Karen M. Drabenstott
Associate Professor
School of Information
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1092 USA
Voice: (734) 763-3581
Fax: (734) 764-2475
karen.drabenstott@umich.edu
New topic -- "Nicholson Baker's Annals of Scholarship"
Many thanks to Bob Holley for introducing our topic, "The Luddites Were Right: Technological Change Is Disruptive." Bob experienced some problems with his E-mail delivery during our discussion and was temporarily unable to participate. Thanks to Robert Bauchspies for picking up the discussion and adding his viewpoint to which several members responded. Thanks again to Bob Holley for suggesting this topic. Perhaps we can visit it again in the future.
Speaking of the future, let's revisit the past in the topic, "Nicholson Baker Revisited." Boyd Holmes is our guest editor for this topic. Boyd is studying for a doctorate in library and information science at the Faculty of Information and Media Studies (FIMS) at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. Mr. Holmes's research interests include bibliometrics, definitional constraints for information science, and the history of information science. Please welcome our new guest editor and let the discussion on our new topic begin.
Boyd Holmes
Ph.D. Student in Library and Information Science
Faculty of Information and Media Studies
University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario, Canada N6G 1H1
Voice: (519) 679-2111, ext. 8481
Fax: (519) 661-3506
bholmes@julian.uwo.ca
Four years ago this week, in the 4 April 1994 issue of The New Yorker (70[7]), Nicholson Baker published an essay that may rank as the most incendiary article on librarianship to appear in a popular magazine in this decade. The essay was called "Discards: Annals of Scholarship," and it was a stirring defense for the retention of the card catalogue in what is now the Age of the OPAC. For several months after its publication, the most popular refrain among librarians was, "Have you read the New Yorker article yet?"
Certain of Baker's observations are indeed provocative:
"Administrators are singling out card catalogs, I think, not as a last resort but as a first resort, because they hate them. They feel cleaner, lighter, healthier, more polyunsaturated, when all that thick, butter-colored paper is gone.... The impulse to burn is there, it seems to me, because library administrators (more often male than female) want so keenly to distance themselves from the quasi-clerical associations that surround traditional librarianship.... The card catalog is to them a monument, not to intergenerational intellect, but to the idea of the lowly, meek-and-mild public librarian as she exists in the popular mind." (157-8).
"But the real reason to protect card catalogs is simply that hold the irreplaceable intelligence of the librarians who worked on them. Kathryn Luther Henderson, a professor at the library school of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, told me, 'I've made catalogs I've been very proud of, or had a hand in making them.' Her work ... and the work of all those other people who spent every weekday thinking about the interconnectedness of the books around them, deserves praise and admiration, not clear cutting." (178)
Now that we are four years distant from the first appearance of Baker's essay, certain new questions come to mind. Did the article have any actual effect in retaining card catalogues? Did it save any of the specific catalogues mentioned in the essay, such as the one at the library school at Berkeley? And -- of particular interest, I think, since many of the people whom Baker interviewed are likely members of this discussion group -- what were the responses, of those persons he cited, to his polemic?
At the core of the Baker Debate, I believe, is this question: Is Baker right? Is the destruction of the card catalogue a "national paroxysm of shortsightedness and anti-intellectualism" (128) that is, as Helen Rand Parish called it, in "a class with the burning of the library at Alexandria?" (ibid.) Or is Baker's perspective that of the modern techno-Luddite? Or is he just a fool, who does not know what he is talking about?
Of course, Baker's essay raises many additional points, a number of which I am planning to raise as this debate progresses. For the moment, let us concentrate on the questions I have listed here. (Note how the subject of this debate dovetails beautifully with the one we have just concluded!)
Let the fireworks -- or, the firewords -- begin!
("Discards" is now also available as part of Baker's collection, The Size of Thoughts: Essays and Other Lumber (New York: Random House, 1996, 152-81). Page reference above are to the book.
LTC Jerry Klopfer
Assistant Director, LRC
New Mexico Military Institute
101 W. College
Roswell, NM 88201
Voice: (505) 624-8382
klopfer@yogi.nmmi.cc.nm.us
Funny that this topic should come up on Monday morning, with classes in the library and computer services taking the system down! Several students wanted to know where to find the card catalogue. Sorry, we do not have one, it was literally burned up in a homecoming bonfire in 1985. This sounds almost sacrilegious. What few people know is just how inaccurate the catalog was. To start with, new entries had not been added for eight years; removal of entries for lost or discarded was even further behind.
Many well maintained card catalogues were works of devotion and beauty. They were both effective and efficient in their time. And a really good one would have been a help this morning! However, on a day-to-day basis, having an OPAC which can be accessed on any desk on campus at almost any time is not just nice, it is a necessity today!
Change causes a sense of loss and perhaps we should grieve for the card catalogue. Life goes on, as does librarianship and both will continue to change. Will someone someday lament the loss of the last OPAC to some new-fangled catalogue?
Gerald M. Furi
Assistant Director
Farmington Community Library System Administrator
Metro Net Library Consortium
gmf@metronet.lib.mi.us
Nicholson Baker is a respected essayist (a collection of his essays is now available in hardcover), as well as a creator of, um, somewhat controversial erotic fictions (Vox, The Fermata, etc.). I feel, however, that he has been unfairly tarred to a certain extent by the library community.
His "Discards" essay pointed out very real lacunae in MARC-based OPACs that are only now beginning to be addressed. But his real contribution was, I submit, not this essay, but rather the other (two?) essays in the New Yorker and LJ castigating the San Francisco Public Library boondoggle. It is, BTW, quite amusing that the SF Public Library sent its old catalog cards to be decorated and laminated by an area artist to form wall decorations on each floor of the library, but that is neither here nor there. Mr. Baker made a number of telling observations, validated by my own impressions at ALA in San Francisco when the new Main Library opened:
Mr. Baker brings a perspicacious viewpoint which, I submit, we can all profit from; I really don't think he is so much a luddite as a skeptic, who is rightly cynical of technology as a "magic bullet." The things he has written are not so far from observations made by such a highly-respected library technologist as Walt Crawford. I rather think of him in the words of Daniel Berrigan, as a "bubble in our cosy blood, sand in out pet gears."
Margaret Blue
Librarian
North Dakota State University Library
Fargo, ND 58105-5599
mblue@prairie.nodak.edu
In 1985 and years following, I rejoiced at the end of the card catalogue and actively touted the advantages of electronics for university administration, library directors, and reluctant staff. We were able to eliminate all catalog backlog of materials and of corrections and revisions of the catalog. We were able to share our catalog with our most active interlibrary loan partners. We kept the electronic catalog up to date while suffering staff cuts -- clerical positions formerly devoted to typing and filing catalogue cards were transferred to other services.
Now, however, I wish to embrace Nicholson Baker's viewpoint.
Jerry Klopfer wrote:
"Funny that this topic should come up on Monday morning, with classes in the library and computer services taking the system down! Several students wanted to know where to find the card catalogue. Sorry, we do not have one, it was literally burned up in a homecoming bonfire in 1985. This sounds almost sacrilegious. What few people know is just how inaccurate the catalog was. To start with, new entries had not been added for eight years; removal of entries for lost or discarded was even further behind."
When the computer fails, the whole library stumbles. Delayed maintenance or inattentive care and keeping of a card catalogue caused some problems, but not a complete absence of information. The inert nature of the card catalogue gave it great staying power -- some may remember hand-written cards in the library hand, still as readable in 1985 as they were before the use of the typewriter!
Jerry Klopfer also wrote:
"Many well maintained card catalogues were works of devotion and beauty. They were both effective and efficient in their time. And a really good one would have been a help this morning! However, on a day-to-day basis, having an OPAC which can be accessed on any desk on campus at almost any time is not just nice, it is a necessity today!
"Change causes a sense of loss and perhaps we should grieve for the card catalogue. Life goes on, as does librarianship and both will continue to change. Will someone someday lament the loss of the last opac to some new fangled catalogue?"
Indeed change causes a sense of loss. The change now facing my library and others is that the catalogue, indeed the whole integrated library system, must migrate to a new program in the near future. Grieve for the loss of the current system but even worse for the cost of migration. Can we afford it?
The estimated cost of migration will take all of the book budget for two years. Besides migration, purchase of the new system, and technical staff to guide the installation, there are continuing costs for new equipment to access the catalogue.
The inert card catalogue resided imperturably without capital expenditures. Users carried the full expense of transporting themselves to the catalogue. When budget stringency struck in the 1980s the catalogers mended the wooden trays with strapping tape. I wonder why we didn't use duct tape.
For durability, I celebrate the card catalogue.
Judith Hopkins
Central Technical Services
University at Buffalo
Voice: (716) 645-2796
Fax: (716) 645-5955
Buffalo, NY 14260-2200
ulcjh@acsu.buffalo.edu
Unlike many catalogers who took violent exception to everything that Baker said, I found much to value in his article, primarily his recognition of the intellectual value that the card catalog represented. What I did disagree with was his confusion, as I saw it, of the intellectual content displayed in the catalog records, with the physical format that the catalogs he knew (those of the 20th century) took: catalog cards.
Boyd Holmes also wrote:
"Now that we are four years distant from the first appearance of Baker's essay, certain new questions come to mind. Did the article have any actual effect in retaining card catalogues?... At the core of the Baker Debate, I believe, is this question: Is Baker right? Is the destruction of the card catalogue a "national paroxysm of shortsightedness and anti-intellectualism"
I cannot answer your first set of questions though my instinct says that his article influenced few if any libraries to stop moving towards an online catalog. Some libraries MAY have been influenced to retain the old card catalog as a physical artefact (not as a working catalog) but given the space constraints that most libraries face that number is presumably small.
As to your core question, "Is the destruction of the card catalogue a 'national paroxysm of shortsightedness and anti-intellectualism,'" my answer is "no."
It seems to me that this topic goes right along with the previous CRISTAL-ED one on Neo-Luddites; Baker could probably be characterized as a Neo-Luddite.
As a life-long cataloger who's early working experience was with the card catalog, as an amateur historian of the catalog and the forms it has taken, and as someone who has worked with MARC records and online catalogs for many years, I am well aware of some of the problems that online catalogs have, e.g., standard record format, problems in indexing records and collating the results in many of the online catalogs, the inadequacies of the present display labels, etc. I take that as characteristic of the transition phase between the mature format of the card catalog and the still developing online catalog; in my more optimistic moments I even think I will live to see the online catalog mature.
A few minutes after I read Boyd Holmes's thought piece I received the following message on INTERCAT@OCLC.ORG and have Erik Jul's permission to re-post it here. The key point that I take from it is that as the resources we catalog change it may be necessary to rethink the relationships between those resources and the surrogates that represent them (the catalog records). The online catalog gives us the possibility to reconceptualize this relationship in a way that would be impossible if we were still limited to the use of a card catalog.
Tony Barry wrote:
Perhaps we are trapped in a print culture viewpoint by thinking that you "create" a bibliographical record and that is the end of it. Electronic publications are producing an environment where publication are born, they grow, change, update and evolve and may eventually die in terms of an ongoing version anyway.
Just as the publication changes, so must the surrogate to keep pace with it, and if it spawns alternate versions where the content runs in parallel then you just add to the detail in the evolving record.
Erik Jul responded:
I like Tony's ideas. Why shouldn't there be a closer and more dynamic link between bibliographic records and the resources they describe? We have take the prodigious step of providing direct access to the resource through the 856 field, and I can imagine other links that would be useful. Moreover, why only unidirectional links (bib record to resource)? Why not bi-directional (record to resource and resource to record)?
More simply put, in a digital network environment all of the spaciotemporal limitations that bounded cataloged cards disappear, and we are free to reconceptualize the relationships between surrogates and resources.
Erik Jul jul@oclc.org
Dave Drummond, Ph.D., CIH,
Director
Safety Department
University of Wisconsin - Madison
david.drummond@mail.admin.wisc.edu
The catalog is a means to the end of finding information resources. The discussion seems to view the catalog as an end in itself.
The new catalog technology has many blessings of its own, even though it hasn't captured all the good features of its predecessor, yet. Few users miss trekking to the library, only to find that a book is not in the collection or cannot be retrieved in less than a month.
Do we value the artistry of hand-written catalog cards? Then online catalogs need to handle graphic images. That might be a big help in cataloging art references.
IMHO, librarians and the ALA should be a major force in developing standards for new catalog technologies. That would resolve many complaints by steering technological evolution.
Personally I hope online books will soon join online catalogs. They might be harder to skim, but they're also harder to steal or vandalize and they can be recalled instantly. (One-user-at-a-time access will protect authors' rights). This is especially true for reference work that requires short sections or quick look-ups. When the dog and I curl up in front of the fireplace, I'd still rather have a "real" book.
Boyd Holmes
Ph.D. Student in Library and Information Science
Faculty of Information and Media Studies
University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario, Canada N6G 1H1
Voice: (519) 679-2111, ext. 8481
Fax: (519) 661-3506
bholmes@julian.uwo.ca
There have certainly been some thoughtful contributions so far to this debate! Now that we are at the midpoint of our discussion, let us summarize at least some of the many points made.
Coming from one direction, a contributor rejected Baker's position that the destruction of old card catalogues was a nearsighted, anti-intellectual act. Despite, she wrote, the limitations of the OPAC, it presents fewer problems than did the card catalogue. Another poster added that many problems with the current OPAC technologies might be resolved through standards the ALA and librarians themselves should set. (Perhaps anticipating the shape of things to come, this contributor predicted that online books will soon be as much a feature of modern life as online catalogues.) Another poster noted the huge costs of migration from one OPAC software to another one -- costs libraries did not need to meet in the age of the card catalogue.
One member wrote that, despite the beauty of card catalogues, and their usefulness when the OPAC breaks down, their day has clearly passed. She noted how accessible the OPAC is outside of the physical library itself.
Let us turn now to some of Baker's other observations.
In his essay, Baker lists obvious advantages of the OPAC over the card catalogue, then enumerates on what are, to him, the virtues of the card catalogue over its electronic replacement. According to Baker, the OPAC:
Again, the question seems to be the extent to which Baker is right. And I still think this debate would profit greatly from contributions from librarians cited in Baker's essay, and by accounts of what happened to those card catalogues that, when Baker published his piece, were still in existence, and mentioned in the article.
Let the firewords continue!
Boyd Holmes wrote: "Coming from one direction, a contributor rejected Baker's position that the destruction of old card catalogues was a nearsighted, anti-intellectual act."
Indeed, the old card catalog (in which I filed vast numbers of cards in the '60s and '70s) was an "artifact" with a history and "feeling" that may be lacking in computers. However, many people attach just as many "human attributes" to their computers, although Baker apparently doesn't.
However, there is/was NO useful data that was on catalog cards that couldn't have been transferred to the online catalog. Candidly, I don't think anyone could seriously argue that the initials of the person who cataloged the book in 1918, or typed the card in 1919 need to be preserved for any reason. The same is true of the date that copy 17 of Gone With The Wind was withdrawn in 1953. There is just no reason to care. This attitude reminds me of the "Withdrawn File" maintained in the catalog department of a library I used to work in. It had ALL of the cards for ALL of the books ever withdrawn for any reason. They argued that "we might need the cards again." I could see, in those days of card catalogs, that keeping the cardset for a book that was "missing for a year and thus withdrawn" MIGHT be worth keeping for several years in case the book was found. But, keeping the cards for books withdrawn some 50 years ago just made no sense to me then, and still does not.
Of course I also never saw the value in putting the "source information" in number three pencil on the title page or its verso, either. (For those who don't know the term, catalogers or acquisitions folks used to write in pencil in the gutter of the book on one of those pages, listing the source (where purchased), the date received, and the cost. When I asked on numerous occasions why we did such a thing, the answer was usually "so we'll know how much it cost when it is lost" or similar wording. Well, duuuuhhhhhhh..... Is something missing here?
Boyd Holmes also wrote: "Despite, she wrote, the limitations of the OPAC, it presents fewer problems than did the card catalogue. Another poster added that many problems with the current OPAC technologies might be resolved through standards the ALA and librarians themselves should set."
Most features of OPACs and the MARC and related standards HAVE been set by librarians. And there is certainly nothing that keeps new standards or revisions of these being developed and implemented. Of course I'm not sure what these limitations really are.
Boyd Holmes also said: "(Perhaps anticipating the shape of things to come, this contributor predicted that online books will soon be as much a feature of modern life as online catalogues.) Another poster noted the huge costs of migration from one OPAC software to another one -- costs libraries did not need to meet in the age of the card catalogue."
Yes, we'll see more online texts, but I believe that the vast majority of them will be journals, rather than books. This could change when we end up with a "cuddly laptop" or "cuddly palmtop" that is as good in bed as a nice paperback book. Of course in the sixties there was talk about "cuddly microfilm readers" too, and I never found one yet that met the criteria.
As to the costs of migration to another OPAC software, it isn't a new cost, just a different one. Who besides me can remember the vast costs of "shifting the catalogue" when it had to go from 4800 drawers to 5400 drawers? Having planned and supervised such a project, as well as one of converting an online catalog from one vendor to another, I'd rate it a tossup.
And, for those who remember the trauma of converting to AACR, or Dewey to LC, or even changing such headings as El Salvador to Salvador in a card catalog that contained a vast number of materials on that little country (that took days just to do the shifting of drawers and relabelling them)
And Boyd Holmes also wrote: "One member wrote that, despite the beauty of card catalogues, and their usefulness when the OPAC breaks down, their day has clearly passed. She noted how accessible the OPAC is outside of the physical library itself."
This is a key point. I can't tell you how unhappy our students and faculty would be if we were to abandon remote access to our online catalog. On a couple of occasions remote connectivity has been lost due to internet problems, and we certainly heard about it. The catalog itself, however, has been down for a total of four hours (one occurrence) since it was implemented in early 1990. The only other outages were of the massive power failures that hit the west a couple of years ago, but since there was no power anywhere, and it was dark inside the entire building, we closed anyway. You certainly couldn't have read the cards in a catalog, either.
I will point out that the Boise State University made the conversion to the online catalog much simpler than that endured by other places I've worked (seven state universities in seven states) since 1965, when I began library technology work. The card catalog was closed in 1980. There was a microfiche catalog from 1980 to 1990. For a while you had to search in both, but when the retrospective conversion was completed, people only needed the fiche catalog. Of course some used the old, dead, unmaintained card catalog, but not anyone who wanted anything even halfway recent, which was most patrons. The contents of the old catalog were recycled (more environmentally friendly than a bonfire, I suppose) in late 1989 and when the online catalog was brought up in early 1990 everyone was thrilled that they could quit using the abominable fiche. There was NOT ONE cry to return to the "good old microfiche."
Boyd Holmes further wrote: "Let us turn now to some of Baker's other observations.
"In his essay, Baker lists obvious advantages of the OPAC over the card catalogue, then enumerates on what are, to him, the virtues of the card catalogue over its electronic replacement. According to Baker, the OPAC:
Purest nonsense. The online catalog allows you to do massive changes all at once. I would have loved to have had an online catalog when El Salvador became Salvador. All entries changed in one pass. No cards to move. No drawers to shift. Authority control is expensive, and many don't implement it as well as they should, if at all. But, the cataloging rules have also changed, and I could appear in a catalog as Dan Lester, Daniel W. Lester, or other forms. In fact, all my entries appear under the latter, but only because that is how I've used my name consistently for such purposes. (On the other hand, most articles appear as Dan Lester, so I can't claim perfect consistency, either).
Continuing to list Nicholson Baker's objections to OPACs, Boyd Holmes wrote:
That is an interesting but fairly specious point. Looking at the condition of the books in question will be even more telling, anyway. And, the statistical reports that can be generated by call number, by call number blocks, etc, are much more useful for collection development than anything you can tell from worn cards. At the broad scale indicated by card wear, librarians don't NEED to look at card wear to know which topics are popular. Just ask a reference librarian, a book selector, a circ staff member, or even a student that reshelves the books. They all know. If Baker doesn't know, he need only ask...which of course far few self-styled experts would ever do in a library.
Continuing to list Nicholson Baker's objections to OPACs, Boyd Holmes wrote:
Well, I don't know who claims that. Sure, the terminals or workstations may take up as much space as the catalog did, but so what? More important, I have terminals in every area of the library, including each stack floor. Those of us who have used card catalogs in large libraries have all remembered trudging from some distant bowels of the library back to the card catalog to find one more entry for something we needed. Now I can just walk over to a terminal and get the same information. And of course I can get the information from home, or a motel room, too.
Further continuing to list Nicholson Baker's objections to OPACs, Boyd Holmes wrote:
Maybe Baker should take a bibliographic instruction class, or at least LISTEN to the librarian who shows him the best way to use the online catalog. The old ways aren't necessarily the best. And, though online catalogs vary from library to library, so did card catalogs, even though most users never noticed it, unless they were trying to find something that could easily be "lost" due to variations in filing rules.
Boyd Holmes continues: "Again, the question seems to be the extent to which Baker is right. And I still think this debate would profit greatly from contributions from librarians cited in Baker's essay, and by accounts of what happened to those card catalogues that, when Baker published his piece, were still in existence, and mentioned in the article."
Well, I'm not one of those he interviewed, but would love to get him to visit Boise. No, we're not the biggest or best library (or catalog), but we have good authority work and accurate records. Our catalog also includes records for books on order, books pending ordering, desiderata, and so forth. Yes, some card catalogs included some of those, but most didn't.
I'll tell you what...if Mr. Baker comes to visit Boise I'll read "Vox" for the occasion.
Camilla B. Baker
Head of Reference
Canisius College Library
2001 Main Street
Buffalo, NY 14208-1098
Voice: (716) 888-2914
Fax: (716) 888-2887
baker@canisius.edu
I suspect that how you view these issues depends on how you view the catalog itself. Baker (no kin) seems to me to view it as an artifact, with peculiar intrinsic value. If, however, you view the catalog as an appliance, as in something that you apply or actually use, his advantages are not so clear as he states them.
Boyd Holmes wrote:
"In his essay, Baker lists obvious advantages of the OPAC over the card catalogue, then enumerates on what are, to him, the virtues of the card catalogue over its electronic replacement. According to Baker, the OPAC:
OK, to muddy the waters, what authority are we harkening to here? That of a series of individual catalogers, or established local practice, or the Library of Congress? I'd be hard pressed to decipher, as a professional much less as a layperson, exactly what authority was used in any given manual catalog over a number of years, and therefore how accurate the catalog is.
Boyd Holmes wrote (citing Nicholson Baker's objections to OPACs):
Sorry, no contest here. Usage is commonly attached to the item record in our database. We can retrieve much more reliable data about usage of books, subject areas, you name it, with a good integrated catalog system. Discolored catalog cards, by this standard, become mere anecdotal evidence.
Boyd Holmes continues on, citing Nicholson Baker's objections:
This is arguable only from the standpoint of how much hardware and furniture you can afford. On the cheap, it saves lots of space; but if you give all 18 students in this morning's class simultaneous access to "S shepard sam," which was physically impossible in the card catalog, you probably haven't saved any space at all, but it's a tradeoff I'm willing to make.
Boyd Holmes continues with Baker's list:
This is only so if you habitually use keyword access rather than subject headings, and don't care to know the difference between them, and this is an argument that only came about with the advent of online catalogs. As Boyd stated, it just depends on how true you think Baker is. And in any case, if he'd just ask the librarian for help... Woops, my colors are showing.
You may join the discussion and look over the list of past and future topics.
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