Quote:
Originally Posted by Alex
That's too bad, when I was in library school ('96-'98) we did learn that stuff, to a degree, but mostly it was all about the wonderful new world of data availability ("compare and contrast this weird new thing called "google" with DIALOG" was a paper I had to write).
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We also got only a cursory lesson in that with one quick research project using the dusty books. They wanted to us to know how they walked uphill in the snow both ways back in the day, and understand the roots for the electronic databases they subscribed to at the time (most of which is being washed away by the free public offerings on the internet today).
My card catalog class was much more intensive. The instructor was an old German librarian who looked like Doc Brown and was absolutely distraught at the loss of the fine art of typing cards. We spent what seemed like an endless amount of time cracking the code of tabbing and spacing and all-caps and parenthesis, only some of which still applied to online cataloging. We used Dewey reference works and created our own subject descriptions even as I was working at a school library and ordering automated processing on all of our book purchases because it was dirt cheap. I know someone has to sit in a cubicle and do the data entry but now that is one person is employed the publisher itself, not even the middle-man school library sales company or any sort of district librarian, never mind the librarians that actually work at the library. Of course special collections and older acquisitions require that kind of know how, but in most scenarios these days the easy-peasy software walks you through it.
My parents still have encyclopedias from my dad's youth, circa 1960. They are good for a fun night of dramatic readings of science entries.
They also have the ones I used for reports, which were bought from a yard sale and are as old as I am. They were still perfectly useful for most (non-science) homework, at least then.