Card Catalog

10/24/2012

Ah, dear readers...who among us is old enough to remember card catalogs in libraries? A show of hands please!

On a college tour sometime in the past year, we were in the library when the guide pointed out the catalog room. My son and I ducked into it and pulled open a few drawers. They were predictably empty.

My son asked me what used to be the drawers. "Little cards," I replied, "that you'd then copy the number of the book from and write it on this scrap of paper with the little pencils. Like so." I then reached up where relics of pencils and scrap paper laid.

"What then?" he asked, practically scratching his head.

"Well, then you'd take this piece of paper to the circulation desk, and either they'd get the book for you, or you'd retrieve it from the stacks."

"You're joking, right?" he muffled a laugh.

"No. And in my college we'd take a whistle from the basket and bring it up to the stacks with us in case a creep tried to hurt us." But by then, the tour was moving on and we had to rejoin it.

My son turned back to me. "So you've got the book from the stacks and then what?"

"Well, then you'd come back down, pick up your spear and go out and hunt for dinner."

At least I got a good laugh out of him.

Digital literacy. It's in their DNA. And I am happy for them. But I recall with great fondness the way the drawers slid out. I will forever love the smell of libraries. I can recall with precision the color and texture of the velvet cushions on the window seats in my childhood reading room. I love the "hush" atmosphere that libraries invoke. These things will forever be in my personal and mental time capsule.

grannyj

10/24/2012 04:46:53 am

Hand up waving furiously...
Laura you have such a gift for making these memories come alive- I have not thought about card catalogues in a hell of a long time- and now I can actually feel the little metal handle on the drawer, hear the sound the drawer made as it opened, and feel the cards on my fingers as I try to find the book I am looking forward.

grannyj

10/24/2012 04:48:23 am

...looking for!

ManxMamma

10/24/2012 05:27:00 am

I worked in my University library and stayed on for several years after graduation. I was thinking about the smell before you mentioned it!

Laura Novak

10/24/2012 05:48:13 am

How wonderful that the smell came to you just reading this, ManxMamma! And GrannyJ, I knew just what you meant. There was something very precise about the way those drawers slid open, wasn't there? It was a certain gliding motion. And the little pencils! Other than miniature golf, where do we see those? Nostalgia for sure.

mistah charley, ph.d.

10/25/2012 12:27:51 am

The public libraries I frequent still have those cute little pencils - old fogies like myself still look up book numbers at the computers, write them down on little pieces of paper, and then go to the stacks. In the near future, of course, the library patron will be reading the catalog number off their phone as they walk the stacks. And in the further future the stacks will be gone, when printed books are of purely antiquarian interest.

Lynn

10/24/2012 07:32:32 am

Too funny. My kid is homeschooled due to health issues, and each year for the past coup,e of years I have administered to her the California Achievement Test. The results of the test are used to prove to our school district (in Florida) that kid is making satisfactory progress. There are many subjects/sections on the test and last year she shrieked when she arrived at the study skills section.

More than half of the questions on that section were about using the card catalog and Dewey Decimal system! I laughed when I looked it over. When the results arrived, my then 15 year old was way above grade level in everything but study skills. This year we skipped that section.

Really, California? I'm nostalgic and all, but I'd just like a catalog as furniture.....because, um, I have google...

Laura Novak

10/24/2012 08:16:52 am

Great story Lynn! Remember the feel of hooking your index (pardon the pun) finger in that small, curved handle and feeling the glide of the drawer? The mystery of the Dewey Decimal System. Ah. Now, as for furniture, how about spices, office supplies, sewing items, picture hooks, fabric remnants...what else? The drawers are roomier than we might think. I'd love on in the color green above! Always great to see you here, Lynn!!

Barbara Alfaro link

10/24/2012 10:46:41 pm

My hand is up and so is my mood after reading your post. The card catalog in the New York Public Library, the whole shebang, though I don't recall the spears. You can still find the "cute little pencils" in churches around annual pledge time.

V-A

10/25/2012 12:44:25 am

Lovely. Card catalogues. . . and grazing down aisles of books looking for something you're not sure what it is until you find it. And it's free!

Our city tried to shut down branch libraries ("only places for the homeless" "unnecessary in the digital age") and to San Diego's credit, we fought back. Branch hours and days are almost back to normal after the city's near bankruptcy. Civic institutions -- not businesses-- are what make our country truly great.

Laura Novak

10/25/2012 06:23:08 am

Public libraries were always ours for the taking, weren't they. Growing up, we never thought they might be taken away from us. Is there anything like the smell of a library? Not even a book store can compare.

Mistah Charley, I think you're right: we'll all be reading and scanning off our phones. But surely these august places will still exist.

And yes, Barbara, those pencils ARE in churches - another place, by the way, that I always love the smell of.

Thank you all!

Rolando link

10/25/2012 09:26:38 am

For me libraries were like time machines. I would go to the section that had the oldest books and look at research articles written by long-dead scientists. I also liked the smell (although some of that is harmful chemicals that were used in those days to treat paper). I used the card catalog, but I also liked to browse and see what I'd discover. In science we used something called the Biological or Chemical abstracts to learn about new research papers that were published. However, I am glad these were replaced by computer searches.

Duncan Campbell

10/26/2012 02:58:05 am

The library I best remember was the one I went to where some adult would read stories to us kids in 1944, long before I knew about the little drawers and, we always got to eat the mulberries when they were ripe on the big tree outside.

Ottoline

10/27/2012 07:44:56 am

More than card catalogs, I am fond of the stacks. Lots of good memories of taking my list, handwritten by me on the crooked little slips of paper, and plunking myself on the stacks floor near the books on my little slip, to browse the other nearby stuff I had no idea existed.

But the thing I loved long ago and love even more now (when it's online) is being able to look up any title I read about and order it online from my local library. The whole world is right there on my laptop! And I go pick it up at a small local library via their extensive interlibrary loan. Usually, by the time it arrives, I've forgotten I ordered it, and the title is a lovely surprise. Sometimes I look things up when I'm in the lib, and yes they still have the little pencils and crooked sm slips of paper. But my thrill in getting books that are 100+years old, any book I want (almost), arcane titles, ordering it at 3 AM from my bed rather than intending to order later and forgetting about it -- this is the best yet.

I am sooooo eager to have the old magazines go online -- for example Country Life (or whatever the title is) so I can find gardening details from the past.

I just wish we had a new business/funding model for our libraries, esp those in remote and low-income areas. Something to do with donations from dot com gazillionaires or corporate wealth, maybe. I understand the Gates philanthropy was initially set up to help libraries. But now, I see esp that category of libraries suffering crippling decreases in funding -- now, when internet literacy and the library's role is needed more than ever, esp in low-income and remote areas. If anyone has info/ideas on this topic, I'd be grateful to learn of them.

Ottoline

10/27/2012 07:57:22 am

Actually, I had this dream awhile ago: to write up a better funding model and seek a grant to implement it in a remote, low-income library. Something that provides generous, stable funding for the traditional+new roles of libraries and possibly even preserves the beautiful but falling-down historic buildings they are often housed in. Something that relieves gov't of this funding role, because gov't is too stingy now (understandably so). But an approach that opens a whole new possibility of vigor for libraries to continue to contribute.

And then that one pilot study (I am assuming it to be a successful model -- i.e., one that really works) could be used to seek funding for and perpetuate this new basis for robust free-to-the-user library services into the future.

Laura Novak

10/27/2012 09:05:45 am

Thanks, Ottoline, for such a thoughtful comment. It reminds me why most people say the digital revolution will never entirely replace the hand-held book. Isn't there room for both? But shouldn't expansion be in the realm of "not cutting down more trees"?

You know, I never, ever open a book without holding it up to my nose in and inhaling the smell of it. Doesn't matter whether it's new or old. Cherished by few or touched by many. I simply love the smell of books.

Ottoline

10/27/2012 03:27:16 pm

I'm always surprised at how durable our sense of smell is. I recall opening a certain brand of suntan oil my mother used when I went skiing with her as a kid, and the whole scene recreated itself around me, even after many yrs.

The same with books, for those of us who take great pleasure in reading. If we did not, I suppose it would just be a musty dusty scent, but not so for me, either.

Oh yuck, I still remember the book a smoker had read some time earlier. Not the title but the bad idea of it. Big time smell!

When I occasionally get a 100+yr old book, I do have a little love affair with it before reading. The binding is sometimes v interesting, sometimes there's an annotation in an old-fashioned handwriting style. I wonder who turned those tissue-paper leaves covering the engraved frontispiece, and whether this book was originally a gift or bought by the first owner, and in what setting that person might have read this book, ditto for the other people through the years. Just the idea of the book having been there, doing its quiet job, all those years.

mistah charley, ph.d.

10/30/2012 05:42:13 am

Speaking of the smell of books, in the mid-20th century I used to go to a library in Europe (at a NATO base - I was there in my capacity as an Army brat) and notice that the books from England smelled different than the American books - I got to the point where I knew where it came from by the smell, before looking in the front to see where it was printed. My olfactory acuity has declined over time, and now I can hardly smell my own ear wax.

Laura Novak

10/28/2012 05:03:26 am

Beautifully put, Ottoline. That's how I feel about the Poe anthology I have. The price on it is $1.59 Imagine that. It was new and cost only that at one point. Such poignancy in that alone. I know I've turned those pages hundreds of times throughout the decades. But who cared for the book before me? And why did they think to give it up? What a gift to have some quiet time to ponder these questions. Thank you again!

Margot Woodrough

11/5/2012 05:00:32 am

Does anyone remember how an entry requiring more than one card was fastened to its partner? the two or three were permanently joined with a delicately tied little thread through the rod hole.
Neophyts were allowed to file "above the rod" then their work was checked by head librarian who would remove the rod all the way back through all the cards and "drop" the newly filed cards into place - then replace the rod.

Laura Novak

11/5/2012 05:17:24 am

Ah, now that's a great memory, Margot! Thanks for reading and sharing. Glad to know I wasn't the only one hunting for my dinner with a spear! So glad this was a lovely conversation. Seems many of us have nostalgia for those days.

Jordan link

1/3/2013 08:47:56 am

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5/12/2013 06:13:42 pm

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