« Veterans Day 2011: Most Every Family Has a Story to Tell as We Recognize Our Stakeholders in America | Main | Friday Fun: 11/11/11 And The National Anthem »
November 11, 2011
Friday Fun: fin dt tal,of,th,s and dp mich,jam,a - So what's that?
Those of you who have been around for a while might recognize what the title of this post says and does. Anyone?
How about fin dp flet,ste,w and st bow,to,ma,a?
What about fin sn 0036-8113 and dt sci,ab,,?
Am I hurting those memory cells yet?
For all you newer librarians, these are the commands of an OCLC past. A time when we used something called PRISM to find titles and lend materials. Those were the days! Only us geeky librarians knew the language and how we delighted in stringing those phrases along to the utter confusion of our patrons. Ah yes, those were the days before we went click happy.
I think you can still use this language somewhere on OCLC. Is anyone out there still using the old OCLC command strings?
I'll post the answers on Monday! Have fun figuring it all out...
(Why bring this up? Well, you find interesting things when you move into a new office...)
(VS)
November 11, 2011 in Friday Fun | Permalink
Comments
I like to tell younger librarians that this is how we used to search OCLC, so I can watch their heads explode. Back in the early 1980s I worked in a college library that had a public-access OCLC terminal, so even the students had to learn 4,4 and 3,2,2,1 searching if they wanted to explore beyond the catalog.
Posted by: altoii | Nov 16, 2011 6:20:31 AM
So this is how we used to search OCLC, remember? The title is a command to find Tales of the South Pacific by James Michner!
Posted by: vicki | Nov 14, 2011 12:31:18 AM
