Celebrating obsolete library card-catalogs

USC's "It's All in the Cards" feature is a Flash widget that celebrates a different card-catalog card every day. I remember the first time I was exposed to my school library's subject index and practically falling over at the thought that there was a way to find all the books in the school (which I assumed were all the books in the world) on any subject that mattered to me. I could look at these things all day.

Maybe I should find a surplus mountain of these things and tile a room with them.

It's All in the Cards (via Resource Shelf)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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e.varden

A couple of decades ago there was a marvellous article on the demise of library card-catalogues in The New Yorker magazine. It was informative, poignant and with a few sweet observations such as which cards were more finger-soiled = popular. The human “touch” now missing.
- blakewest
  
  Some egghead professors kept me late after closing at my college library job about a week after that article came out, complaining to me about the “tragedy” of card catalogs disappearing. Jerks. I’m pretty sure they’re dead now, and I’m pretty glad a can just use a search form on a computer to find what I’m looking for. I don’t miss those stupid cards one bit, except maybe for the opportunities they afforded to remove or otherwise put them in the wrong order so Mr. So-and-So from town couldn’t find his crap about Rabelais. Pretty sure he’s dead too.
Shelby Davis

And what about the check-out cards in the pockets in the backs of books? Other than an overseas highschool in 2003, I haven’t seen a library using those in about a decade.

Sometimes, at a used book store, I’ll find a library cast-off with the pocket and card still there. I treasure them.
martyingels

“Maybe I should find a surplus mountain of these things and tile a room with them.”

For those in the Los Angeles downtown area, LAPL’s Central Library has two elevators shafts (and cars)lined with old card-catalog cards. When you move between floors, you can see the cards through a glass in the car.
Anonymous

Though I realize this thread is of age and the cabinets mentioned have long ago sold, I can’t help but to chime in about how wonderful these cabinets are.

I found one on Craigslist for 450.00 here in Oklahoma. It has legs and three pull-out writing sections along with 60 drawers, 50 of which I’ve filled.

Incense, tealight candles, miscellaneous keys and locks, winter gloves and hats, cable ties, garden seeds, handkerchiefs, sewing supplies, you name it.

I’m currently in the market for another one, this time for my bedroom. Perhaps odd, I would love to have one instead of a dresser. Dark socks, white socks, nylon stockings, scarves, shoes, etc. What a fabulous way to organize!

Karen
Mark Crummett

One of Portland, OR’s wonderful resources, City Liquidators, has a couple of these available, if you’re in the neighborhood. At least they had them a couple of days ago.

http://www.cityliquidators.com/
sic.transit.a2

Check Ann Arbor and Detroit Craigslist in the coming week. I have 6, 72-drawer library card catalogs coming up for sale.
lectroid

As wonderful as the old hand typed cards are, the real find from these would be the AMAZING card-catalog cabinets. All those wonderful little drawers, little label holders. Truly something for a maker’s garage holding every imaginable nut, bolt, screw, chip, wireend, diode….

At least one candy shop in my town has repurposed these cabinets to hold their collection of dozens of flavors gum and mints.
- watman
  
  Agreed. I have been trying to find one of those fantastic cabinets for years to repurpose for storage. So far no luck.
Derek C. F. Pegritz

When the campus library at Penn State’s Fayette location was getting rid of their physical card catalogues–back in 1991! (they were considerably ahead of the curve)–I took home seven or eight “drawersful”: approximately 2,000 or 3,000 cards. They’ve been chillin’ in my old bedroom ever since, because I could never quite figure out what to do with ‘em. But now I’m going to cover one entire wall of my bedroom with them! But first I’ve got to think of something weird to write on the backs of them, so if anyone starts tearing them down once I’m uploaded they will make a Terrifying Discovery….
skeletoncityrepeater

They’re not All obsolete. Remember, there are a lot of libraries that haven’t been cataloged (catalogued?) or digitized yet. I can think of, non-Western science and mathematical libraries, many music libraries, and so many others that fall under the ‘special library’ classification. For things like that, cross-referencing is still everything. You need indexes of indexes. The system is very powerful even today, as the process of cataloging is not strictly hierarchical and lets you get at things you might not have originally aimed for. Hopefully those old catalogs will survive long enough for us to recatalog and digitize that other stuff..
skeletoncityrepeater

at the beginning, I meant ‘recatalogued (recatalogued?)’
Anonymous

My husband found an old card catalog at a salvage store and fixed it up (refinished the wood, cleaned up the hardware, added new legs) for me as a wedding present. It’s quite large (six drawers by five drawers), and we plan to modify the drawers to hold wine bottles.

I also have a mini-catalog, just two drawers, and plan to type up cards for all my books (using a typewriter I bought at a rummage sale for $2). So geeky.

If anyone is in the San Francisco Bay Area, there are a few card catalogs that pop up on Craigslist from time to time, including a monster catalog from the UC Berkeley library, but they’re not cheap. Card catalogs do not last long in any of the salvage or antique stores in this area, either.
adwkiwi

I remember coming across the catalogue for the first time too and it blowing my mind. As convenient as the internet versions are, there really is something wonderful about a card system.
Anonymous

This is fantastic. I’ve been using an old card catalog as a holder for my audio tapes. So I have one outdated piece of hardware holding another outdated mode of music recording!
evilrooster

When I did a Library Science course at UC Berkeley in the late 80′s (I wanted a stack pass, and it was neat anyway), the professor mentioned that there were still handwritten cards in the card catalog.

Of course, I had to go search for one after class. Found it on the third or fourth try, looking up the Argonautica by Appolonius Rhodius. It’s one of my most vivid sensory memories from college: I can recall the card itself, written in black copperplate, but also the golden wood of the card catalog drawer, and even the particular shade of olive green of my T-shirt sleeves.

(And now? Now I work in a company that makes library search software. The sensual pleasure of physical cards may be less, but the magic of discovery is still there for me.)
Anonymous

I remember being totally aghast when I went to the library shortly after the card catalogs had been replaced by computer terminals. Instead of little note pads to write your information on, they were using the actual cards from the card catalog. You wrote on the back side of the card! It just seemed so wrong.
Asterion

Anyone who enjoys card catalogues should make a pilgrimage to the Mundaneum in Mons, Belgium. Sadly it’s only a remnant of a grand idea that never took off. Still, if you make an appointment you can have a tour of the archive and handle the hardback prototype of Otlet and La Fontaine’s Universal Decimal Classification. My girlfriend regrets that she didn’t have a camera to capture my joyful squeak.

(This might be the geekiest thing I have ever done.)
deviceofmind

The artists Ann Hamilton and Ann Chamberlain have an untitled piece in the SF public library made from old index cards:

“Obsolete cards embedded in artisans’ plaster cover the principal diagonal wall on three levels of the building. Each card is annotated with a quote from its corresponding book or from another book associated with the title by subject matter. nearly 200 individuals annotated the cards in a dozen different languages. The cards not only represent a process of research unique to the person who created them but also express the diverse meanings derived from reading. Moreover, the annotations on the cards expose the interior of books-the text at the heart of a library’s holdings. The wall represents a window into a world of books that can be browsed by those who enjoy the library and its collection.”

from: http://sfpl.lib.ca.us/librarylocations/main/artmain.htm
Janet Brennan Croft

I gloat … I have THREE old card catalog units. Two from the first library I worked in — long low units to which I added wheels and which hold all my sewing and craft stuff and work as a cutting/craft table. And one from my current library, a taller unit that sits in the kitchen/dining area and holds spices, silverware, napkins, and so on. Fantastic things! Built to last.

But I remember some of my earliest library jobs were pulling, editing, and refiling catalog cards. Every time a subject heading changed, or a book was reclassified to another call number, or a new copy or volume was added, you had to pull the whole set and update them — with whiteout and a typewriter! — and refile them. Now updating a record is done with a few taps on the keyboard.
Anonymous

Hello, I am thrilled to find a 60 drawer library catalogue. I am missing just one of the rods that is under the little label holder. Does anyone know where I can get one? Thanks, Royane
Rob Beschizza

A project I would like to do: find a super-thin form of digital storage/flash memory/whatever that can be glued onto the cards like a sticker, and upgrade an entire card catalog library to actually BE the library.
winkybb

Golf; Eisenhower and
technogeek

At one point, I smuggled myself (in catalog-card form) into a number of my alma mater’s many libraries. I haven’t checked whether any of those card cabinets still exist and if my bogus card is still present.

Yes, I too would be delighted to rescue one of those cabinets.
getjustin

The Harvard University Library, the fifth biggest library system in the world, still has card catalogs at their main branch. I was in there a weeks ago with my wife and was stunned.
jaytkay

The Los Angeles Central Library has glass elevator cabs and shafts lined with the old cards.

Here are pictures and words.