And perhaps the most archetypal, most maligned print reference of all – the ponderous old card catalog – is an invaluable resource for staff trying to fix long neglected record maintenance on pieces selected for remote storage. At any rate, it’s more accurate than our OPAC, after one too many sloppy automatic bib loads from OCLC. I swear to God, if librarians were ever judged by what they did (or did right), as opposed to what they could claim on their C.V., there’d be fewer and better ones in the profession.
Sidenote – Sampiro, what in tarnation is a Luddite anyhow? Around these parts, I hear the word used for people who feel that books are good and that computers are also valuable tools (in their proper place). No one will give me a straight answer.
“throw a wrench in the works”…that was these guys. During the Industrial Revolution they were anti-machine. I believe the leader of the group was named Ludd. Now it’s used for anybody who isn’t all-fired for technology being the solution to everything (at least that’s the way I feel about it). Anyhow, that’s my 5 cent definition.
I had a Luddite professor in Library School who honestly believed the Internet was useless for “real research” (never mind that even then- almost 10 years ago- it was chock full of digitized primary sources that the library didn’t have access to as well as the government websites). OR- and this was at two universities- there were English profs who insisted that their students use Readers Guide to Periodicals and other indices rather than a database and couldn’t be convinced that "we don’t even order most periodical indices anymore- basically they didn’t know how to use the databases, weren’t going to learn, and for God knows what justification they didn’t want their students to learn them either.
It’s also used largely interchangeably with the term “Late Adapter”, meaning someone who’s usually among the last to adapt to a new trend. Somebody who’s still using Windows 99 (and it’s not because of money) would be a late adapter.
I do have a lot of students come in (at the public library and in a previous job at an academic library) with professors who don’t understand that the electronic copy is THE SAME ARTICLE. Now, this isn’t the same thing as assignments that are for making you understand how print resources work and such - this is all of their assignments. They say “I can’t have a source from the Internet” and I patiently explain that a database is not the Internet and they say, yes, they know, but their professor will not take anything in electronic format whatsoever. I’ve had professors actually confirm that. They cannot be swayed.
I’ve just never used any of the ones I learned about in that stupid class
I do reference of the arcane and weird.
My sort of reference questions are things like (real one from today) : “I am caring for an infant of a substance-abusing mother - what do I need to know?”
So I wasted months learning how to use books like “famous dead people”.
Sometimes, you just don’t know where you’re going to end up!
