The Librarian of Congress Weighs In on Why Card Catalogs Matter
8th July 2024
Orderly boxes of cards once filled libraries large and small, and even the most humble of books boasted a catalog card of its own. But when the company that made the cards stopped printing them in 2015, the sun finally set on the card catalog, a book-finding system more than a century old.
…
Many of us who remember going to libraries and using the card catalog connect it with a sense of discovery. I have memories of flipping through the cards by subject and finding all the different books or other materials that had the kind of information I was looking for and those were always fun “eureka!” moments.
But it is not just about nostalgia. The card catalog was a revolutionary tool for organizing information. It was really the first search engine, so I think for younger generations it is an eye-opener to think about the written catalog and how far we have come in organizing data and making it findable.
I recall as a student going to the card catalog, looking up a book, and then just flipping through cards ahead and behind the one I had looked up to find others of the same nature. The Library of Congress web site has a ‘browse’ feature where one can look up a book and then ‘browse the self’ for books with the same (or close) classifications, which is an experience close to that of playing Myst.