The Death of the Card Catalog

I was at the library the other day and one of my children asked me how people found books in the library before there were computers. Subsequently, we had a very good discussion about the card catalog.

I remember sitting countless hours in front of that massive wooden structure with those tiny little drawers, leafing thru card after card and hoping to hit the jackpot. Sometimes, the cards would be completely out of order and I would take the time to rearrange them. I suppose this was probably the start of my career as an academic. I really miss what the library used to feel like and now when I enter all I see are lines of people waiting to get on the internet.

For me, the treats in the library were always in the 000 to 070 section. I could always find an interesting book about Bigfoot, UFOs, Reference materials, and news. Although we live in a world of instant gratification when it comes to information, I seem to recall that information was a commodity. It took great effort to actually ‘know’ something and I think that is rapidly disappearing.

When I see children at the library looking at Wikipedia for information and it makes me grit my teeth just a bit. A disturbing trend has been the reliance and citation of Wikipedia as a scholarly resource by law students. Despite the efforts of the Writing Center to educate the students, I do not think they actually realize that it is not a respected resource.