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things I wish I hadn't seen
They're throwing away the card catalogs at UIC today.
Now, I recognize that the card catalogs here have, for all practical purposes, been replaced by the computer system, and I've come to terms with that. This doesn't change the fact that, for me, a card catalog is a powerful symbol of knowledge, and so to see them lying helter-skelter in a dumpster feels symbolically wounding (symbolic wounding, by the way, is what I mean when I refer to something as soul-killing, as I have been wont to do lately).
OK, soul-killing aside, the real reason I'm upset about seeing the card catalogs get tossed is that I covet them for myself.
I can say that I would actually put them to good use. Those of you who know me know that I have been maintaining a rather elaborate card-index for the last five years or so... someone bought me a six-drawer card catalog from Ebay a few years ago and it has become one of my favorite possessions, maybe the one thing I would grab in case of fire. I can't help but look at those fifty-drawer monsters in the dumpster and think "one of those would be really handy."
Plus it'd look great in my apartment! They are, after all, beautiful objects.
But: even if I could manage to wrangle out of the dumpster, there's still no way to get it home, plus there's no room in the current apartment (and there's unlikely to be enough room in the next one).
The pain! Labels: indexing |
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
9:45 AM
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