- Browne Issue System
The Browne Issue System is an old
library system for loaningbook s.Operation
When a book was borrowed the
librarian took one of the reader's borrowing cards and removed the book's own card.The two cards were filed together this date was stamped in the book. This cards are tickets are organised in trays, by date of issue, and within date by the key on the card.
When the book was returned, the user's card was removed from the file of the day indicated by the stamp and given back, and the book card was replaced in the book.
Whilst the filed cards revealed which user had a particular book, or which books a particular reader had borrowed, this was only true whilst the loan continued. Afterwards no record of the transaction remained.
Origins
The Browne issue system is a system of book charging which is attributed to Nina E. Browne, an American librarian, who described it in 1895. A common mistake when describing this system is to misspell 'Browne' without the 'e'. The system is very similar to that adopted by Mr. L.G.Virgo, Librarian of Bradford Public Library.
Advantages
A reader can quickly see how many more books they can borrow (before handing any in) by the number of cards they have remaining.
The librarian can look at the tray and instantly visualise the number of transactions that day.
Deficiencies
There is a lot of manual processing of the cards in the trays. Each day, the issues have to be ordered and added to the trays. When a book is returned, the identification 'key' and date of return guide you to the card location in the trays.
When a book is reserved, somebody needs to check the catalog, and, if the book is not on the shelf, look for the relevant card in the trays. This involves manually looking for the card with the matching 'key' in the trays, sequentially looking in each date until found. A reserved item is flagged with a piece of colored card, so that when it is returned it can be set aside and checked against the file of reservations.
Renewals involve finding the ticket and moving it to its new location in the trays. Typically, a small number of 'queries' will mount up, cases where something goes awry because a card or ticket is misdirected in some way. These may consume quite a bit time to sort out.
A tray of cards dropped on the floor could prove catastrophic and require a substantial amount of time to re-sort.
Decline
The simple, reliable and speedy method was replaced in America by the Newark and Detroit methods and others based on them. The advent of technology within libraries, such as barcode scanners, eliminated card-based systems.
Discussion
In 2006,
Lorcan Dempsey commented on his blog about the lack of a Wikipedia entry at the time for the Browne Issue System.References
* Sturges P., Iliffee U. & Dearnley J. [http://www.ffzg.hr/infoz/lida/lida2001/present/sturges_et_al.doc Privacy in the Digital Library Environment] Department of Information Science, Loughborough University, UK. Paper of presentation from "The Internet: ethics and legal issues & Information services - practice and research."
* Country Lending Service (CLS) manual, State Library of Queensland. Section [http://www.slq.qld.gov.au/serv/publib/cls/manual/day 3.1] is a description of the Browne issue system.
* Prytherch J.R. Harrod's librarians' glossary : 9,000 terms used in information management, library science, publishing, the book trades, and archive management.External links
* [http://orweblog.oclc.org/archives/001196.html Orweblog blog discussion concerning the Brown Issue System in Wikipedia]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
