[DCRM-L] "Slips for Librarians to paste on Catalogue Cards"

Thu Mar 5 14:11:30 MST 2015

I can re-confirm the lack of these slips in the Boston Athenaeum’s
half-height card catalogue, which I think is really surprising. What we
call our Cutter card catalogue, which we kept as an historical reference,
was started by C.A. Cutter and his assistants in the early 1870’s. We have
documentation in our archives stating that after ten years of writing out
the cards (in lovely 19th century penmanship) they realized that less than
10% of the collection was represented on the cards. To expedite matters
they started cutting up the old catalogues they had published in book form
and pasted those entries on to the cards. I would have thought they would
have availed themselves of Holt’s slips, but again, they are not to be
found.

Best,

Will

*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*

Will Evans

Chief Rare Materials Catalog Librarian

Library of the Boston Athenaeum

10 1/2 Beacon Street

Boston, MA   02108

Tel:  617-227-0270 ext. 224

Fax: 617-227-5266

www.bostonathenaeum.org

*From:* dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu [mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu] *On
Behalf Of *Donald Farren
*Sent:* Thursday, March 05, 2015 1:17 PM
*To:* 'DCRM Users' Group'
*Subject:* Re: [DCRM-L] "Slips for Librarians to paste on Catalogue Cards"

The original inquiry was about how to describe the slips, so I didn’t
follow up with the historical aspects, but, as Richard mentions, they were
a precursor of CIP. The slips appear in books published by Holt during the
1880s-1890s. A very progressive idea at the time.

Years ago, I identified a hundred or so of the books in which they appear,
and I have a shelfful of them. An article was published on the slips in one
of the library journals, the name of the author of which I can’t remember
except that she was the wife of David Kaser (so the surname is Kaser). The
article is descriptive of the phenomenon and makes the connection with CIP
but doesn’t account for what gave rise to the practice or its demise. I
thought of writing an article about those aspects, so I searched the
finding aid to the Holt archive, and the person who did the article on the
Holt archive in that huge Gale series searched the collection for me, but
neither of us located any paperwork. I assume that there was a connection
with ALA, so I tried to identify the ALA committee that would have been
responsible by searching contemporaneous ALA publications but likewise
without success.

The slips are the size to be pasted on those half-height card catalogue
cards that were used before the larger size was standardized, some of which
still, during the 1960s-1970s, existed in the venerable card catalogue
cabinets in use at the Providence Athenaeum, but the cataloguer there
reported never having seen any of the slips. I thought they might appear in
other card catalogues that still contained half-height cards, so I wrote to
a few libraries where I thought those cards might be in use, one of which
was the Boston Athenaeum, but I received negative reports.

That’s all I can report without getting out of my chair to look at my
records (if I could find them now).

Donald Farren

4009 Bradley Lane

Chevy Chase, MD 20815-5238

dfarren at concentric.net

voice 301.951.9479

fax 301.951.3898

mobile 301.768.8972

*From:* dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu [mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu
<dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu>] *On Behalf Of *Noble, Richard
*Sent:* Thursday, March 05, 2015 11:06 AM
*To:* DCRM Users' Group
*Subject:* Re: [DCRM-L] CV question

It's CIP (quite literally, even though some 82 years *avant la lettre*), so
"CIP leaf?"--a somewhat lighthearted suggestion.

- Has anyone else seen one?

- Could we see an image of this one? I'm curious to see what 1889 CIP looks
like.

RICHARD NOBLE :: RARE MATERIALS CATALOGUER :: JOHN HAY LIBRARY

BROWN UNIVERSITY  ::  PROVIDENCE, R.I. 02912  ::  401-863-1187

<Richard_Noble at Br <RICHARD_NOBLE at BROWN.EDU>own.edu>

On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 5:15 PM, Matthew C. Haugen <
matthew.haugen at columbia.edu> wrote:

Hello,

I recently came across something in a book I haven't seen before: printed
descriptions of the book meant to be excised and pasted onto library
catalog cards.

The book is Our familiar songs and those who made them. New York : Henry
Holt and company, 1889.

The text printed on the preliminary leaf begins: "Slips for Librarians to
paste on Catalogue Cards. N.B.--Take out carefully, leaving about quarter
of an inch at the back. To do otherwise would, in some cases, release other
leaves." This is followed by the text for for 5 cards, for author, title, a
variant title and two subject entries.

>From the description and signing pattern, I take this to be an integral
leaf. I imagine some copies might have only a stub suggesting that this
leaf was removed. Or, perhaps this was a separate issue distributed to
libraries and this text wasn't included in all copies?  I have a copy of
the Holt 1881 edition which has a blank preliminary in this place.

It does seem to be an interesting case, but I'm not sure how best to
describe it, nor can I find an obvious term in the controlled vocabularies.
I'll consider proposing one if needed. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Matthew

-- 

-- 
Matthew C. Haugen
Rare Book Cataloger
102 Butler Library
Columbia University Libraries
E-mail: matthew.haugen at columbia.edu
Phone: 212-851-2451
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