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Author Topic: Things I am delighted have become almost redundant during my short lifetime  (Read 2216 times)
autoharp
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« Reply #165 on: 10:52:54, 30-01-2008 »

Wooden cabinets with little drawers in them filled with index cards. 

My LPs, cassettes + CDs are catalogued in this way. Use 'em all the time. God, I'm proud to be a dinosaur.
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Andy D
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« Reply #166 on: 12:48:10, 30-01-2008 »

Wooden cabinets with little drawers in them filled with index cards.  I bet you didn't think any of those survived in any libraries, did you.

I believe Birmingham Central library still has their records prior to 1972(?) on just such a system since they've never been migrated to the computer system which contains everything after that date.

But that's beaten hands down by the Birmingham & Midland Institute, which was the city's original public library in the 19th century. All their books are on index cards. Not only that but members have one or two bigger cards themselves (one for books and one for CD/LPs) on which your borrowings are written by hand. If you ever want to renew an item, they have to write it in as returned then write it out again as borrowed on your card. There's, in theory, a month loan period, but since there are no date stamps in the books/CDs, I never now how long I've had anything. Until I get a phone call from someone that is - I got one before Christmas saying that I'd borrowed a book in June so I'd had it rather a long time, could I return it? I did so a couple of weeks ago. There aren't any fines so the most they can do is make you feel guilty about depriving other members. 

The BMI have had to computerise their CDs however, since the discs are shelved according to their reference numbers and these consist of a prefix (which refers to the source/donor) plus a sequence number. Without the printed list which they've got, it would take ages to find any particular CD, since it could be anywhere.
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #167 on: 12:54:05, 30-01-2008 »

While I was an undergraduate and still involved in paleomusicology, there was a project going on to list all sources of notated music prior to 1400.  It had been going on for about three years when my tutor roped me in to help with the admin of it.  The final result was (i) the Germans had finished a year early, and had it all tidily on microfiche (in the days before pc's)  (ii) the Italians had finished, put it on microfiche, all in Italian, but with huge gaps that said "awaiting data"  (iii) the Spanish team couldn't be contacted, and had not been heard from for over a year  (iv) the British listing was "complete, on a set of index-cards in old shoeboxes in the Bodleian Library".
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
-  Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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