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What ever happened to the card catalog?

Library assistant Kim Berardi uses a card catalog at the Schiappa branch of the Public Library of Steubenville and Jefferson County. -- Contributed

STEUBENVILLE — If you are under 40 years of age, you probably don’t remember using a card catalog in your school library, at a public library or any other type of library.

The card catalog began in America shortly after the Civil War, as libraries began to grow and expand.

A hand-written paper catalog became impossible to maintain, as books were added and removed from libraries.

Charles Cutter would help to change that method.

Born in 1837, Cutter was appointed librarian for the Harvard University Library. He found that using a card system was more flexible when providing access to the library’s book collection.

These index references are among those kept within the card catalog in the archives at the Schiappa Library. The words located at the top of each card reflect how to look up a reference title. Other information listed on the cards included its author, date of publication, a brief description of the work and the publisher. -- Contributed

Compared to a printed catalog, cards were easier to add and subtract.

His card catalog, which filed 3-by-5 inch cards in cabinet drawers, proved easier to maintain. Books could be accessed by author, title or subject.

Meanwhile, Melvil Dewey, born in 1851, was the chief librarian of Columbia University Libraries.

He later became chief librarian for the New York State Library.

Dewey had developed the Dewey Decimal Classification as a method of shelving books into 10 categories — making libraries more useful. Together, these two methods quickly became popular in American libraries.

When our own library system was established in 1902 as the Carnegie Library of Steubenville, a card catalog was used to organize the collection.

When branch libraries were established beginning in 1936, card catalogs were maintained at each location.

The first online library catalog was established by the Ohio College Library Center in Columbus in 1967.

The center worked with the Library of Congress Cataloging Division to produce the 3-by-5 inch cards to go with any published book.

Local libraries could type cards for their own catalog. By the 1980s, computers were automating libraries.

It became clear the “old card catalog” would be replaced with online public access catalogs.

Our library system began automation in 1988, joining with libraries in Cadiz, St. Clairsville, Barnesville and Woodsfield to form the SEO Consortium.

Today, some 36 years later, that same system contains 100 library systems in Ohio, with 276 locations.

In the early days, automation involved the check-in and check-out of library materials.

However, it was quickly found that the computer was a better media for identifying a library collection than the card catalog.

In 1993, our library system closed and removed the card catalog, replacing it with online public access catalogs.

Updating the library collection “catalog” was instant and provided more than 40 different access points, as compared to the three access points of the card catalog. It could be used outside the library and could combine multiple library collections.

It was found that only 10 percent of the public could actually utilize a card catalog, whereas OPACs could be used by anyone who was computer-savvy.

Today, I volunteer as an OHIONET online cataloger for the library.

I served for 36 years and can download existing records from the Ohio College Library Center Inc. — the largest database of library records in the world and still in Columbus.

I can create new records if there isn’t an electronic record available to download, I can edit those records if needed and barcode items to allow them to be searched.

The library’s OPAC has expanded to include non-book materials, e-books and whatever else libraries have in their collections.

And yes, most public libraries and school libraries still use Dewey Decimal Classification to arrange things in their collections.

Academic libraries typically use the Library of Congress Classification, developed in 1897 with 21 classifications for their more complex collections.

Dewey’s Classification has been sold.

Since 1988, it has been owned by OCLC Inc. and is available online.

It has been expanded so as to be up-to-date with new subjects in the world.

When I recently took online classes to become an OHIONET cataloger, I could not help but think back to 1976-77 when, as a student at Case Western Reserve University in Library School, typing those 3-by-5 cards.

Today, we do the same thing with the same theories.

But the information is in a database and not on those cards.

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