one big list:

I've officially finished consolidating the haphazard lists of abbreviations that had been passed down to me by librarians of days past! What started as an eighteen page paper manual and an Excel spreadsheet has been consolidated to a forty-four page document with over two thousand terms! Everything from "audio-visual" to "zoomorphism," literally.

So what's next? I get to spend some time with the list and highlighters in a wide variety of colors.This will be the first step in creating a taxonomic schema that will then develop into our controlled vocabulary.

It's exciting to cross steps off your list, isn't it?

card catalog cards:

I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss old-fashioned library card catalogs. Sure, speaking as a graduate student/researcher, data bases and online catalogs make the research process more effective and expansive.  But I do miss thumbing through the old catalog, and seeing just where in the library's collections those cards would lead me....

Although the University of Texas has done away with most of their old card catalog cabinets, there are still remnants of the old card catalog system at the different library branches.  In particular, the old cards can be easily found in boxes of scratch paper left out for library patrons. Stacks upon stacks of old library cards are scattered on the different floors of the Fine Arts Library so that patrons can jot down the call number for which they're looking. Working there, I use the old cards for a myriad of purposes, and am often tickled by which book's card I'm using. But last week, I discovered a stack that were interesting for a much more personal reason....