SSD Conference 2009

Gateways 2009

Step up your game: Tools for your job

Keynote Speaker:
· Bob Welch ~ an Oregon author / http://www.bobwelch.net/2009/Bob_Welch/Home.html

Date:
· Friday, July 17th, 2009

Location:
· Keizer Renaissance Inn (formerly Wittenberg Inn), 5188 Wittenberg Lane, Keizer, OR / (503) 390-4733 / http://www.keizerrenaissanceinn.com/

Registration fee:
· $70.00 for SSD / OLA members (same fee rate since 2007)
· $85.00 for non-members
Scholarships to attend are available: http://www.olaweb.org/mc/page.do?sitePageId=61763

Registration opening soon.

SSD website:
· http://www.olaweb.org/mc/page.do?sitePageId=61036

Questions?
Contact Lori Davidson: davidsol@wou.edu

Musings on old catalog cards

It's been a seriously long time since we closed the card catalog here at the State Library. However, in Tech Services, we still have a box of old catalog cards that we use for scratch paper. (After all, "re-use" is one of the 3 Rs!). I've become a little obsessed with looking at the cards before I scribble my notes on the back. It's partly to see what books the library had way back when. But it also causes me to muse about the people who did the cataloging, typed the cards, etc., in the pre-computer era. For instance, there's one in which the typist almost couldn't fit the title on the one line, so the period at the end of the title isn't all there. Was she relieved that it fit? Frustrated that it almost didn't? Then there are those neatly hand-written notes on the back; cryptic things like "t.c." Actually, I've been around long enough to know that was an instruction from the cataloger to the typist to make a title card. But what in the world, if anything, did "MMM", typed on the back of the card, mean?

I like thinking about the previous staff at my library, and how they worked with different tools, but were still doing what we're all doing today; providing access to information for their patrons.