I grew up when card catalogs were still the only way to find anything at the library and I loved the serendipity of it - that you could find the subject you were looking for and then stumble into something equally fascinating with the subjects that came before and after it. I also just loved the site of those little drawers lined up along a wall - all those cards with all those subjects leading to all those books.
The whole world was in there if you were patient enough to go find it.
Paul Collins posted a piece a couple of weeks ago on the Mundaneum, a source in the created in Belgian in 1910 where "information was broken down into over 15 million index cards".
From the Kircher Society:
When the Mundaneum opened in 1910, its purpose was to collect all of the world’s knowledge on neatly organized 3″ x 5″ index cards. The brainchild of Belgian lawyer Paul Otlet and Nobel Peace Prize winner Henri LaFontaine, the vast project eventually totaled 12 million cards, each classified according to the Universal Decimal Classification system developed by Otlet.
Le Corbusier was one of many prominent figures enthralled by Otlet’s scheme of a “Universal Book.� He described it as a panorama of “the whole of human history from its origins,� and signed on to design an international “city of the intellect,� centered around the Mundaneum.
A "city of intellect" - can you imagine?! How cool is that?
I have tried to organize my writing on software and I like the idea of that kind of organization but I always fall back to the index card (or in the case of Map, a few pages of regular paper). The other day I sat down to figure out where I needed to insert a few brief bridge-type chapters in my memoir and so I wrote out what each chapter is primarily about (dead body contract, Sam almost dying in Barrow, first mention of Ben Eielson, etc.) in just a sentence or two and then figured out where I could add a quick chapter on fire season or weird cargo (snow machines, sled dogs, dead animals, prisoners) and where I should insert my "orphan" chapters that haven't been placed in the narrative yet. (Keeping in mind that the chronology is grounded by my life, but all these other chapters sort of fit wherever in the four years I was at the Company - their chronology is not so critical.)
Anyway...I did think it might be more efficient to write all this in a spreadsheet but once I started putting it on paper and adding arrows and post-its and that kind of thing it came together. (Mostly - I'm still messing about with the last chapter.) Writing it down and rearranging the pieces was soothing somehow...like I could picture it as a larger book that way. As much as I prefer writing directly on the computer, the sorting is vastly more enjoyable when done with pen and paper.
Index cards are where I put notes about things I mean to look into more later. I've been collecting odd notes on Joan of Arc of late - in fact I came across Sarah Aaronsohn, the "Jewish Joan of Arc" when I was reading Aaronsohn's Maps. As my YA novel includes a flashback or two to WWI and Sarah died (horribly - she was literally tortured to death) in the war and might very well have been Lawrence of Arabia's lover (or love) then really - I totally had to take a note!
I would love to have an old card catalog. I don't know where I would put it but I want one anyway. When I was working on my thesis at UAF they hauled the old card catalog through various spots in the library looking for a place to store it. I was on the 2nd floor (underground) quite a bit and that's where it ended up for more than a year. Oh how I coveted part of that catalog - the wood was soft and faded but still sturdy and strong. It looked like a classic library card catalog, not something pretending to be one. The library was not ready to sell it yet although I'm sure it was let go or given to someone by now. Someday I'm going to get at least part of one and fill it up with thousands of ideas. It will be like my brain, except on nice 3X5 cards and in alphabetical order by subject.
How can you resist the idea of all that order?
[Post pic of Yale's catalot.]
