"Terror Reading"

[Bill Stewart]

At 02:23 PM 06/25/2002 -0700, Joseph Ashwood wrote:
>I can tell you that at least in some areas that is simply not the case. I
>have personal experience with the San Jose City library and know this for a
>fact to be incorrect. They store information since the last upgrade of the
>central database, currently the better part of a decade, but coming up on a
>cycle point. Although it is very difficult to get the information, and large
>portions of even that have been lost through various issues.

It's been almost ten years since I was in the Keyport NJ library,
but I'd be surprised if they've computerized their recordkeeping.
If you wanted to see who'd checked out a given book
that was on the shelf, you'd look at the card in the back and
see the library card numbers of the people who'd checked it out,
and they might have had dates as well.  To find which 3 or 4 digit number
corresponded to which person, it'd depend on whether they took their
library card home with them the last time they'd returned books
or left it at the library (mine might still be there?),
and if they currently had books out, it was definitely at the library.
If they took the card home, they had privacy, though the librarian
often did know her regular customers by sight.
They might have computer records for books they got on interlibrary loan,
but that'd be about it - no sense in spending money on computerizing
when old-fashioned card catalogs worked well enough for the speed at
which they acquired books.

On the other hand, any place that does computerize finds it almost as easy
to keep records permanently as not, and it's certainly easier to centralize
records and make them searchable.