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Epigenetics in the Card Catalog

By Trevor | January 13, 2007

Before I decided to pursue a degree at WSU, I had just moved to the Pullman area and was in desperate need of a job during one of the worst possible times for a college town: summer. Since the university is Pullman’s largest employer (by far), and has their own need for people to do the lousy jobs during the summer, I actually got one of the better ones that involved time in an air-conditioned building.

The downside? The building was Holland Library, and I was one of eight people hired to expend extra budget money by, among other things, assisting in the ongoing effort to move card catalogs to the electronic catalog system. Since I was old enough to have learned the Dewey decimal system in elementary school, and had experience as an editor (for spotting spelling and grammar mistakes on the cards), I was hired to review hundreds of the cards before they were hand-typed into the computer.

So, needless to say, this brings back some bad memories:

EN Card Catalog
You can make your own at blyberg.net. (Hat tip: Genetics and Health)

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  • Topics: commentary |

    2 Responses to “Epigenetics in the Card Catalog”

    1. Hsien Lei Says:
      January 15th, 2007 at 1:31 am

      What a story! I love it. I think all of us have had some not-so-great jobs but as long as we weren’t in a sweatshop, I think we did ok. ;)

    2. Trevor Says:
      January 15th, 2007 at 10:17 am

      Maybe some other time I’ll go into some of my other all-time worst jobs, some of which involved long hours standing in a concrete floor warehouse and walking through knee-high mud fields.