A Top 1% Card Catalog Title Entry. Seriously.

JF Ptak Science Books  Daily Dose from Dr. Odd 

 

 
Triple-F (Frank Freemnont Frazee) came up with an all-time-great-title entry when he wrote his pamphlet about _____ back in 1947.  I have a copy of it, purchased in a 90,000-item collection from the Library of Congress--something called "The Pamphlet Collection", housed in 1,500 blue document boxes from 1952, all of which were categorized in a Borgesian nightmare way, according to nothing. Therefore the "General" box might have had General Electric pamphlets, or something about General Malaise, or Boston General, or General Rules of Parking in Providence (R.I.), and so on.  So, although categorized and alphabetized, it was all useless.  Among this beautiful mess were a thousand or so pamphlets like Mr. Frazee's--incredibly titled, about stuff visible and invisible, complaints, claims, praises, warnings, sufferings, advanced supra-backwards premonitions, and so on.  My Frazee copy happened also to be the U.S. Copyright Deposit copy (or one of them, rather) that was sent to the Library of Congress to be housed forever (or until I got them), along with a carbon copy of the card catalog entry. 

The card is a work of art. (More about this pamphlet here.)

Comments

[Jeff Donlan]

I'd like to see the typewriter that could make a carbon copy of a catalog card. Most impressive. Interesting for me to see the name "Frazee," which I've only come upon in local (Salida, CO) history. Steve Frazee was a popular Western author (and author of Westerns) and his books saw some Hollywood action. He also published a book in 1961 called "More Damn Tourists," loosely based on Salida life, which is instructive for locals who moan as if tourism were somehow a new part of our regional economy, supplanting railroads, mining, and ranchin' thanks to more damn Liberals ... Ok, I'll stop. But of course, a check of Superpages.com shows a great many Frazees out there. Only twelve Ptaks in Colorado, though.