Brooklyn Historical Society Staff, circa 1994. Brooklyn Historical Society Institutional Records, ARC 288. Brooklyn Public Library, Center for Brooklyn History.
Did your favorite singer release an album recently and use an image of a card catalog to promote said album? Are you not entirely sure what a card catalog actually is? Not to worry, we are here to explain!
Let’s first look at the word catalog: for the purpose of libraries at its most basic level, it is an organized list of books held by a specific library. Prior to cards, library catalogs were recorded in books. But as libraries continuously expanded throughout the 18th century at faster rates due to printing innovations, library catalogs constantly had to be updated. But instead of rewriting the catalogs in books each time to keep things in order, keeping book information on separate cards made adding new additions much easier and quicker and allowed librarians to maintain order. The cards included information like author, title, call number, and publication information. Library users would then have to sift through cards kept in alphabetical order one by one in order to find the book they were looking for.
Former BHS employee and present-day cataloger, Tamara Fultz, can be seen here showcasing the BHS card catalog from when it was still in use in the mid 1990s.
Nowadays, to try to find a book at your local library, you can easily use search terms on your library’s digital catalog either from a computer at the library or from your own laptop.
The Brooklyn Historical Society Institutional Archive Project is generously funded by the Leon Levy Foundation.
Interested in seeing more photos from CBH's collections? Visit our online image gallery, which includes a selection of our images, or the digital collections portal at Brooklyn Public Library. We welcome appointments to research our entire collection of images, archives, maps, and special collections. Our reference staff is available to help with your research! You can reach us at cbhreference@bklynlibrary.org.
This blog post reflects the opinions of the author and does not necessarily represent the views of Brooklyn Public Library.
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