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That old library catalog card taught me a thing or two about searching
Last Tuesday I was looking for a nursing textbook from the 1980s, the one about shift work fatigue, and the online system kept coming up dry. My coworker said to try the physical card catalog in the basement, which I thought was a joke until I actually found the book listed there with a call number. The card had notes in pencil from three different librarians, dates when they updated the subject headings, even a tiny correction to the author's middle initial. Turns out the digital index missed a whole shelf of older materials, and the paper catalog caught everything. It took me about 20 minutes to find what I needed, versus the hour I spent clicking through the database. Has anyone else had better luck digging through the old card files instead of the computer search when something just won't turn up?
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