So yesterday I go to my local public library (Chicago Public Libraries, the somewhat scandal-ridden Sulzer branch (more about that topic another time!). It was a minor, and somewhat humorous, adventure
I'm there seeking a copy of Computer Lib/Dream Machines, by Theodor Nelson. This is a classic work of computer theory, where the concepts of hypertext and so forth were carefully laid out more fully than earlier thinking, like Vannever Bush's "As We May Think".
So I look it up in the online catalog available at chipublib.org and it shows up in the Juvenile Collection. I suppose this should have been my first clue that something was amiss.
But the call number - TL298.S7 should have been a second clue. That's an automotive LC classification, not computers.
So I go to look for the book in the juvenile stacks. No luck. Nor is it in the QA76's, where it would actually live. I look upstairs in the adult stacks, thinking it may have wandered off. No luck. Digging deeper, nothing has been done with this book's record since 1995.
This book, which touches on the ways humans and computers interact, has probably been misfiled and misregistered in the Sulzer computers. Oh, the irony that using a bunch of hypertextual systems leads me not to find a core book on hypertext at all...
So now I wait for the friendly librarian's request that a copy from another library be sent my way. We'll see.
Meanwhile, the Microsoft Press (!) edition from 1987 is out of print and unavailable except at reasonably heinous prices. Pity.
Posted by esinclai at February 15, 2002 08:34 AM |