[DCRM-L] "Old art of cataloguing"

[Deborah J. Leslie]

The following is an excerpt of the Washington post review of the
Folger's current exhibit. Put together on an emergency basis (we thought
the exhibit hall would be closed this summer for maintenance, now
deferred), The Curatorial Eye features previously unexhibited personal
selections of about 15 Folger Central Library curators, conservators,
catalogers, and public services staff. 

 

It's a really interesting exhibition, and I think a really successful
one.  It has an online incarnation, in which selected items are
accompanied by short recordings of their respective curators.  Audio
tour: http://www.folger.edu/template.cfm?cid=3230

 

And now, for the review excerpt:

 

Today, readers can delve digitally into millions of books to find quick
hits on what interests them. The old process of cataloguing a book,
which meant summarizing its contents in a way that anticipated how
future scholars might search for the interesting, is a dying art. It
required an act of reduction, an act of exclusion -- this matters, the
rest doesn't -- that defined that book's importance within a canon of
knowledge.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/20/AR200908
2003860.html

 

Discuss.

 

__________________________________________

Deborah J. Leslie, M.A., M.L.S.

RBMS chair 2009-2010 | Head of Cataloging, Folger Shakespeare Library

201 East Capitol St., S.E., Washington, D.C. 20003 | 202.675-0369
(phone)  202.675-0328 (fax) | djleslie at folger.edu  |www.folger.edu

 

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