About the Collection
When the decision to finally dispose of the obsolete Dewey catalog was made in 2006 (it had not been keep up to date since the early 1970s), it was decided that we should preserve a piece of this history for posterity as a "Special Collection."
The aim of the project was not only to preserve a sample of an early Dewey catalog as a material artifact, but also to provide clues as to which "hidden" collections of 19th and early 20th century material might yet remain to be discovered and preserved. I spent many days examining each individual drawer of the old card catalog and selecting subject headings to be retained permanently. The list includes subjects of local significance for which we know that our holdings are likely to include both a breadth of material as well as rare items. This project required some familiarity with the history of Oberlin College.
However, I also needed to be open to the discovery of significant "patches" of holdings in subject areas we could not have foreseen. In order to do this I examined the card catalog also from the point of view of the physical state of the cards.
As the image right shows, significant congregations of the oldest pre-1908 full cards proved to be easy to spot since, in profile, the cards showed gaps which contained half cards, and were more browned by acid deterioration and a longer period of human handling.
These older cards often congregated because the use of the Dewey tables to break down subjects into more specific geographic areas, historical periods, etc. was not applied with much rigor by Root in his early cataloging. Short, simple forms of the subject were used without subdivisions and so frequently survived at the beginning of a subject group. This enabled me to retrieve the early germ of hundreds of subjects totaling approximately 7% of the total. These cards contain a high proportion of early library acquisitions. A list of early subjects [XLS download] is available and the cards themselves are still available for patrons to browse on request.
Mary E. Cowles
For more information about the history of the Oberlin College Library Dewey card catalog refer to the unpublished essays by Mary Cowles. For most of the years from 1942 until her retirement in 1977, Mary was the library's senior cataloger. Those who remember her work remark on Mary's care and vast knowledge of the history of the library. Her experience was invaluable as she helped establish the Special Collections area of the library when it was moved from the Carnegie Building to the present Mudd Learning Center in the 1970s. Ms. Cowles served as a very dedicated volunteer in the library after her retirement until just months before she died.