Pictures: Libraries & Computing

(Click to enlarge). Copyright 1995-2001. Christopher Brown-Syed.

Papyrus Plants

Papyrus was used to make paper in ancient times. In medieval times, parchment or vellum were used. Paper made of linen rags, and eventually, of wood pulp, took over. 

McBee Cards

They could be used to track library circulation. The edge-holes were notched at particular places. You inserted a needle into the deck of cards, so cards satisfying certain criteria would drop out of the deck.

Catalogue Cards

First hand written, then typed, then computer produced, cards were used until terminals with video displays became practical. Continuous form card stock facilitated production from machine readable cataloguing (MARC) data.

Electric Eraser

This Gaylord Bros. Eraser made it easier to update typed catalogue cards, for instance, if subject headings or holdings information changed. 

Osborne 

One of the first portable personal computers, the Osborne had 2 floppies, but no hard drive, a 300 Baud modem, and 64 kilobytes of RAM. It ran under the CP/M operating system.

Intel 310

Based on an Intel 80286 chip, and running under the Xenix operating system, this minicomputer supported up to 8 dumb terminals, tape backup, etc., making it a contender for small library applications.

Geac 9000s & 8000

During the 1970s and 1980s, Geac Computers of Markham, Ontario, built the System 8000 mini computer and the Series 9000 super-mini.This photo was taken at Unilinc Limited, Sydney, Australia.

Barcodes

Plessey PLC of Poole, Dorset, UK, pioneered barcodes for library use in the mid 1970s. The 14-character Codabar format, with its 4 digit agency prefix, was developed by CLSI of Boston, Massachusetts, a company subsequently bought by Geac.