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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   31725 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 24, 2023

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I'd make a physical version of a relational database, actually pretty easy to accomplish with filing cabinets and folders.

I'm not a CS guy so I don't know what that is. If I walk into the office and tell the clerk I want to search the archive for records indexed to Michael Price, how do I find them?

If I walk into the office and tell the clerk I want to search the archive for records indexed to Michael Price, how do I find them?

literally just do that ^ ?

And what do they tell me? Do they just have the record locations memorized?

And what do they tell me?

how to find them or they find them for you?

Do they just have the record locations memorized?

probably not but they should know to find them since that is literally (a part of) their job?

This was already answered, and it was at one time taught in elementary school. You don't need a degree in library science to use an indexing system.

There's a bunch of cards/sheets/whatever containing lists of authors, each with a unique id (just a number that I increment with each new author added, though there are other ways). I find Michael Price and make a note of his id. Then there's another bunch of cards that has book/record/document titles ordered by author id. I find the sheet(s) for Michael Price's id and use that to find all books by him

There's other concerns like handling books with multiple authors, adding new sheets in the middle of others, etc. that would make it more complicated but it's nothing that can't be done by hand, especially for a smaller local/school library.

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