![]() ![]() Staff make discoveries in the card catalog on a regular basis, as well. This isn’t only true for our Readers, either. ![]() Therefore, using a combination of Hamnet and the card catalog remains the only way to reliably discover all of the materials we have on a given topic. While the intention is, of course, to get everything into the online catalog eventually, there are only so many hours in a day, and priorities had to be set somehow. That still leaves important parts of our collection under-represented in Hamnet, such as the continental-published books, and some of the more ephemeral collections such as playbills and sheet music. The Folger is best known for our collection of Shakespeare-related materials and early English printed books historically, these two areas have gotten the bulk of attention when it has come to digitizing our catalog records. These cards sometimes contain hand-written annotations that can give important clues when trying to solve a mystery or document changes in the call number of an item. Although we stopped adding cards for newly acquired items in the late 1990s, that leaves around 65 years of collection history encompassed in the narrow wooden drawers. The longer answer takes into account factors such as institutional history, staff time, search methodologies, and physical space.įor the Folger, our card catalog plays an important role in maintaining the rich history of our collection. The short answer is, of course, a resounding NO. Some libraries will have separate sections for cards filed by author name, by title, and by subject others (like ours) will interfile those, so that you will see all three types contained in one drawer.īut why do you still have a card catalog?Īs you might expect, one question I frequently get is “But why? Isn’t everything online?” ![]() These can be grouped together in a number of ways, often resulting in having multiple cards for the same book.įor example, cards for Walter Bigges’s A summarie and true discourse of Sir Frances Drakes West Indian voyage ( STC 3056, also available in our online catalog) can be found in three different places in the main card file.Īlphabetically under B, for the author’s surname:Ĭard for Bigges’s A summarie and true discourse of Sir Frances Drakes West Indian voyage under the subject heading. Many people are surprised we still have our card catalog, let alone the fact that it is easily accessible to our Readers, and that we encourage people to use it.įor those who respond with “a what?” or blank looks when I mention the card catalog, I stop and try to explain both what it is and why it’s important.Ī card catalog is, simply, a set of index cards 1 that record bibliographic information about the books in a collection-author, title, publisher/publication date, subject, and call number. ![]() The responses I get to this fact are varied, ranging from “Oh thank goodness, I’m so much more comfortable using a card catalog!” to “A what?” (along with nearly every possible response in between). Left, the card catalog room primarily for the manuscript and art collections right, the card catalog room primarily for the print collections. ![]()
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