Anyone knows how video rental stores and libraries worked before computers:
The book you were checking out had a little pocket glued to the inside of the cover that held a card with the book name on it. The librarian would write your number on the card and placed it in their filing system. They would then write or stamp the due date on the pocket of the card.
https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/library-book-due-date-g...
- the book had that paper thing with dates stamped on it
- I think there was a pocket, but that the librarian emptied the pocket before handing me the book
- the librarian scanned a barcode on both the book and on my library card, during checkout (using a pen-like scanner)
Perhaps I'm mixing memories from different times. Or perhaps I joined the library soon after it was computerized. Perhaps the backend was computerized but they still did the date stamp thing because that was the only way I'd know when the book was due back.
I think I experienced this as well, just in a different country. There was probably no email or website for a patron to check when a book was due so they stamped it. My memory of this is pretty hazy as well.
One of my small joys as a younger person was discovering a book I was looking at hadn't been checked out for a long time. Seeing a 10 year old due date stamp, or better, a book that had been in the library for a long time that had never been checked out, just gave me a small burst of joy.
When a student or faculty member checked out the book, we had a photocopy machine that recorded the book card info and the user's photo ID. The current date was on there too. The photocopy output was maybe 3-in by 8-in (not full size sheet) and was on a stiff type of paper. I distinctly remember using a manual sorting device at the end of the day to alphabetize the photocopies -- it was a narrow board maybe 2-ft long, with plastic flaps for the letters of the alphabet, so one could easily slide the photocopies under the correct letter of the alphabet (by author last name, as I recall).
So, if someone could not find a book on the shelf, it was fairly easy to find who had it checked out and send them a recall notice, if they had checked it out sufficiently long ago. I do not recall whether or how routine overdue notices were sent (maybe there was a policy that you could keep the book out until recalled or the end of the current term, whichever came first -- renewals were also possible).
I wish I could remember more details. I spent more time working in the stacks area (supervising the re-shelving of returned books) than at the circulation desk.
I was also there when the first pass at computerization was done - we had to manually affix barcodes to every book as it was re-shelved, with the same barcode on the card in the book, for adding to the database. Once books were barcoded, the circulation became computerized, as I believe the user IDs also had barcodes -- no more photocopies and no more manual alphabetizing. This was pretty novel at the time, we even had T-shirts made with a large barcode symbol as the graphic on the T-shirt, I don't remember if it had a funny caption or not.
Recently I saw someone ask how vinyl records were ‘decoded’.
It’s good that young people are asking these questions, but it does feel odd to be part of the last generation to have grown up in the pre-digital age.
Yes it's good that they're eager to learn.
Just yesterday (in my timezone atleast — perhaps earlier today for you) somebody effectively wondered how websites work without having something similar to a json call from the frontend [1].
I predict that within 75 years people will wonder how the hell we came up with internal combustion engines, which on first glance is incredibly complex.