System sunset: card catalogues are the steam engine of library technology, outmoded, but still revered

• Published in: Quill and quire 1995-07, Vol.61 (7), p.15
• Main Author: Aspinall, Jane
• Format: Magazinearticle
• Language: English
• Subjects: Computer applications; Libraries; Library catalogs; Online retrieval of information
• ISSN: 0033-6491

There are, of course, people (generally not the cataloguing people who have perhaps spent too many hours standing in front of card cabinets) who have a real affection for the card catalogue. Paul Baldwin at Simon Fraser University says that one emeritus professor there asked to have the paper catalogue removed to his office rather than have it discarded. Jocelyn Godolphin, who is the head of the humanities and social sciences library at UBC, says her library has "taken great pains to assure users we won't be getting rid of the card catalogue," which still stands in the entrance concourse of the main library. "There were conversations around campus after [Nicholson Baker]'s essay came out, and people wanted to know that we would not toss it out when we move to our new library next year." She wonders if it is not a peculiarly North American habit to get rid of the old when the new is available-having worked at the library of Trinity College, Dublin, where 400 years worth of handwritten, printed, computer-generated, and finally microfiche catalogue is available, and where it doesn't cross anybody's mind to unload any part of the catalogue. Despite these reservations, there was agreement that in the climate currently holding sway, there is no practical alternative to the OPACs. Elaine Boychuk, associate university librarian at Dalhousie, figures that with the university's participation in Novanet, a cataloguing consortium of nine Nova Scotia libraries, she is able to complete five times as much cataloguing with three fewer staff and $20,000 less annual expense. As for Baker's claim that paper catalogue filers corrected errors on cards by filing them where they should go, Boychuk says "there will always be typos, and always be human beings to compensate for errors." Dalhousie's Utlas system allows librarians to "observe the most common misspellings and insert these with 'see' references." (Thus a client who's unsure of a spelling for what they're searching for-but who could still hunt down their quarry by flipping through a card catalogue-won't be left high and dry by a computer's insistence on exact spellings for a search.) Besides, she adds, "Baker's assumption that every card in a card catalogue was filed correctly is amazing."