I know. The drawer seems out of focus. But wait, the focus is actually on the card. Can you see the author entry and what we used to call the added entry, at the top of the card? Well, sort of, yes? The added entry cards allowed you to look up the author, title, subjects or anyone else responsible for the creating the content-illustrators, editors of story collections, etc. Often there were 8-10 cards for each book.
Don't get me wrong. I am not nostalgic for the old card catalog. They were handsome drawers, well made, and the warm glow of the wood used to be such a fixture of libraries, that for many people the card catalog meant libraries. And if they loved libraries-the best kind of folks-they loved the card catalog. But when these same people tell me they miss the old catalog, I have to restrain myself from the rant that I won't start with now, but the summary would be something like: it was work, work, work! Not only did we have to put them in, we had to pull them out, as when the book was lost. I love online catalogs!
1 comment:
I remember the days of the old card catalogs too. I even worked on OCLC and ordered the things to be filed!!
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