Kick it Old School

[Sarah Glassmeyer]

If I know anything about technology, it's that eventually (almost) everything becomes obsolete. Yesterday afternoon on Twitter, a couple of us starting discussing library technologies of the past such as electric erasers and "library hand." As a younger librarian, I had never heard of these things and was fascinated by it all.

So, for you more experienced librarians out there...what technologies or gadgets do you remember that used to be cutting edge are now no longer used or even known about?

On a related note, and so everyone can participate, what technologies of today do you think will be tomorrow's electric eraser?

[Karen Rutherford]

I haven't seen a laser disc since I took "Optical Technologies" in library school.

As for what will be obsolete, I'd have to agree that desktops will probably go.

[Scott Frey]

I imagine that by 2015, both MS Windows and MS Office will be nearly history. (Yet I think that Microsoft will survive ... though perhaps only as part of Google!)

Meg Kribble said:

Definitely on the way out: proprietary software the likes of MS Office. I still use it for most of my writing and presenting, but I don't envision buying another personal copy with all the alternatives available.

[Wendy Reynolds]

Card catalogues died before I joined the profession, but I still remember using them as an undergrad.

[Ron Wheeler]

I hate to admit this, but when I was in college, I took a computer programming class where we wrote our programs on key punch cards. Remeber those anyone? Then we had to run our cards through a huge mainframe computer that took up half a building. (Or almost half a building.) That's way ity-bity laptops still sort of freak me out in a good way.

[Kama Siegel]

Um ... what is an electric eraser? :-)

[Sarah Glassmeyer]

Kama Siegel said:

Um ... what is an electric eraser? :-)

Rumor has it that electric erasers were used to erase catalog cards...whatever those are!

(I'm kidding. I remember actual card catalogs with drawers and paper cards.)

[Chris Pickford]

Somebody posted this link on autocat a few months ago:
The Virtual Museum of Cataloging and Acquisitions Artifacts
http://www.heidihoerman.com/museumca/

We occasionally unearth some of these artifacts at our library.

[Ron Wheeler]

Kama Siegel said:

Um ... what is an electric eraser? :-)

Here is a photo of one. http://tinyurl.com/4j5ubs

[Karen Rutherford]

You know, I actually had a law student ask me how to use paper Shepard's the other day! Ah, the memories.

[Francis Norton]

I just asked a law student how old he was.
He was curious about why we have digests. Isn't it online?

Before he was born, I remember a computer programming class where we had to fill out little #2 pencil marks on a giant stack of cards to run a program. Programming Tip: run a pencil line diagonally down the top of the stack, to aid in putting the cards back in order if you happen to drop the stack.