The Card Catalog

Today Mr. Phillips had Vivian teach me how to type catalog cards. Yes, type, as in using a typewriter (manual, no less).

I don't care what Mr. Phillips thinks, there is something to be said for word processors. Every single time I made a mistake (which was often), I had to toss that card and start all over. This was especially frustrating when I made the mistake near the end. And believe me, Vivian made sure that I got each card perfect, down to the smallest detail of punctuation and spacing, before allowing me to move on to the next one.

After I had spent the morning practicing how to make the cards, Vivian then taught me both how to file them in the card catalog drawers and how to find cards in the catalog by author, title, and subject. That last part I vaguely remembered from grade school, back in the days before you could look up a book on the library's computer catalog.

I have to admit that the card catalog is aesthetically superior to its computerized version, and, to tell the truth, once you get the hang of it, it's not really that much more difficult to use, if at all. Maybe Mr. Phillips is onto something, at least when it comes to keeping the card catalog.

I still think he's wrong, though, about there being no right answer to the bone classification exercise. I can't really explain how, exactly, but I'm working on it.