Days of Yore: Research and Organization

As you may remember, I covered research to some extent in my post about books. In that post, I mentioned that we spent a lot of time in the library looking up information in books. We used encyclopedias, dictionaries, newspapers, magazines, microfiche, and more. In my post on telephones, I mentioned the wonders of phone books. But there were other ways that we kept track of phone numbers and contact information. I covered aspects of today's subject in previous posts, but here I expand on more.

Photo by puhhha on Adobe Stock

Going to a library could be a tad daunting at times. Once you got to know how it was laid out, finding the book you needed was easier, but could still be challenging at times without help. We had a couple options. We could ask the librarian, who was usually quite helpful, or we could check the card catalog. It was a cabinet with small drawers just big enough to fit cards that listed all the books in the library. Most libraries I went to used the Dewey Decimal System, which arranges books by subject. For example, computer science, information and general works are classified as 000; philosophy and psychology are 100, religion is 200, and so on. The numbers in between are more specific. Each book in the library has a sticker on the spine with its Dewey Decimal classification, which gets more and more specific, down to identifying the individual book. The card catalog is arranged in a simpler manner so books are easier to find. They have a section that lists the books by title. Another section lists them by author. Each card represents one book, and it tells its Dewey Decimal classification so you know where in the library it is. (We usually wrote down the information from the card so we could remember it when searching for the book on the shelf.) The aisles of books are typically labeled with the classifications in that aisle. Though libraries still use this system, Google and Amazon have simplified this considerably. I haven't been to a brick-and-mortar library in years, though I have been to bookstores more recently. Bookstores typically don't use the Dewey Decimal system. They still arrange books by subject, and then usually alphabetize them on the shelves by author.

Card Catalog
Photo by Andrey Kuzmin on Adobe Stock

When checking out a book, we would open the front cover and find a paper pouch with a card in it. That card had a list of names of people who had checked it out in the past. At the front desk, the librarian would stamp the card with the date and file the card until we returned the book. Most libraries had a limit on how many books you could check out at a time, and also how long you could keep them before you had to return them. They often fined you if you kept the books too long.

One way of keeping track of appointments and such was a calendar. Not the kind you hang on your wall, but one you could carry with you and mark up. My dad jokingly called it his brain. They were of varying sizes, typically from small enough to carry in your pocket to regular paper size. Now Outlook and other programs have calendars (with a similar setup) where you can do it electronically. I have a calendar on my phone that reminds me about appointments and other events coming up.

Filing cabinets were a way of keeping papers neat and organized. Drawers were organized similarly to a card catalog, but you could arrange it in whatever way worked best for you, and label the drawer. They often had hanging file folders that hung from tracks on the sides of the drawers, and then you could put manila folders in those to organize papers further. (Honestly, with ADHD, filing was one of the most boring jobs I have done. I don't bore easily, but when I am bored, it may be when filing things in the old-fashioned filing cabinets. Even so, it's a great way of keeping papers organized!)

Then there was the rolodex. Where phone books came with the phone numbers printed in them, you could customize rolodex with just the contacts you needed, and when placed next to your phone, it was a convenient way to find contact information. They came with special cards that fit on the wheel, and you could put them in their alphabetical place for easy reference. (They could also be used for other things, but keeping track of contact information was one of the most common uses.)

Rolodex
Photo by Albert Lozano-Nieto on Adobe Stock

I'm sure it will come as no surprise that I do all these things on my phone now, and rarely use the above options. I have a filing cabinet, but I don't use it much. I have physical books, but most of my reading is done on my phone, Kindle and computer. It's also much nicer to carry your entire library on a small device, as opposed to lugging heavy books around. That could get cumbersome, and it was sometimes a little awkward to pull out a big book on the bus. On the other hand, books don't have a battery that wears down and dies if you don't recharge or have access to an outlet, so there's that. These days, I may not lug around books, but I might bring some wireless chargers if I anticipate not having access to an outlet for a while. My trusty chargers came in handy when visiting New York last September, though didn't help the day I forgot to bring it and my battery ended up dying just as I got to Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. I did have my cord with me, so I found an outlet in the lobby during intermission and got permission to use it. That helped a bit, so I was still able to check the subway route after the show, and write down what I needed in case it died again.

Back to books...I have gotten rid of a lot of my books, as they just take up space. Some of them are in storage. I still have some in my room, but most of them are either in storage or gone. I do still use wall calendars.

Days of Yore: Books

To quote the grandfather in The Princess Bride, "When I was your age, television was called books."

When I was little, I loved reading books. I read every chance I got. In particular, I loved adventure books (still do) and mysteries. I read The Chronicles of Narnia multiple times. I read most of The Three Investigators books (3 series of them...one set when the main characters are in their preteens and early teens, the second series in a "Choose Your Own Adventure" format in between, and then a third series when they're in their later teens). The Chronicles of Prydain come to mind. As an adult, the Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Heroes of Olympus and Kane Chronicles books joined the honored list, along with the Ranger's Apprentice books and sequel series. There were many other books that I loved to read, but those book franchises are what come to mind offhand. In fact, I loved reading so much as a kid that often when I got in trouble, my parents would ground me from reading for a few hours.

William Shakespeare's Star Wars Saga
by the great bard Ian Doescher
with bookends inspired by
the great bard JRR Tolkien

On long road trips growing up, my mom would read us books. At one point, someone sent us the audiobook of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe on cassette, and that was a new experience for me. I was expecting a somewhat dramatized reading of it with a full cast, and was surprised to hear one person reading the whole book, though he did a fantastic job.

They also had a genre called Choose Your Own Adventure that was popular for a while. Every time a character had to make a decision or there was some other "crossroads" in the story, it said something along the lines of "If you want this to happen, go to page 75. If you want that to happen, go to page 95." It made for interesting variations in the story. If I didn't like the way a story turned out, I generally went back until I found a path that turned out better. Come to think of it, it was a bit like a literary maze. Hmm, I never thought of it that way. (Insert lightbulb emoji here...I tried it and the emoji looked more like a tennis racket, so I'll leave that to your imagination.) 😀

At church when we sang hymns, we pulled out the hymnals in the back of the pews and turned to the song in question. It had basic sheet music for the hymns (there's one in the middle of the picture above, with a gray cover). In the 90s, we used a mixture of hymnals and songs with the lyrics on the overhead projector. Now we use PowerPoint. The hymnals are still in the back of the pews, but only rarely used.

In past years, it was common for families to have family Bibles, which were large and heavy, and had places to record birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, and more. We also had smaller Bibles we could carry with us. We often marked them up. They sometimes said that a mark of a healthy Christian is a worn-out Bible. Now I have a Bible app on my phone, which offers hundreds of versions and languages, as well as commentary, a Bible verse meme maker, and more. Easier to carry, and it offers more options, but you can't mark it up in the same way. You can also have virtual Bible studies with friends on the app.

Technically, the internet existed before I was born, but it didn't really become popular and public until I was a teenager in the early '90s. Until high school, research was done entirely by physical means. The closest I got to online research was using microfiche in the library to look up old news reports. They had the glossy black microfiche scans that we fed into the machine and read on the screen. (The print on the cards was tiny and too small to read without the help of the machine.) We had computer classes, but we saved our work on the individual computers and on floppy disks. If we wanted to work on it using a different computer, we had to insert the floppy and pull it up that way.

When we had to look up a word, we pulled out our dictionary. There were also special dictionaries for translating in other languages. If we needed synonyms, we would pull out the trusty thesaurus (which was a little more complicated to navigate than your average dictionary). Researching more complicated things, such as history, other cultures, and many other things, involved pulling out the encyclopedia (notably World Book and Encyclopedia Britannica). When we were younger, we also looked things up in the Childcraft encyclopedias for children. We could also look things up in newspapers and magazines, as well as autobiographies and other physical books. In school, I did many book reports, as well as reports on cultures such as Bolivia, Chad and Newfoundland. (I know there were others, but those are the ones that come to mind.)

When I was younger, some people generously gave me subscriptions to magazines like Ranger Rick and Clubhouse. I loved reading the Highlights magazine. When we got our Stars and Stripes newspaper in the Philippines, I would go straight to the comics section. I loved reading the comics, particularly Peanuts, Garfield, The Phantom, Prince Valiant, Cathy, BC, Family Circus, For Better or for Worse, Blondie, Dick Tracy, Calvin and Hobbes, multiple superhero comics, and others. Though I didn't see it in the newspaper when it was syndicated, I'm also a big fan of the Kim & Jason comic strip (though I might be a bit biased because the author is a dear friend...I've mentioned Jason on my blog before). I borrowed the Asterix and Tintin comic books from friends and read them voraciously. The Adventures of Tintin is still one of my favorite comic strips, and I now have the full collection.

When Amazon introduced the Kindle, I downloaded it on my cell phone and read books that way. The Kindle format all but eclipsed the physical books for me. It's much easier to carry a phone in my pocket with an entire library in it, than sometimes big and heavy books.

In more recent years, as I've gotten more busy with work and other things, I've done a lot of my reading with audiobooks. I find it helps to listen to them while I'm working (depending on what I'm doing), as it helps to focus my mind to keep it from wandering thanks to ADHD (which I wish I had known as a child that I had). On the other hand, some tasks require listening to music instead, as it can be distracting at times. I know, I'm sure everyone is shocked that yet another "Days of Yore" post ends with me pointing out that I do most of this on my cell phone now (although some of my audiobook listening is done on a computer).