4 Matching Annotations
  1. Feb 2024
    1. cards printed by theLibrary of Congress, Baker & Taylor, and OCLC;

      In the 21st century, many library card catalog cards were commercially printed by OCLC, Baker & Taylor, and the Library of Congress

  2. Apr 2023
    1. TheSyntopicon invites the reader to make on the set whatever demands arisefrom his own problems and interests. It is constructed to enable the reader,nomatter what the stages of his reading in other ways, to find that part of theGreat Conversation in which any topic that interests him is being discussed.

      While the Syntopicon ultimately appears in book form, one must recall that it started life as a paper slip-based card index (Life v24, issue 4, 1948). This index can be queried in some of the ways one might have queried a library card catalog or more specifically the way in which Niklas Luhmann indicated that he queried his zettelkasten (Luhmann,1981). Unlike a library card catalog, The Syntopicon would not only provide a variety of entry places within the Western canon to begin their search for answers, but would provide specific page numbers and passages rather than references to entire books.

      The Syntopicon invites the reader to make on the set whatever demands arise from his own problems and interests. It is constructed to enable the reader, no matter what the stages of his reading in other ways, to find that part of the Great Conversation in which any topic that interests him is being discussed. (p. 85)

      While the search space for the Syntopicon wasn't as large as the corpus covered by larger search engines of the 21st century, the work that went into making it and the depth and focus of the sources make it a much more valuable search tool from a humanistic perspective. This work and value can also be seen in a personal zettelkasten. Some of the value appears in the form of having previously built a store of contextualized knowledge, particularly in cases where some ideas have been forgotten or not easily called to mind, which serves as a context ratchet upon which to continue exploring and building.

  3. Feb 2023
    1. Wie durch ein Wunder blieben vier Holzkisten mit hochbrisantem Inhalt verschont. Sie waren zum Zeitpunkt des Infernos in einem anderen Gebäude eingelagert. Sie enthielten 20'000 Gästekarten, die Concierges und Rezeptionisten zwischen 1920 und 1960 heimlich geführt hatten.

      srf.ch/kultur/gesellschaft-religion/brisanter-fund-geheime-gaestekartei-ueberlebt-hotelbrand-und-birgt-zuendstoff

      Google translate:

      four wooden boxes with highly explosive contents were spared. They were stored in a different building at the time of the inferno. They contained 20,000 guest cards that concierges and receptionists had kept secretly between 1920 and 1960.

      The Grandhotel Waldhaus burned down in 1989, but saved from the inferno were 20,000 guest cards with annotations about them that were compiled between 1920 and 1960.

  4. Dec 2022
    1. The “Book of Roads and Kingdoms”, an eleventh-century geography text by Abu Abdullah al-Bakri, describes the Vikings as “Majus”, a term for heathens and fire-worshipers.

      Majus cognate with magi, magic?