Prejsnar, Mark wrote: > This is a good and important point, and only needs one clarification: the > concept and phrase access point actually arose BEFORE the card > catalog (pre-1890), when all catalogs were a series of printed books. I > suspect that few people realize how extremely recent the card catalog is. > This is interesting to reflect on (among other reasons) because we have >really, > in a very short period, gone thru three phases, each introducing > more flexibility to the catalog: printed books, to the card catalog, to > the computerized catalog.. In keeping with Jims post, access > point was especially crucial when there was least flexibility.
True, and you make some interesting points as well. When I started studying the history of card catalogs, I was surprised by how much people disliked them. Even the catalogers referred to them more as tools for their work and kept trying to emphasize that the real purpose of it all was to create printed catalogs, which were much easier to use, portable, and so on. Of course, to create a printed catalog meant essentially, to create two catalogs: one printed and the other in cards, so as more and more books were published and bought by the libraries, the printed catalog became obsolete even before the day it went to the printers, and it eventually became an unjustifiable luxury. I don't know when the last printed catalogs came out. At Princeton, there was one of the greatest catalogs I have ever seen that was published around 1889, and later a linotype "title-a-line" catalog was created as late as the 1920s. That last one was a complete debacle and no other comprehensive catalog was ever printed there again (that I can remember, anyway). But this is in essence, how I see the real goal of FRBR and RDA: to recreate virtually the displays found in the printed catalogs. Without any doubt, they are excellent displays and are far better than the the card displays were users are doomed to look at multiple records with quasi-duplicated information over and over and over again. Those who complained about the card catalogs were right. While the idea appeals to the historian in me, I just think it's time to move on and come up with other solutions. Jim Weinheimer
