The particular solution of retaining backup paper card system might be silly or otherwise prove infeasible at closer inspection, but what kind of backup systems the current institutions have?

edit. Looking at the rest of the comments, smkellat might have provided a splendidly simple answer upthread. At least, concerning libraries.

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