咨询客服 咨询客服

Archaeology and evolution: What happens when you clean your office

Abstract:
T o celebrate the arrival of some new of flee furniture, the inhabitants of the Elec\xad tronic Formats Unit in the Marston Scie Library at the University of Florida cleaned the entire area. We w ere fortunate to have Student Assistant Allan, w ho doubles as com\xad puter geek and neatnik, on the payroll dur\xad ing our cleanup. Those of us w ho have survived the tech\xad nical revolution in libraries tend to react with bemusement when we encounter relics while cleaning our offices. But Allan is in his early 20s, and he reacted with wonder, amazement, and reverence as he dug through the layers o f accumulated treasures. Allan unearthed a Hypercard package, circa 1990. “I don’t know what this is, but it looks pretty cool!” I explained how Apple developed the program to hyperlink discrete “cards” within a “stack,” years before the Web exploded. Next came a stack of floppy/CD mailers, made of corrugated cardboard. Allan asked if he could toss them. I said that we used them frequently back in the good old days, w hen we mailed floppies around and had to return outdated CD-ROMs to the publishers. He looked puzzled, and I explained that librar\xad ies subscribed to CDs for years before the jewel case was invented. Allan’s eyes filled with pity. Faculty mem\xad ber John added, “Yes, and the first CDs were made of wood!” nce Then came the prize—a box with a DOS 3.30 manual and an accompanying 5.25 dis\xad kette. “I knew these existed, but I’ve never seen or touched one before!” Allan especially appreciated seeing “IBM” splashed over the manual and diskette. He knew that DOS was originally developed by Microsoft for IBM, but he was unaccustomed to seeing IBM re\xad ceive the top billing. Allan m ourned that he lacked access to a 5.25 floppy drive. In addition to the DOS manual, Allan was surprised to see the number of older soft\xad ware packages that contained printed manu\xad als. We explained that people did (and many still do) prefer to consult printed manuals, and also that old diskettes didn’t have enough room to store manuals as well as programs. Perhaps I should feel embarrassment over the length of time it took us to clean out the office. But I’m happy we saved the archaeo\xad logical dig for Allan, w ho truly appreciated handling the relics and learning about the evolution of the technology from physical pieces to networked resources. He regarded the process as a history lesson. Allan’s reactions will serve to remind me of the perspective of the current generation of students. They handle CDs and floppies, but they expect all library resources to be net\xad worked and Web-based. And the next time one of your networked services crashes, spare a moment of thought for the days when we had to reload crashed programs from floppies. ■
Author Listing: Denise Beaubien Bennett
Volume: 63
Pages: 30-31
DOI: 10.5860/CRLN.63.1.30
Language: English
Journal: College & Research Libraries News

College and Research Libraries News

影响因子:0.0
是否综述期刊:否
是否OA:否
是否预警:不在预警名单内
发行时间:-
ISSN:0099-0086
发刊频率:-
收录数据库:Scopus收录
出版国家/地区:-
出版社:Association of College and Research Libraies

期刊介绍

年发文量 -
国人发稿量 -
国人发文占比 -
自引率 0.0%
平均录取率 -
平均审稿周期 -
版面费 -
偏重研究方向 Social Sciences-Library and Information Sciences
期刊官网 -
投稿链接 -

质量指标占比

研究类文章占比 OA被引用占比 撤稿占比 出版后修正文章占比
0.00% 0.00% - -

相关指数

影响因子
影响因子
年发文量
自引率
Cite Score

预警情况

时间 预警情况
2025年03月发布的2025版 不在预警名单中
2024年02月发布的2024版 不在预警名单中
2023年01月发布的2023版 不在预警名单中
2021年12月发布的2021版 不在预警名单中
2020年12月发布的2020版 不在预警名单中

JCR分区 WOS分区等级:Q0区

版本 按学科 分区
WOS期刊SCI分区
(2021-2022年最新版)

中科院分区

版本 大类学科 小类学科 Top期刊 综述期刊
暂无数据