Library of Congress

It's odd to think of libraries without rigorous systems of classification, but cataloging was a surprisingly recent addition to libraries. Well, perhaps not so surprising when a few hundred books in the same place was a substantial collection, and a few thousand an unprecedented hoard of wisdom. The Card Catalog is a light history of the Library of Congress, and the effort involves in filing and cataloging everything the right way.

I was familiar with the basic outlines, the core of the show more collection based around a donation from Thomas Jefferson, but I did not realize that the the Library of Congress was such a laggard in organization. Cards cataloging was basically formed during the French Revolution, with playing cards (cheap and universally accessible) used as a standard, but the Library of Congress didn't get its first cards until 1899. For much of the 19th century, the Library of Congress was opposed to Melvil Dewey and the emerging field of library science, but once it stepped in, it threw immense weight. With copyright registration allowing the library to hold copies of nearly every work published in the United States, the library embarked on a massive effort of making its catalog accessible to the public and smaller libraries. Finally, in 1980 the card catalog was 'frozen', in preparation for replacement by computer.

The cards themselves are surprising beautiful objects, especially the ones in elaborate 'library hand' script. And this book has lots of photos. It's not the deepest, but it's a fun read for any bibliophile. show less

I am old enough to have used a card catalog during the whole of my education. We actually had classes when I was young on how to use the library, the catalog and the microfiche. Even though digital catalogs are easier, more up-to-date and faster, there’s something wonderful about a physical card catalog. It’s the tactile quality of actually discovering something. Reading the tracks left by another person for you to find a book you might love or at least learn something from.

The history show more of the catalog is a reasonably interesting one and fraught with humans fighting over really dumb stuff. The very fact that bound catalogs were de rigeur for so long speaks to this. The instant the thing is bound it is obsolete. The very nature of a growing collection of objects renders it so and while the idea itself of using something small, portable and most of all sortable, isn’t French, the French were the first to exploit the medium. And they did it with playing cards! Suits and all. Fabulous.

Interspersed with the story of the card catalog (and the Dewey decimal system, which if you think about it is brilliant) are photos of actual cards in all their quirky glory. I had no idea that so many were handwritten and in Library Hand no less. Library Hand is a writing style strictly defined as to letter size, shape and even the slant. It’s really beautiful to look at and remarkably easy to read. If you’ve been taught how that is. If you’re a kid these days it might as well be hieroglyphs.

Along with the cards are the books or artifacts that go with them such as a collection of Emily Dickinson poetry with a cover featuring Indian Pipe, my favorite wildflower. And speaking of covers, what’s with The Legend of Sleepy Hollow? Now that’s deceptive advertising. I had a little sizzle of personal connection among the treasures of the Library of Congress - they have a folio by Pierre-Joseph Redoute who made the most amazing botanical prints in the 1800s. I have a set of reproductions that I frame and hang on my walls.

Alas I don’t actually have a card catalog - the physical piece of furniture. There are a few scattered among the shelves at one of my local libraries and I so want to buy it or steal it and bring it home. Many of these oak cabinets were sold off in the 1990s as the electronic catalog (and the MARC record, invented by a woman) gained popularity. People often think librarians are staid and stodgy, but they embraced the electronic catalog very quickly because it was more fluid and easier to update and find information.

But there are treasures there in the cards. Funny notes and bits of information that individual catalogers and librarians thought important enough to include. Some cards were actually multiples and extend to a dozen or more! It helped bring the Library of Congress to the people instead of being a private collection for Senators. As a matter of fact, it seems to have been progressive for its time - there’s a photo from the 1940s near the beginning of a bunch of people at a long table doing research and in the crowd is a black man and many women. All learning and discovering together, the way it should be. show less

Well, here's a book that made me feel old. Knowing that most people under the age of 30 have never used a card catalog makes me sad for some reason. It's not the world's most glamorous or sophisticated technology, but this book highlights its charm quite vividly. I was still using card catalogs at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center in Austin as recently as 1995, and I remember how thrilling it was to find their provenance catalog and the discoveries that led to. I catalog my own show more library with the online database of LibraryThing, although as a teenager I did build a card catalog to manage my then-growing considerable comic book collection.

This materially-beautiful volume The Card Catalog supplies a fairly full history of the Library of Congress itself (at least for its first century or so), in support of its more particular study of the library's card catalog, and the library's eventual mission to support cataloging at local libraries across the US. As the text explains, the Library of Congress was actually one of the last major collections in the US to adopt the card cataloging system, but when they did so, it transformed library cataloging nationwide.

I was fascinated by trivia such as the French origin of library catalog cards in the repurposing of playing cards, and the features of the "library hand" in which American catalogers were trained for creating cards in manuscript. I was also gratified to find out that the physical card catalog of the Library of Congress, while retired, has been retained. As explained and amply demonstrated in this book, there is valuable information in the cards that did not make it into the MARC records created by a private vendor from the card catalog in the 1980s. The visible emendations to a card show change in the status of a given book (promotion from second to "official" copy, for example), details of changes between editions, and developments in metadata such as the addition of an author's date of death.

There are many full color reproductions from catalogs that preceded the card catalog, and over half of the book consists of pictures of cards from the catalog, accompanied by photos of the actual books (or other media objects) and often portraits of the authors. The fact that The Card Catalog is thus itself a secondary product of the catalogers who worked in the Library of Congress is evidently why writer and editor Peter Devereaux gave the book's byline to the institution itself, crediting on the cover Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden with the foreword, and effacing his own role--showing it only in his subscription to the introduction.

I enjoyed reading this book far more than I expected to. I recommend it to both the curious and the nostalgic, and I'm glad that it exists to help document this increasingly ghostly element of information science. show less

This is probably the most pleasant, and by extension, interesting, history of something as mundane as a card catalog as I'm likely to ever run across. From the first example of a book catalog, pressed into clay in cuneiform, to the modern day usage of MARC records, the text flows in a tight, succinct narrative that is neither chatty nor dry (and I'm sure nowhere near comprehensive).

Where the book truly shines is in its photographs and illustrations. The author and publisher were generous show more with the photographs and they fill at least 1/3 of the pages. Most of them are photos of the old cards and the books they belong to, but there are many old pictures of the Library of Congress and other related images. The number of cards the Library of Congress had to deal with daily in the mid-50's is staggering. I can't even imagine the logistics.

Did you know that the Library of Congress still has their old card catalog and it's still in use? (Most of it.) I think that's wonderful and the perfect example of how old and new methodologies can complement each other instead of competing.

This isn't the kind of book that's going to have wide appeal, but for those that find the subject interesting, it's a beautiful book, thoughtfully put together. show less