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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   31391 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 24, 2023

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HISD to eliminate librarians and convert libraries into disciplinary centers at NES schools

Not worth a post as top level thread on it's own; but hilariously dystopic enough to post here. It's only one (admittedly large and important) SD, but this is the type of shit Margret Atwood would write about as a totally out there thought experiment.

Hopefully enough people get mad it stops there.

To those people who are suggesting that library science isn't a real thing, I have a simple exercise for you: Suppose you are managing a very basic, but busy archive that adds dozens if not hundreds of new documents per day. Each document is assigned a sequential number, and has several names associated with it. When each document is entered, an index entry for that document must be created. Without a computer, how would you organize such an index to make it quick and easy for someone to find documents associated with a particular name?

You could use linked lists. The front desk of the archive would have a ledger that maps all names in the archive to the numerical ID of the first and most recent documents with that name, and all documents would be added to the shelves sequentially. When looking for all documents by John Doe, you would look up John Doe in the ledger and go to the first document. That document would have a cover page affixed to it that lists the ID of the second document associated with John Doe. The second document would tell you where the third one is, and so on until you get to the final one. Adding a new document would likewise be straightforward: put it in the first open space on the shelves, look up in the ledger where the last John Doe document is, affix a cover page to it that points to the new document, and then update the ledger. If a document has multiple names, simply repeat this process for each name.

I'd make a physical version of a relational database, actually pretty easy to accomplish with filing cabinets and folders.

I'm not a CS guy so I don't know what that is. If I walk into the office and tell the clerk I want to search the archive for records indexed to Michael Price, how do I find them?

If I walk into the office and tell the clerk I want to search the archive for records indexed to Michael Price, how do I find them?

literally just do that ^ ?

And what do they tell me? Do they just have the record locations memorized?

And what do they tell me?

how to find them or they find them for you?

Do they just have the record locations memorized?

probably not but they should know to find them since that is literally (a part of) their job?

This was already answered, and it was at one time taught in elementary school. You don't need a degree in library science to use an indexing system.

There's a bunch of cards/sheets/whatever containing lists of authors, each with a unique id (just a number that I increment with each new author added, though there are other ways). I find Michael Price and make a note of his id. Then there's another bunch of cards that has book/record/document titles ordered by author id. I find the sheet(s) for Michael Price's id and use that to find all books by him

There's other concerns like handling books with multiple authors, adding new sheets in the middle of others, etc. that would make it more complicated but it's nothing that can't be done by hand, especially for a smaller local/school library.

Suppose you are managing a very basic, but busy archive that adds dozens if not hundreds of new documents per day.

How many school libraries could this possibly describe? I think you and many others are conflating school libraries with public libraries. The latter are relatively large and provide all manner of community services and I could imagine a 2 year degree program could be necessary for managing such a thing. The former are small and often staffed by community volunteers or teaching assistants. I am not convinced that grad school or even a bachelor's is necessary for this function.

Without a computer

How many libraries of either variety do you think there are in US that don't any kind of computer or digital inventory management? Regardless, you could probably learn such an organization system in your bog standard 30 hour technical training class.

I'm not describing any library. I'm describing something much simpler than any library to illustrate a point that archival science is a lot more complicated than laymen think, largely in part because the professionals working behind the scenes have done such a good job that we don't notice them. And just because computers can handle a lot of our work now doesn't mean that the professionals in charge of these systems don't need to understand the underlying theory. Most people don't use 99% of the underlying theory they learned in school. I mean, why do we give a fuck if the kids can add when we live in a world with calculators?

But we do have computers. It's 2023, not 1973.

The Cutter catalog system did it pretty much the same way a computer database would: Secondary indexes. You shelve the book based on one criterion, and you have multiple card catalogs with index cards sorted by the other criteria. You don't need a master's degree (or even any degree at all) to use this system, either. When you get a new book you make up all the appropriate cards and put them in the appropriate catalogs.

I would take a collection of loud noises and leave them on the front lawn overnight until they had been lightly coated in condensation. Then I would systematically organize the documents using these dewey decibels.

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