Done! (sort of)

Well, I do not know how it's possible, but I am so far behind schedule it will be a miracle to hand things in today like I am supposed to ... and yet I am entirely pleased with myself because I have just put a conclusion on my first essay.

For my essay demonstrating my competency for ED109, Library Procedures, my Table of Contents looks like this:

The Dewey Decimal System
The Library of Congress and Universities
Electronic Databases and the Catalog
Formats, Genres, and Choices
Handling and Circulating Materials
Copyrights,Copy Machines, Bibliographies, and Ownership
Library Types, Library Functions, and MARC

And my conclusion is as follows:

Libraries of written materials seem to have been a part of human culture for as long as written language has been. People build libraries so that collections of knowledge, shared experience, and literary expression can be preserved, and the act of organizing and cataloguing human knowledge and expression seems to be an intrinsic part of all human communities.

In our modern time, libraries have moved from using card catalogues as a way to list and find the holdings into using ever-expanding computerized databases, from separate and independent entities into branches of cooperative components in large districts, and, in the case of community libraries, from places where a legendary hush was enforced by strict librarians into active and busy gathering places for a vast array of interactions.

Through all these changes, the foundation of an alpha-numeric cataloguing system has remained in place. Other building stones in the library’s foundation include openness to ideas and expression, a commitment to the preservation of records of the human experience in all its variety, and provision for intercultural interaction. Libraries may use the simple Dewey Decimal system for organizing holdings into ten broad categories of global knowledge, with a separate place for fiction and biographical work, or they may use the more item-specific Library of Congress system. They may be large or small, they may serve a tiny elementary school far from any urban center, or they may serve a university with dozens of departments and thousands of students. Regardless of the size or purpose, a list of things is a catalog. The things named in the catalog are a collection. And the collection housed together makes a library. Modern technology, such as electronic databases and the internet now make it possible for the libraries themselves to be a collection, more deep and wide than any known in human history.

And now I have a half an hour to shower, dress, and get to work at the library! (I wonder if I have any ironed shirts ...) (And I've just seen some awkward phrasing that needs to be fixed. heck!)