CARD CATALOG
A DESCRIPTIVE ATTEMPT OF THE THREE TYPES OF CARD CATALOG
Fadairo, Opeyemi Yusuf
Linguistics, African and Asian Studies Department
University of Lagos.
08066095215.
fadairoyusuf@yahoo.com
INTRODUCTION
Many scholars have written about card catalog: Brooks (2000), Angeli S. and J. Rather (1975), Teitelbaum (1996), to mention a few. All of them have discussed with astute professionalism, many issues relating to the said topic but some of this works tackled the peripheral aspect of it. This paper focuses on the attempt to vividly describe what we call card catalog. It seeks to trace its indistinct origin, raise some issues concerning its state and most importantly clearly map out its standard way of preparation. In this study, a peep will be cast into the past, which leads us to discussion of the present and what may likely occur in the future. All of this is in a bid to produce the details of books from all the common types of card catalog we have.
CARD CATALOG
A card catalog is a physical listing of all the contents of a library, organized with a single card for each item in the library. It helps the people to know the publications a library has and the exact place to find them. The most common size of card catalogue is 3by 5 inches (76.2 by 127.0 mm). Many of them contain additional information that could assist a scholar. Anytime a book enters a library, a card is created for it, with information like the title, author’s name, subject and location of the book. Teitelbaum (1996) describes it as the focal point of the set-up of any library. In contribution, he says:
Although this index might be considered the brain of the library – it lists all the books the library owns.
The concept of card catalogues has been in use as far back as the 1700’s. The period according to Sandy Brooks (2000) dated back to French Revolution era when another need emerges for playing cards. In her words, Brooks explained thus:
An inventory and listing of all books is ordered (by the French government). To accomplish this, a set of instructions is created which is known as the “French Cataloging Code of 1791”. Inventory takers use the blank backs of playing cards to write down the bibliographic information for each book.
This is the very first reference to the word catalog in history. After this, others like the Harvard College Librarian, Thaddeus William Harris made mention of it during his annual lecture in 1840, Charles Folsom in 1853, John Langdon Sibley in 1860 and this goes on till in 1903, when American Library of Congress began the sale and distribution of pre-printed catalog cards to libraries throughout the nation (Brooks, ibid.). The standardized sized at that time which is (7.5 x 12.5 cm) became what was improved upon and has been in use up till today.
For most books, there would be at least three cards namely: the author card, the title card and the subject card. This are explained below.
THE AUTHOR CARD
This card is highly essential as it gives the best information about the book starting from the author’s name. Sometimes, it is considered important to include the date of birth and death of an author in an author’s card. This will be for clarifications in case we have two authors bearing the same name. The order of a good author card is as follows:
1. The name of the author
2. The number of the book
3. The title of the book
4. Place of publication, publishing company, year of publication
5. The number of introductory pages in Roman Numeral, then the number of pages
6. Identification of the pages taken by bibliography
7. Content: indication of the table of content
8. The library call number
9. The order of the cards
TITLE CARD
With the exception of the title of the book typed above the author’s name, the title card is an exact duplicate of the author card.
SUBJECT CARD
This is exact duplicate of the author card, except that the subject heading is typed above the author’s name in upper case letter.
RULES FOR FILING CATALOG
Catalogs as complex as they may appear will be worse if a proper filing is not done. There is no exception to all the three types or card catalogs. These designated rules which must come to place as far as any reasonable catalog is concerned are highly important and cannot be side-stepped, if not, all will be lumped in a manner which makes it difficult for any researcher to dabble in his research using the catalog. According to Seely ed. (1968), the rules which must be followed are:
· Alphabeting Rule: all entries are to be in alphabetical order. The only exception to this are in some cases where numerical is unavoidable.
· Modification of letters: this states that all forms of letter modifications like umlauts (tone marks) of all kinds are to be removed.
· Punctuation marks re to be left out. Most especially when they appear with the topic.
· Initial articles like “a”, “an” and “the” are to be left out.
· All initials are to be arranged alphabetically.
· Abbreviations should be orderly as if they are spelled out.
· Arrange elision, possession and contraction which entail the use of (‘) as they are. Do not supply any missing letter.
· One is to be picked in two words spelt differently and the person recording must be able to stand by the picked one.
PROBLEMS OF CARD CATALOG
There are various problems which cataloguing cards or the use of cataloged cards may pose. This has to do with the library setting on the one hand, and on the other, the efficacy of the people involved in the filing. These problems are discussed in terms of size of the library, library personnel and physical condition.
Library size
When a library develops, the need to update the catalog should also increase. If this is not properly handled, it means that the card catalog will end up growing in an arithmetic progression while the library gets stocked in a geometric progression. Also, as a catalog increases, the need to clearly make distinctions among the headings increases. This makes it become very complex for the staff and the general public to access.
Library personnel
If it happens that the number of staff in the library does not grow with the catalog too, it may pose a lot of problems. This is the point it becomes cumbersome for the available members of filing staff to get the job done on time and accurately. They are also to take charge of the editorial conditions of the cards. If the job gets worse, then, we get effects like incorrect call numbers, missing or lost cross references, incomplete card contents etc.
Physical condition
Whenever a library environment is not well managed, issues like lost cards, water percolation, rats disturbance and all ascribable to this will be the new order. All library materials including the card catalogs are vulnerable to deterioration. If they are not properly handled, this renders the library useless for researchers and the whole society at large.
CONCLUSION
In recent times, the frequent use of card catalog has gone moribund. The reason being, that it has been rejected on the corridors of modern days catalog technologies. Most libraries now use, computer catalogue which is considered by people generally as faster and at the same time accessible. As a result of this, the future of card catalogue is not sure because it has been well overwhelmed by the new techniques of finding materials we have nowadays.
In this paper, we have been able to describe books in author, title and subject catalog. In the course of this work, we have realized how hard it will be for this type of cataloguing to thrive in our contemporary society because of the less need being ascribed.
References
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Ajikobi, D. (2002), Marina Wo Niyen Ma? Lagos: Prompt Books.
Angeli S. and J Rather (1975) “The Library of Congress Card Catalog: An Analysis of Possible Problems and Solutions” in The Future of Card Catalog, Washington D.C: Association of Research Library.
Brooks, S. (2000) A History of the Card Catalog” in Whole Library Handbook 3, George M. Eberhart ed. American Library Association.
Medubi, D. (2006), Apere Itunu, Ibadan: DB Martoy Books.
Olukoju, A. and Falaiye, M. (2008), Global Understanding in The Time of Terrorism, Lagos: University of Lagos Press.
Opafeyitimi, A. (1997), Tiori ati Isowolo-ede, Ile-Ife: Department of Linfguistics and African Languages
Teitelbaum, H. (1996), How to Write Theses: A Guide to The Research Pater, New York: Monarch Press.
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