Card catalog(ue)s anyone?

I still love card catalogues. I cannot be the only one. Big cabinets with many drawers attract a high price. I only have two 4-drawer ones, but still capable of holding around 15,000 cards, I estimate. A while ago I decided on catalog(u)ing my books in this form, now officially declared as dead. But for some, that's just a challenge!

Has anyone else explored the idea of outputting LT data onto cards? Or is anyone doing it with a fountain pen and ink, surely the best?!

Or is anyone doing it with a fountain pen and ink, surely the best?!

Goose quill.

Old School. I think that's awesome!

>2 lilithcat: Of course you're right!!!

>3 al.vick: Thanks, maybe there are a few of us around?!

Ack NO! I worked with cards at the beginning of my career as a librarian (most of which I was a cataloguer) and I HATE cards. Hated creating them, proof-reading them, filing them. One of the happiest days of my career was the day I could start emptying catalogue drawers over the recycle bin. Computers are wayyyy better.

That said, I do love card catalogues as furniture, especially the old oak ones. I just would never use them to hold cards.

I’m with >6 tardis: on this one. I’ve never actually worked with a card catalogue (in this area they were demolished in the early 90’s and I was still in primary school then), but my older colleagues at the library nearly disowned a sales rep who waxed rhapsodic about cards (she was also too young to have worked with them). I’m eternally grateful that we had computers during my librarians days.

But card catalogues are very beautiful pieces of furniture and I would absolutely love to have one to store odds and ends in. Too bad they are/have been trendy and are thus difficult to get hold of and VERY pricey.

>6 tardis: we agree on the furniture aspect anyway! ;)

>7 PawsforThought: Yes, they are attractive things, I loved the one in The Big Bang Theory!

>1 GraemeLyall: I think to get the full effect you'll need to practice your Library Hand penmanship!

>10 rosalita: That was really interesting, thanks! Actually the only writing I am doing at the moment, with LT, is adding accession numbers. And each time I do it, I am, in a way, without knowing it, following the same approach as "library hand". I have a stamp which added an extra number each time, but I rejected it, for neat writing in a 4B pencil.

I remember back in the seventies when a university lecturer was desperate for a card catalogue, but couldn't get funding, that I suggested making a proposal for a computer to catalogue the institute library on, and then agreeing to compromise and accept a card catalogue.

I much prefer computer searches to the old days of leafing through card after card.

Computer catalogs save a lot of time and effort, but there was something charmingly opaque about an old catalog card. It had just enough information to make the informed researcher or reader need to see the work cataloged--no image of the cover, no reader reviews, just the bibliographic trace.

Anyone with serious card catalog nostalgia needs this book: The Card Catalog.

>13 paradoxosalpha: Yes, that's a great book!

The one thing I loved about card catalogs was that, as a kid, I could just flip through them and find stuff I didn't know existed. Browsing is possible in computer catalogs, but it's not such an obvious option, I think.

That said, my favorite non-card use of the furniture was in a store called Uncle Fun in Chicago (part of a tiny chain of related stores across the US midwest). They sold all kinds of odd things, and the card catalog drawers each had one thing in them. With an example in the rectangle on the front, of course.

>14 rosalita: I ordered a copy, it does look great!

>15 karenb:

Uncle Fun on Belmont! I remember it well.

>15 karenb:, >17 paradoxosalpha:

There's a documentary about Uncle Fun: https://unclefunyouretheone.com/

>15 karenb: "The one thing I loved about card catalogs was that, as a kid, I could just flip through them and find stuff I didn't know existed. Browsing is possible in computer catalogs, but it's not such an obvious option, I think."

I used to love browsing in the card catalogues at school and in the local library.

I suspect they're easier to get amended too. There's so much rubbish data about books in computerised catalogues, often copied one from another. Nobody ever even looks at the books to check. I've had booksellers refuse a refund because the incorrect data on which I based my purchase came from an "industry standard" database. Never mind looking at the book and seeing it's paperback, not hardback, oh no, "computer says it's hardback" so it must be so.

The original request seems like the sort of thing that could easily catch Tim's fancy and have him whip up an "export in card catalog format" option.

>20 lorax: In that case, Tim is, or might be, on my wavelength! Let's hope he reads comments.

I have repurposed some metal card index drawers: they are just the thing for sorting and storing hand tools, chisels, screwdrivers, spanners, etc.

I tried card cataloguing my collection years and years ago. I was even using colored index cards to indicate categories. It didn’t last long. I much prefer the cross linking capabilities of collections and tags.

>15 karenb: For 'adventure-browsing' i would just go to the proper sections of the stacks themselves and brooooowse away...

Yes, I do feel nostalgic about that.

I also have to regularly fight the urge to make a physical card catalog -- hand written or otherwise. I am stopped mostly because I can acknowledge to myself that I would never actually USE the catalog. I just want to make it, look at it, and leaf through it. It's the physical and tactile nature of it that appeals to me (that, and I also love cards and card-type things in general, such as playing cards or the like).

I have a CD cabinet that is reminiscent of a card catalog that I use to store gaming miniatures in. My desire to get more so I can have a wall of mini drawers is great, because I really do need them and can pretend they're a card catalog, but I'd have to give up a wall of bookshelves for that which is non-negotiable, and I already am out of room.

>26 macsbrains: I can acknowledge to myself that I would never actually USE the catalog. I just want to make it

So it is not just me... :)

>26 macsbrains: I use a plastic parts cabinet that's reminiscent of a card catalog if you squint to hold the cardboard minatures for gaming. And yes, they do fight with my bookshelves for space; my last apartment had some space too short for bookcases, but this one sadly doesn't.

>27 AnnieMod: Not just you :-)

>28 prosfilaes: I have 4 of those sitting on top of the CD cabinet too. Double stacked, of course.

I wonder if a non-physical card catalogue was an idea. I.e. a display style. For extra points use older fonts for older entries etc.

>30 bnielsen: Libraries with card catalogs have sometimes had their cards scanned and OCR'ed, but never, as far as I know, created a virtual digital version. That would probably be seen as pointless, since they are moving away from cards. But your thought is very cool.

>30 bnielsen: The library I used to work in changed catalogue systems and that was one of the features of the new one. The info tab looked like an old card. The sales rep I mentioned in >7 PawsforThought: was so excited about this and we were completely unimpressed (and many of my colleagues complained loudly. They eventually got rid of that feature because they got so many complaints.

We still have a card catalogue. One of our librarians prefers it to TinyCat, and we call it 'retro', so some of our college students take a stab at it. We don't have a lot of turnover so it's not onerous to keep up. Not in a beautiful wood cabinet, though.

>33 H.C.P.: I also know of a small institutional library which, as far as I know, still has a card catalog. But for me it's personal and about the aesthetics.

>7 PawsforThought: I was lucky to be a student at Hull University in the early '80s, which I chose for several reasons, one of them being the quality of its library. The librarian was, of course, the poet Philip Larkin. A key part of this was their very early adoption of a GEAC computer index system, as well as the long, low oak cabinets of card indexes. I could access this from across the campus (remarkable!), from other universities (Damnit, JANET!) and most marvellously, by dial-up from home (unofficially, and if the wind was blowing in the right direction for my Steam Modem to work).

It really was a very, very good library and he was a superb librarian.

Nice to hear that story! So, I gather, the card catalogue remained, at least for a while I imagine?!

I used to meet Larkin, not long before he died, as we both lived near the University and still frequented the jazz night at the Haworth, a big pub on Bev Road. I bought him a drink. "Very kind of you" he thanked me. "Not at all", I replied, "I'm going to regale impressionable young English Lit students with this story for years". The old lech smiled.

That was as far as we got on the subject of poetry, as he was (rather infamously) quite reticent on that subject. However he did enjoy his music and he loved his library. He was more interested in the Internet (a vague cloud on the horizon) than our CompSci department ever was. I was an Applied Physicist, which meant that I had the only office with a better view than he did.

>37 Andy_Dingley:

Flattering of you to class us with "impressionable young English Lit students"!

>38 paradoxosalpha: I was one, once. Around the time of Larkin's death.

Way back when I was a Biochemistry undergrad. I had to resit some exams and missed sign-up for some popular courses, so chose to do an Archaeology & Ancient History course. One of the profs teaching on that course was a noted lech... Apparently, first years were routinely warned about him and still believed his blandishments.

Yes, I keep a card catalog. We don't have a computer or wifi in the library, and not everyone would know how to really use it.
I downloaded the collection as a spreadsheet and then, after some modification, used mail merge in Word to create the cards.