Confessions of a Mad Librarian

[Caveat lector: Graphics ahead ...]

Far too many weeks ago, I went to a meeting of the SLA SF Bay Chapter that was held at the CA Culinary Academy in downtown San Francisco. The majority of the program took place in a basement banquet room, there was an opportunity before dinner to take a tour of the school's library. As befitting a culinary academy, the collection is devoted to the techniques, sciences and arts of food, beverage and hospitality. It's a pretty cool little library ... I browsed the book collection a bit and decided to see how many volumes of M.F.K. Fisher's work the place held. But I couldn't find any of her titles. So I turned to the library assistant (and SJSU SLIS student), Daniel Hollander, to see if he could help me. He turned to the catalog:

A card catalog! Watch him work that drawer:

I hadn't even registered the piece of furniture, let alone recognized its function. Daniel pointed me to the right LC class for Ms. Fisher and I found several of her books. I'm a really big fan of electronic catalogs/OPACs, but watching someone work the card catalog was pretty neato peachy keen.