On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 2:29 AM, Mark Wieder <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
The University of California's Doe Library went to a closed stack > system some years ago for some obscure bureaucratic reasons. The > (backhanded > obligatory Arthur C Clarke reference) serendipity of contextual proximity > is > what we've all but lost with the demise of open stacks and physical card > catalogs. > > OK, I'm not a Librarian, but my wife is and so I asked her and this is what she discovered just now. She can access the University of California's Doe Library via the internet from halfway across the planet, in fact she can access every University of California Library by a system called Melvyl - which is the front end for OPAC (Online Public Access Catalogue - my wife normally uses a system called Oliver) Through Melvyl and OPAC you can search by: Title, Title begins with Journal Title Journal Title begins with Author Keywords in name Author last name first Author organisation Author/Title Subject Keywords ISBN ISSN My wife says Universities generally don't use Dewy because the system is designed for small collections, Universities uses Library of Congress system which provides finer categorisation for more accurate searches. My wife who teaches 'Information Literacy' at University to graduates, typically School Librarians, laughs at 'card' systems as being 'way too restrictive' and that if you couldn't find a host of books on any given subject with Melvyn, then you're an idiot - her words not mine. For Richmond, my wife checked out the University of Durham Library which is also online and indicated there you can ALSO search by: Classification mark, Shelf mark, Place of publication, and in Arabic or Chinese language. She tried to access the Plovdiv National Library but couldn't, although from her limited perspective it appeared that they were transferring to an OPAC system and that their catalogue may become available online at some future date - again, that is her impression, not necessarily reality. So, next time you're off to the library Richmond you could simply do a search of the online catalogue at Durham Uni, get a bunch of book names within the subject of interest and take the list to Plovdiv to see if they have any of them. Lastly my wife indicates that in general the physical book collection at libraries are getting smaller, and should be, to reflect the reality that access to more accurate data is readily available via the internet. If a library these days has an encyclopedia collection, then the librarians aren't doing their job. OK, can we go any further OT ;-) _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [email protected] Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
