How to rebuild the card catalogue

[MEA]

Aside from they fact that the furniture and cards are gone -- just how much work can a librarian get done in her away from desk time with a manual type writer or a pen?

Has anyone give this much thought?

At my branch, the best I can come up with is to take the old paper records of patrons out of the drawers, and use them for catalogue cards -- skip author cards for the moment and interfile subject and title. Fiction goes by the wayside for now, and we make doomer books a priority. Of course we need pockets again, and circulation cards.


For a small library where the librarian knows the collection (or several librarian know part of it well) it might not be such a nightmare, but how the heck are we going to be able to instantly step back 50 years or so in book retrieval?

[cygnus]

You know, that's a really good question.  And then we have the problem of private libraries, like mine, where you would have the need to keep track of who has borrowed what book so you can be more certain of getting it back.  I've thought about that a little, and have almost decided that I won't let my books leave the house in that case, unless I know and trust the other person implicitly.  But that won't work for a real library. 

I wonder how much a case of pockets and cards costs...and if they are even available anymore?

[MEA]

You can get pocket cards for about $6/100 from Gaylord ($4/400 if you order over 300) and pockets about #25/500  -- I expect you can find them more cheaply if you look elsewhere.

For a small collection, you could just use file cards without pockets and have something like all  books are due last Saturday of the month.

[speaksoftly]

I'm not sure we could step back in time for real. With knowledge of the classification system used in each library, librarians would at least be able to browse the shelves. Patrons would need a set of finding aids, but the card catalog isn't (nor was it ever) the only option. We could keep indexes on plain sheets of paper if we had to.

My problem would be getting to work. 

[MEA]

Getting to work -- a shelving truck isn't perhaps the best idea.

A slip catalogue isn't a bad idea -- I'm hoping we'll still be adding useful volumes, even if scavenged.


MEA

[speaksoftly]

LOL @ book truck

[MEA]

I'm six miles from work -- walkable or bikable. After all some people walk 2 hours each away to work in parts of the or commute that long.

[speaksoftly]

MEA, 6 miles would be bliss. I could walk two in a heartbeat, 6 if I jogged part would be OK. 48 in a book truck not so much. 

[Chesyre]

in order to need a card catalogue , one would need things to put in the card catalogue.  so the plans for keeping books dry, safe and available  sans fossil fuels is what exactly ?

and as your friendly nehighborhood warlord, i'll be deciding what books are available and who gets to stay out of the fields in a cushy library job slot. not you, thanks for your cooperation and have fun mucking the stalls and hand spreading the shit .   

[speaksoftly]

 

[MEA]

Well, you have a building, see, and you keep the roof in good repair, and make everyone who uses it promise not to kindle flame in it, including war lords.

After a hundred years or so, the war lord (whom no one has gotten around to teaching to read) is told, oh, yes, my lord, the scribes are copying your Archie comics, they just look like engenering tables and sacred texts. See, if Brother Wiggins reads it to you, it will sounds just the same -- cue Brother Wiggins who had memorized Archie and Jughead.

Thats how you do it.

(Or you hope the few thousand extant letter presses are still working -- I can get type. Can you?)


And I like mucking out horses. I can drive a pair, but can't plough.

[Librarian]

how on earth did i ever miss this one! card catalogues! Doomer Librarians! yay! my peoples!

depending on the size of your collection, i'd worry less about making things searchable for patrons, and more about keeping them in order, with spine lables, and safe from weather and decay and theft!

as long as everything has a call number, then YOU become the search engine/card catalogue. that's your quick 50-year-back trip. YOU are now Teh Google.

the other issue is keeping track of any lending, assuming you'd let anything leave, should things be so bad! it's all Reference now, you read it here and take notes, buddy. or you leave me some collateral so i know you'll bring it back.

by the way, without any such card catalogue, this is also how you make sure that Warlord Chesyre does *not* put you to work in his fields, because without *you* he can't *find* his prized Doomer Books on gun-smithing and horse-breeding. this is called Job Security for Librarians, the way they *used* to do it. you not only guard the books, you guard the method of *access* to them, like a Medieval Guild secret! ha! do you think they were being intentionally funny when they put Religion and Philosophy in the BS section?

 

but seriously, just in my building we have around 3 million books. we're LOC, so that's pretty straightforward. i'd worry less about being able to find a specific known item by author/title, and more about being able to access the subject needed.

and you're right about fiction/lit...that becomes a luxury subject, left maybe to chance as far as finding anything in particular. OR i spose you could just toss the idea of keeping them seperate, and re-catalog them as IF they were NON-fic? by topic, region, year, etc.? so Little House on the Prairie goes right in with histories of that area, or farming, pioneers, whatever?

in our Freshman intro's this year, we've gone back to making them learn a bit about the history of libraries, LOC and cataloging in general, and then sending them upstairs to actually *touch* the books in question, and over-all they've seemed to enjoy it, strangely enough.

in the 6 or 8 classes i handled, i gave out a one-sheet quick guide to the basic LOC subject categories, told them how many books they were currently sitting beneath (4 floors' worth, several million) and said: you can kill the internet right now, cut the power, and with that piece of paper you are holding, and a flash-light, you and i can walk upstairs and we'll get you pretty much whatever you need, 'tho it may require some browsing once we get to the general area!

i think next round i'm going to actually shut OFF the computer projection screen, *kill* the lights in the classroom, turn on my own flash-light, and *then* tell them My Librarian Ghost Story! WOOO!!! what will you do when the lights go out and your term paper is still due?!

but if you *really* want to lay awake at night worrying, look at how many big uni and public systems are using off-site high-density storage for less-used books...we've got about 1.5 million just 10 blocks down the road from my house in a re-purposed factory building, in shelving that is over five-stories high and requires a damn *lift* that they ride up and down on wearing a safety harness...

and how are they shelved? by arrival date. and somewhat by size.

ARGHHHH!!!!

without the database and the barcodes...it is basically a big ass PILE in no kind of order at all. in a serious enough situation, you realize i am sure how valuable those books might be? herbal medicines? local geography and plant ID? wild edibles? first aid? animal husbandry? basic mechanics and building arts? weaponry and military tactics? black-smithing? gardening?

at least they still have spine lables, but how long would it take, how many *trained* people would you need, to climb up and bring them down one by one and re-shelve them in order so you could find any of that? when i'm bored at work, that is what *I* think about--how would i organize the salvage crew over there?

but of course MY library Director thinks the future is going to be all Kindles and jump-drives and e-text remotely accessed online or maybe implanted in a chip in your damn head. dumb old fart. i think he'd just as soon *burn* them after he scans them, if he could, Mr. Digital Everything.

and *that* is why we're teaching the Freshman how to treasure hunt in the stacks. THEY get it. the kids are not totally clueless. if you were born after 1990 or so, computers are *not* magic to you, they are not special, they are not "the future"...but apparently you are better able to appreciate simple human ingenuity, than your parents/grandparents can, these days. and some of them have some vague sense that maybe that sort of thing may be important to understand within their lifetimes.

unfortunately enough for me, i happen to also be a librarian of the Government Document sub-category as part of my job--now there's a whole set of shit that is STILL pretty much accessed like it was in Umberto Eco's "Name of the Rose" era. half of that material isn't even IN the online catalog for my library, and all still shelved by SuDoc's numbers--a system as convoluted and arbitrary and inconsistant as anything else Big Beaurocratic Government usually comes up with. blech! so i get to deal currently in Guild Secrets and Job Security every time anyone needs anything out of that mess...they have to come and ask ME to find it.

of course, half of that particular collection is essentially worthless--remember The Day After movie? when the NYC Public librarians led their little survivor group in burning all the tax law books to stay warm! ha! then later they saved someone's life by using Reference books on medicine to diagnose and treat an infected wound. they were awesome librarians!

[MEA]

You sound pretty awesome yourself, with the Freshmen Treasure Hunts of Doom and your knowledge of Gov Doc and your appreciation of subject headings!

I love the idea of teems of mountaineering pages swinging off ropes searching for all the useful call numbers.

I spend some of my ideal hours working out how to set up deposit collections of useful books in the places that aren't in easy walking distance for our branches.

I'd love to know the % of LATOCer who have MLS/MILS or library experience.

[Librarian]

THANKS MEA! but YOU are the one who thought to post here on the topic! so i think you win there!

You sound pretty awesome yourself, with the Freshmen Treasure Hunts of Doom and your knowledge of Gov Doc and your appreciation of subject headings!

good Subject Cataloging is very under-appreciated and largely not understood, even among many library types if they don't catalog as part of their work. but it truly is an art, and i show any students who have the slightest interest how to get into the big hot-linked LC subject trees in the darker corners of our online catalog. and every time, they are like "wow! that really helps me understand how to get at my topic better!" it's like i'm giving them the keys to the candy store or something. they have no idea!

i've been on our desk now (main library, evenings mostly, dealing primarily with undergrads, and often saving their asses the night before that paper is due) for about 9 years, and i've watched a few trends come in with new students.

first it was the Blank Look a couple years ago when you wrote down that call number, so i've got my own 1-minute break-down with a way to make notes around the written call number so they can understand how it works.

but now in addition to that, half of them don't even think there might BE something like a catalog online for the books they can search, so that is their First Happy Surprise. next tho, more and more of them don't even understand how the books are arranged in the sections of shelving--some of them try to read across the *entire* top shelf of a range from end to end, rather than realizing it goes in sections, down, then over to the top of the next section? yeesh! or even that you work from left to right across the shelf! it's getting bad out there, people! do they no longer have ANY books in the high schools???

i also help in the training for our MLS grad student interns, and so we talk about these things a lot. i think what we're starting to see in the under-20 set, is how the concept of search engines has actually *changed* how young people think about accessing anything? they don't think about information being physical at all, or in any order. to them it's like fishing with a magnet or something? they see everything as a big mysterious jumble in the dark, and you just set your magnet for XYZ and toss it in and hope it pulls something out that will be useful?

i wonder what would happen if you handed them a big pile of books and said "how would you arrange these?" people my age, we'd take each one and start sets of related items, right? but now, with even much of their *music* existing only as a file on the iPod or whatever, they don't even have that kind of practice--of setting up cd's by artist or type of music, you know?

language is not the only tool that changes your brain as you use it! i worry about what this means for their ability to organize *thoughts* even, to think logically!

I love the idea of teems of mountaineering pages swinging off ropes searching for all the useful call numbers.

: )

the current High Density Shelving Monkeys at our location are pretty cool folks already--tucked away there in the Half-Dead Book Purgatory, with their tatoos and shaved heads and Carhardt overalls and punk music, riding the Big Lifts up and down all day! i betcha some of them are already Doomer types, too. they may already have a plan themselves for when/if the lights go out.

and seriously, ropes and ladders is what it would have to be! and we'd have to pull them ALL down, one by one, and probably start by stacking all the A's here, B's there, etc., then going back and further arranging each pile again a bit more, over and over until we could re-shelve them by the full call numbers. i see no other way to do it!

but with a couple million titles, we'd probably also be doing triage with each title on that first round--Urgent, Useful, Questionable Value, and Has to Wait! (well, i guess with *four* categories it isn't "triage" anymore, but *quatrage*?!)

I spend some of my ideal hours working out how to set up deposit collections of useful books in the places that aren't in easy walking distance for our branches.

good idea!

also, as we say in GovDoc land now that more and more gov shit is ONLY available in digital format--LOCKSS!!! Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe! in any situation of social upheaval, you're very wise to have multiple physical locations with enough info to be useful on their own if they get cut off or if the main library --GASP!-- has any bad trouble! so you've totally got the right idea there!

I'd love to know the % of LATOCer who have MLS/MILS or library experience.

ME TOO!!!

i wonder if we could post some kind of Call to the Library Landers someplace on a main thread here?

i think Doomer Librarians should definitely be discussing and sharing strategies! we should do it now while it is easy to share online, and while we still have jobs and collections and access to the current lit if there is any on the subject!

we know the public libraries are getting a LOT more business these days from the newly unemployed and downsized. i bet we'll be seeing a return of the old style Generalist Librarian as someone very useful to have around...all of us types who know a *bit* at least about almost everything, at least enough to get someone started in learning a more specialized skill or subject! there are lots of practical skills you can apply that kind of ability towards--if there's a book on it, and they are still shelved in order, we can find it, and we know how to use it to track down further information. we're experts at teaching people how to teach *themselves* almost anything!

i've never trolled the nets to see if anyone has a blog or something on the topic! i wonder...

[MEA]

A copy of years ago, Library Journal had a short article on PO -- I think most people just bleeped over it.

Do you know what catagory "Callilng all Library Landers" wouild go in?

Thanks,

MEA