Behold
Library Hand, a font designed specifically for librarians without typewriters who created cards for card catalogs. What's cool is the variation within the guidelines:
Via Ella Morton :
Since the aim was legibility, not haste, library hand wasn’t so speedy to execute—but the pace depended on the scribe. Dewey conducted a test in which four cataloguers wrote the Lord’s Prayer in both “catalog hand” and their standard note-taking hand. One cataloguer took three-and-a-half minutes in note-taking hand and almost 12 minutes in catalog hand. But another took three-and-a-half minutes in note-taking hand and four-and-a-half minutes in catalog hand. And the time saved among librarians who had previously mistaken 3s for 5s was priceless.
It came in disjoined (print) and joined (cursive).
• Library Hand, the Fastidiously Neat Penmanship Style Made for Card Catalogs (Atlas Obscura)
I was a teenaged page at the North York Central Library in suburban Toronto, working in the Business and Urban Affairs section, shelving books, taping together newspapers while we waited for their microfilm versions to arrive, and fiddling around with the newly installed (and poorly documented) computerised catalogue/lending system -- I worked there with many […]
The BBC posted an online archive of many of its sound effects. The nature scenes and peculiar things of historical interests are wonderful, though the broad focus seems to be components for radio plays and the like: footsteps, actions, incidental moments. The BBC license isn’t free and has odd stipulations, but the point of the […]
Georgia Grainger, a Scottish librarian, began a fascinating Twitter thread earlier this week: So there was a MYSTERY at the library today.A wee old women came in and said "I've a question. Why does page 7 in all the books I take out have the 7 underlined in pen? It seems odd.""What?" I say, thinking […]
Our world is a colorful one, and when it comes time to repaint the house or create a new design, many of us look to our surroundings for inspiration. However, matching colors from the outside world to our canvas isn’t the most precise process when we’re just eyeballing it. The Nix Pro Color Sensor removes the […]
You probably remember the Twisty Glass Blunt since we love to write about it. And you may also remember its little buddy, the Twisty Glass Mini. Well, today we’ve got a fun surprise that isn’t so little. Less isn’t always more, and on those days when you need to decompress with a good smoke, the Twisty XL […]
Another year, another iteration of Samsung’s Galaxy smartphone—except this time around Samsung sought to redefine what a smartphone can do completely. Boasting a 6.2″ Quad HD+ Super AMOLED (2960×1440) infinity display, and an elite 10nm 64-bit Octa-Core Processor with 6GB RAM, the S9+ is an absolute powerhouse with a price tag to match. However, you […]
