Veering off of the topic of crafting for a minute…
I got an e-mail from a coworker yesterday… a forward, really. It was one of those ‘when I was your age…’ type of e-mails about kids now-a-days with cell phones and the internet, etc… Here was one point:
When I was a kid we didn't have the Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!!
It made me think. Do they even have card catalogues anymore? It’s probably terrible but as much as I have this deep down love for libraries, I haven’t stepped foot in one in close to 5 years.
Awful I know. But I just don’t have (make?) the time to read anymore. Not like I used to. I used to spend hours of multiple days a week (and nights under the covers with flashlights!) escaping away into the lands of fiction.
But the card catalogue; is it weird that I really love them? Haha… I do, though. Those big boxy cabinets with all the little drawers, little trays of scrap paper on top with pencils to notate where the book you’re looking for is shelved under the Dewey Decimal System*. And then there were the cards. The ones that listed the bibliography’s worth of information to help you find the exact book you’re looking for.
*I used to have the Dewey Decimal System memorized.
I loved those little cards! Some of them were so old they were starting to turn brownish from age and use. Typed on with an actual typewriter, loved and used and leading you to the information that was just what you needed for that paper you had to write in the seventh grade. They were sitting next to the brand new cards almost as if to show them the way…
Is all of that just computerized now? Is it all in some big search engine like Borders (or Barnes and Nobles or Hastings) uses? Do kids even know what a card catalogue is? Dare I ask if they know how to use one?
I wonder if I could find one somewhere. At an antique store? That big boxy cabinet with all of the little drawers; that thin metal pole in the bottom that used to slide into the punched out hole so the cards couldn’t be stolen… I’d use one in my house (someday when I have a house). I’d re-memorize the Dewey and categorize all of the books I own/will own in the future.
Then my (future) kids would know how to use a card catalogue…..
4 comments:
Sometimes it is eerie how much we can think alike.
It's a goal of mine to procure an old wooden card catalog and use it in my home for storage of craft things. (So I guess that is the difference.)
And I know somebody who really DID Dewey Decimal her family's library. Cards and all. You could even check them out.
checking them out is a little intense... I would use it as a teaching point for kids. haha
and for craft items is a sweet idea! I always wanted a huge craftsman tool chest for that =o)
didn't you just LOVE that email!?!
It was very cute! =o)
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