Doug Johnson Website

Computerized Card Catalog: A New Tool for Students
St. Peter School Hilites, Feb 1990

Remember thumbing through a card catalog for ten minutes before you realized you were in the wrong drawer? Did you have a difficult time telling a “subject” card from a “title” card? Have you ever found the perfect sounding book, only to find it wasn’t on the shelf? Have you ever forgotten just how many books you had checked out?

Frustrations like these have been plaguing library patrons ever since Melville Dewey began the modern library nearly one hundred years ago. But now, thanks to the computer and some sophisticated software written just for libraries, many of the problems associated with looking for information will not keep library users from the information they need.

This winter, the St. Peter High School students will begin using Winnebago software and MS-DOS based computers to locate and checkout materials. What does this mean to the average student? Let’s follow Julie as she looks for information about butterflies for a science project.

As Julie enters the media center, she sees two computer terminals where the old card catalog once stood. A prompt on the colorful computer screen asks her to type in the key word in her search. Never a wonderful speller, she types in B-U-T-E-R-F-L-Y. A side bar appears on the screen giving Julie a list of subjects the program guesses she might mean. BUTTERFLY is among them.

She pushes a button and the computer begins its search. It looks for the term BUTTERFLY in all the “fields” of all the records of all the materials in the library. In other words, if “butterfly” is mentioned in the subject, author, title or notes, that book, filmstrip or videotape will presented in a list to Julie. So even if the title of a book might be Winged Wonders of the Insect World and the subject heading is “lepidoptera”, Julie would still find the record.

If the computer suggests too many or too few titles, Julie can widen her search or use Boolean logic to limit her topic. At the push of a button, she can receive a print out of the materials in which she is interested. Julie heads to the stacks with her list.

At the shelves, Julie notices that a book which by its title and annotation looked valuable to her is not there, but gets the books and videotapes she wants, and heads to the circulation desk to check her books out.

She encounters another computer. This one has a barcode reader attached. A library clerk passes a light pen over a barcode in a looseleaf folder which tells the program “Julie Jones” is about to checkout some materials. Each individual item is then wanded, and returned to her. Julie remembers she has a novel in her locker, and asks the clerk when it is due, and quickly finds out. Had she had overdue materials, the computer would have alerted the clerk so Julie could be reminded of them. Julie also asks about the book missing from the shelf. “Yes, it is out, but is due in 3 days,” the clerk tells her. Julie heads back to class having spent less time looking for, but getting more information with the help of library automation.

The automation system also performs a variety of clerical tasks for the library staff. It compiles overdue lists, performs inventory, and creates circulation statistics which can be used to help collection development. Without numerous catalog cards to type and file, new materials added to the media center’s collection show up in the catalog the same day they are placed on the shelves. With these time consuming tasks done by the computer, the media specialist and clerks are free to spend more time helping students and staff members.

The media center’s catalog can also be accessed from any computer through-out the school which is on a Novell network. Without leaving the office, a English teacher could create and print a bibliography of science fiction books, or a history teacher could see what materials the media center has about the Civil War. Eventually the records in the St. Peter high school’s collection will be combined with the records of other schools in the area to form a union catalog. That way Julie will not only find what our media center has, but what she could interlibrary loan from neighboring schools, universities or public libraries.

So while many of us might have sentimental qualms about loosing the old card catalog and date stamp, St. Peter students using the computerized media center are getting some early practice with informational skills they’ll be using for the rest of their lives (or until something better is invented).