How Libraries Evolved from Card Catalogs to Digital

“Don’t you miss it, don’t you miss it
Some of you people just about missed it”
~Talking Heads

After all these years of a computer based catalog, lots of patrons still ask where the card catalog is. They really miss a lot of the trappings of the library from when they were kids.

I remember the card catalog as largely a work of fiction. Whenever I had to research something for a school assignment, I learned about all the books out there that my library didn’t have and couldn’t get for me. I could check and see if the Reference Desk could get it for me (they couldn’t) or if they could call and see if the other library would make an exception and let me borrow it (they wouldn’t).

This was the Main Library in the 70s. Things have changed a lot since then. Sure, we don’t have a physical card catalog or due date cards (25 cent fine if lost!), but you can get just about anything published with resource sharing and interstate library loans. In fact, you have to work fairly hard to find something a librarian can’t hook you up with–even in this day of aggressive book banning/not-a-book-banning.

Still, it’s nice to crawl back into a warm memory for a while and remember when “how things used to be” used to work…and forget about how they didn’t.

https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/83e6e5ca-f048-421a-8843-a1c3ff09a7c7