Like Edison’s writing, they preferred a vertical look with little slant, though permission was given for a slight left slant.ĭewey’s prescribed writing differs from the style Edison developed. They began by l ooking at various card catalog entries and determining what did and did not work based on those criteria, even making decisions down to the lines on numbers. The simpler and fewer the lines the better, as long as the distinctness of the letter is not impaired.” He and teams of librarians had worked to perfect the style which would marry clarity with speed, though unlike Edison’s need for a speed-friendly style, library hand did not need to put that aspect in as much focus. Dewey explained of the decision, “At once all see that where the highest legibility is more important than all else together, we must prohibit peremptorily everything in the nature of ornament or flourish. March 1887 marked the birth of an official “library hand” in the journal Library Notes. It was indeed primarily based on Edison’s work, but as researcher David Kaminski has pointed out in an incredibly in-depth look at the hand’s origins and connection to writing styles more broadly, there are differences in some of the individual letters between Edison’s style and what ultimately became library hand. Over the next couple of years, Dewey worked to find the perfect writing. You will notice every letter is written separately.” Edison used this method when he was a telegraph operator taking Associated Press Reports, and he claims that he could write more rapidly and with less fatigue than by any other means. He didn’t receive a personal response, but rather, a response from Edison’s secretary, who wrote, “Mr. Intrigued by the method and its ability to capture information with speed and clarity, Dewey sought to experiment with the writing style to see if it’d fit the needs of libraries.ĭewey reached out to Edison, inquiring about his writing method.
#Teacher and librarian joining hands how to
The discussion included where and how to use typewriters for catalog copy, and then it turned to Edison and his perfection of a style of writing for telephone operators. Those in attendance at the meetings desired a style that would be usable for the average person, without too many flourishes, and was as near to type as possible.
#Teacher and librarian joining hands trial
Years and years of trial and error left a style that helped him write with speed, efficiency, and clarity.Īt the 1885 American Library Association (ALA) conference, Dewey and other librarians turned to discussions of uniformity in library handwriting. Edison’s writing also shifted from the right-slanted style of the time into a much more upright one. He’d been fascinated with methods of writing since his early years of invention, and Edison developed one of the first methods of writing that separated each letter out individually, rather than connecting them together in script, borne from his work operating telephones and the need to capture information quickly. Library hand, a rounded, easily legible style was based on Edison’s own handwriting that had allowed him to take longhand notes from the wires at a rate of 47 to 54 words per minute. In September 1885, Thomas Edison and Melvil Dewey teamed up to design library hand - though their “team work” was less collaboration than it was one of implementation. Information about a book needed to be navigable, as information presented on those cards would need to correspond to the information on shelves and book spines.
Memory most likely serves up typewritten cards in a style that was mirrored at the vast majority of libraries one visited.īut before the rise of typewriters, those cards were handwritten, and in order to become the most useful tools they could be for users, library hand became the style in which they were created.īooks were being published abundantly in the late 1800s, and libraries, which had begun to utilize card catalogs, needed a means by which to manage their collections. For most readers now who are familiar with the original catalogs, each card included information about a book’s subject, authorship, and location on the shelves. Library card catalogs, now almost entirely digital databases, once greeted eager readers and researchers in libraries. So what is library hand and what differentiates it from other handwriting? What made it fall out of fashion? Let’s nerd out on handwriting and specifically, the history of library hand. Library hand, a specific style of handwriting, was once a highly-sought and praised manner of lettering and spacing and a requirement for many eager to enter the field. Before HTML/XML, database design and informatics were necessary skills to have or understand to work in libraries, there was a crucial requirement to obtain a job: mastery of library hand.
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