Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 13, No. 571.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
[1] From: "Norman D. Hinton" <hinton@springnet1.com> (10)
Subject: Re: 13.0569 being had, liking it, but an impractical
idea
[2] From: "P. T. Rourke" <ptrourke@mediaone.net> (30)
Subject: Being had: Color catalogue not that impractical
[3] From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk> (37)
Subject: how people remember things
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 02 May 2000 08:12:05 +0100
From: "Norman D. Hinton" <hinton@springnet1.com>
Subject: Re: 13.0569 being had, liking it, but an impractical idea
Having a list of books by color reminds me of one of my graduate
teachers, Ruth Wallerstein. Professor Wallerstein had an encyclopedic
memory -- except for authors and titles. And she didn't like hauling
her note cards to lectures. So it was quite normal, in Miss
Wallerstein's class, to hear her say "There's a recent book on John
Donne that's absolutely central to this discussion, and you'll need to
consult it for just about any paper you want to write for this course
It's blue and somewhere near the top shelf...."
Librarians' dislike of this had nothing whatever to do with her
teaching. And I don't see that it would take more than one keypress to
enter the information if there's a slot for color in the DB.
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 02 May 2000 08:12:59 +0100
From: "P. T. Rourke" <ptrourke@mediaone.net>
Subject: Being had: Color catalogue not that impractical
> As a practicing reference librarian for a large academic collection, I can
> tell you that cataloging books by color would be a disaster! Books
> change color with edition
This is a good argument. One would have to have a different catalogue entry
for each copy a library has of a given book, with the color information
indicated for each (of course, libraries are supposed to have different
catalogue entries for each edition, aren't they?). It's also logistically
difficult to achieve - one would in effect have to catalogue each book
again. Perhaps one could have the circulation desk enter color information
for each book as it is checked out, and the color database would be
populated gradually.
> . . . not to mention the problems created by
> such a scheme for those of our patrons who are color-blind . . .
> and for the reference librarian trying to find the red book that's really
> not.
Certainly color blind patrons simply would not use the color information in
the catalogue, as those who can't decode OCLC numbers mean don't use them.
Certainly no one is so foolish as to imagine that a color catalog could be
anything but an additional resource, supplemental to all the other resources
and catalogs available to patrons. So I don't see that such a scheme would
create any problems for color-blind patrons that they don't already have.
I also don't see that questions about red books that aren't really red, or
the like, would be any different from questions about books for which the
patron provides the wrong title or author, etc. If the "red book that's
really not" doesn't show up in a subject search cross-referenced by color,
then that's that. The "it's red" question isn't enough, it would have to be
"it's red, and about torts reform" which should give almost the same
narrowness to a search as "it's by Davis, and about torts reform." Such a
catalogue would provide an additional solution, not an additional problem.
Patrick Rourke
Massachusetts
--[3]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 02 May 2000 08:13:30 +0100
From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk>
Subject: how people remember things
I would suppose that research has been done into how people actually
remember things and so I wonder, in the faked but useful light of the
recall-by-colour scheme, how much of that might now be relevant to the
design of automated systems. I'd suppose further that work on the "art of
memory" might be relevant too.
Spatial memory has always, I would guess, been central to those who use an
open-stacks library (including their own). Few have the keen spatial memory
of a now retired friend, professor of Chinese and Mongolian at Toronto, who
remembered where even the thinnest pamphlets were in his office library by
their exact location, through an immediate and quite physical sense, but
we've all depended on that kind of memory to some degree. As we all know
too, location on the page is a common way of recalling a passage within a
book. Sometimes I'm helped by the book's own physical "memory" -- the
tendency of a book that's been opened to a particular place to fall open to
that place again. Colour, yes, too, as well as the thickness of the book
and other visual cues help me find it sometimes.
What particularly intrigues me are those times when I cannot say, even
silently to myself, what the characteristics of the book I am remembering
are, yet I know with certainty that there's a particular book I need, and
its particularity is defined by a strong yet inarticulate sense. Passages
trigger associations, these spread, a sense develops, perhaps?
A kind of memory record I've found very useful is the one implemented by
amazon.com, the list of those items which others who bought the current
item also have bought. The list can help one get a grip on subject- or
style-relations; I've used it with CDs to develop my musical interests in
particular directions. The mechanism is, I'd suppose, a simple one, and
could be implemented by libraries -- "Those who borrowed this book also
borrowed...". Has anyone tried such a thing? The other, sometimes spooky
mechanism amazon.com uses, the list of recommended items based on your own
buying habits, could also easily be implemented for libraries. New things
we can do with computerised records.
Yours,
WM
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Dr. Willard McCarty, Senior Lecturer, King's College London
voice: +44 (0)20 7848 2784 fax: +44 (0)20 7848 5081
<Willard.McCarty@kcl.ac.uk> <http://ilex.cc.kcl.ac.uk/wlm/>
maui gratias agere
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