Thinking back on our conversation about web 1.0 versus web 2.0, I experienced a web 1.0 nightmare today. I spent four hours in Simpson Library today scrolling through card catalogs and microfiche. Yes, microfiche. I had to feed the film onto a machine most likely dating to the early 1850s and scroll through every page until I maybe happened to possibly stop on the right page I needed. But most likely I had gone way too far and had to rewind, only to have to fast forward again. It was like trying to find a ten second section of an eight hour VHS. In any case, I feel like we have the technology to scan the archived Bullet’s onto an Internet database. Then, the articles would be searchable and easy to use – a genius idea! The entire system could change. Instead of looking through every typewriter punched card in the massive card catalog, I could simply search a database for keywords. Not only would it take less space, it would be faster and produce better research. Also, can we talk about the horrible copies that the printers produce from the microfiche? It’s just a bad, bad system that needs to be updated to web 2.0.

If you can believe it, this machine actually looks newer and nicer than the ones in Simpson.

And if the machine wasn’t bad enough…the film comes on spools like old movie projectors.