The University of California Libraries: A Plan for Development (1977)

58 The University of California Libraries
this be practicable, it is needless to recommend it, and to say
that no time will be lost on my part in gaining the knowledge and
power to handle the instrument." 1 Despite Rowell's resolve, the
typewriter was not used for Berkeley's card catalog until 1902.
Now one hundred years old, the Berkeley card catalogs contain some
8 million cards, and reflect "the problems of size, encrustation.
and complexity that the span of years, differing policies, and a
variety of working methods have evolved... Largeness, coupled with
many types of brief, limited, and special slips and cards both temporary
and permanent, location designations and symbols, techniques
and procedures, many of which have become outmoded, constitute a very
complicated tool for users and staff alike." 2
There are other reasons as well for re-examining the efficacy
of these huge catalogs:
• Filing into them becomes more and more complex the larger
they grow; for research libraries, a fair-sized book is required
just to record the rules for filing. As all but the most unsophisticated
users know, the arrangement is not strictly alphabetical,
and there are dozens of special arrangements, and files within
files.
• The user, not ordinarily having access to the book of filing
rules, must guess at where the rules may have caused the entry
he is seeking to be placed. As the size and complexity of the catalog
grows, he becomes markedly less successful, as numerous catalog
use studies have shown.
• This problem in turn requires an investment by the library
in training or assisting users to cope with the catalog, and the
users must make a similar investment in time.
1
UC Library Report, quoted by Janice Knouse, "Main Library Catalogs,"
Berkeley, May 1974, p. 3.
2
Virginia Pratt, et al., "To Close or Not to Close," Berkeley, The
General Library, 1975, p. 1.