McMullen’s Unisort Cards
Entries in the database were keyed in at Princeton University from data on punch cards that had been compiled by Haynes McMullen. A glance at the punched cards, which have all been scanned, shows that the database was compiled over decades. In fact, some of the information was gathered by Jesse Shera, who turned it over to Haynes McMullen. Although long interested in library history (McMullen’s doctoral dissertation at Chicago was on the history of the University of Chicago Library), the major effort in gathering the data that is recorded here began in 1951. That was the year when McMullen left practicing librarianship to become a library educator. He retired from the library school of the University of North Carolina.
The scanned cards sometimes provide information additional to that recorded in the database. In addition, the scanned cards enable the user of the database to verify information in it. This is especially important because it has not been possible to proofread the database entries against the cards.
On the cards Professor McMullen used the following symbols:
- FD (Founding Date): Date of founding
- EM (Earliest Mention): Earliest date at which the library is known to have existed (used only when FD is not known)
- ML (Mentioned Last): Latest date at which the library is known to have been in existence (used only when CE is unknown)
- CE (Ceased Existence): Date at which the library ceased to exist
- DE (Date Earliest): Earliest date for which the size of the library (in volumes) is known
- SZ (Size): Size at the date given in DE
- LD (Latest Date): Latest date for which the size of the library (in volumes) is known
- VS (Size at LD): Size at the date given in LD