Team Ahimsa Blog Relay, Various Contests

Worm

Today's new emoticon set off a chain of thoughts in my head.

The worm immediately reminded me of Richard Scarry's Lowly Worm, with a little green hat and one shoe.

It wasn't officially stated anywhere, but in some of Scarry's books, Lowly Worm appeared somewhere on every page, whether he had anything to do with the text or not.

It was delightful to search for Lowly Worm. Often, a half hour extra was spent with the book just doing this, page after page.

This got me thinking about 'searching'.

When we needed to search something in the library, we went there physically, looked through the catalogue cards and located the shelf the book was on. Once we found the book, we took it to a desk and searched through it to locate the topic we needed - and if it wasn't covered as we needed, we walked back to the shelf, replaced the book and looked for another.

When I studied Library Science, I had to make physical catalogue cards - sometimes nine or ten per book - and place them alphabetically where they would be searched for. I remember having an argument with my Professor, saying I'd prefer to make a card for "Holmes" rather than "Doyle" (or make both) as "Doyle" was less likely to be searched for.

I wonder how many people reading this would even grasp what it means. "Searching" today means keying in something, which takes about ten or fifteen seconds, and getting hundreds of results. You click in and click out - again in seconds ...

Just some stray thoughts!!

Love the emoticon!