I always loved the card catalog, all of that 3" x 5" cardboard connected by long metal rods in dovetailed, oak drawers. I loved the old typewriter lettering and the red letter subject headings with their categories such as Confectionary. But the best part of all were the handwritten cards. That cataloging seemed to be personalized invitations to read books that were so old they predated the invention of the typewriter and all sorts of other modern conveniences! What ancient gems would be found by following the clues on these carefully lettered cards?

Although I wanted to be a librarian from the time I first volunteered in the school library (before media centers were invented) at age 11, I did not give much thought to the actual process of cataloging books and creating library card sets. That all changed in Library School where I discovered it was more complicated than I had anticipated. In fact, it represented so much work that I have never been able to discard the card sets I created for my first cataloging class with their correct spacing, punctuation, capitalization, added entries, subject headings and "see" and "see also" references. They were done on a manual typewriter. No correction ribbon, no typewriter memory, every card a little masterpiece of cataloging minutia.

When I received a Graduate Assistantship at the University Library (Ellis at the University of Missouri-Columbia, for those of you interested), I was initially assigned to the Humanities section. Just as I breathed a great sigh of relief, I was reassigned to Technical Services where I was given a recataloging job. While everyone else at that time was involved in recataloging Dewey cataloging to Library of Congress, I was doing exactly the reverse. The Library used the Library of Congress Classification System everywhere except the Campus Laboratory School, and my job was to use the suggested Dewey numbers of the MARC records to replace the LC cataloging or to supply my own in the cases where no Dewey numbers had been supplied. That experience taught me why science librarians really needed the Library of Congress system. A simple book on jet engines had a Dewey number that extended 26 places to the right of Dewey's decimal point. Try putting that on a spine label! (Don't worry, I didn't assign the full number to that High School book.)

Once I was employed as a real librarian, I could delegate the typing of catalog cards to people who were much better at it than I had ever been. I started hiring High School business course students and never looked back! I could also choose Dewey right from the start without a stop at the Library of Congress numbers in the Cataloging-in-Publication information usually printed inside the book. However, I found myself in another cataloging universe, that of the commercially produced catalog card set. Did they automatically come with the book? Did they cost extra? How much? Were there extra cards so that additional entries could be made easily? Did the subject headings match the ones already in use? Those catalog card sets could be more trouble than they were worth!

At one point in the search for the perfect solution to cataloging and catalog cards, we set up our own printing operation. We obtained a small specialty press that printed items of only one size: 3" x 5". This would allow one typed master to become as many cards as we wanted. At least, that was the theory. What resulted was a search for the holy grail of card stock, one that would absorb the right amount of ink and still withstand the rigors of daily use in the catalog. If the cards were sturdy enough, the ink rubbed right off of them. If they could absorb the ink, they were too soft to last very long in the hands of the public. Not to mention how careful the printer had to be to keep each card from blurring when it was made. And, of course, each card still had to have all of the necessary added entries typed on individually. We couldn't imagine how counterfeiters ever managed. We couldn't ever seem to print satisfactory catalog cards in simple black and white, and this operation (as far as we knew) was completely legal!

All of the confusion of preprinted cards, typed cards and in-house printed cards was simplified with the advent of a great new invention: The memory typewriter. At one of the Nebraska Library Association Spring Meetings in the early 1980s, everyone statewide was encouraged to save their funds, beg their friends groups or do whatever it took to get one of these wonderful answers to our prayers. And was it wonderful. And it did make a great deal of difference in the efficient creation of card sets for the catalog. However, there was something even better in our future.

In 1986 the Beatrice Public Library joined OCLC. A dozen years earlier this had been presented in Library School as something that would only be possible for large academic libraries.

Now, those people whose lives are dedicated to finding the perfect call numbers and the correct subject headings, those librarian detectives with expertise about the sneaky authors with multiple identities, those masters of machine readable coding--all of them would be helping me. Catalog cards showed up at our door in the proper format on sturdy card stock that had somehow been forced to absorb non-fading ink. It was a miracle made possible by sending every spare cent to Lincoln to be forwarded on to somebody in Ohio, and it was worth it!

In the early years of my job at the Beatrice Public Library, the Head Librarian from 1919-1929 retired in our community. She had been responsible for expanding the Children's Room to the lower floor of the building, an innovation that was to become the norm in many Carnegie libraries. She had lived in Korea in the time between World War II and the "Conflict" that followed and developed a taste for travel that lasted her entire life. She would stop at the Library after an elephant ride in India or seeing the sun rise at the North Pole to describe her adventures. She also always had stories about the libraries she visited along the way. She prided herself on her ability to keep up with library trends. One day she commented, "I don't suppose you get to use your library hand very often anymore?" My library hand! That careful backhand script that had been used on so many of the cards that I loved the best, the penmanship that I had never learned. I had attended the Library School that claimed to be the first to require a computer course! I didn't laugh. I certainly didn't tell her that I had never learned library hand. In a split second, I realized that handwriting catalog cards was such an integral part of cataloging that she could not imagine library coursework that did not include this skill. I just agreed with her. I didn't get to use my library hand much anymore.

When this former Head Librarian died, much of her estate came to the Library Foundation. Although her salary was miniscule, she had married a wealthy dentist with real estate holdings that were sold for the Library's benefit. Those funds paid for our first automated system. The final gift of the Librarian who had proudly cataloged books and produced the catalog cards in "library hand" was used to close the card catalog and replace those cards and all the subsequent cards with computer text. I won't claim that she would approve. I don't believe she ever really approved of the typewriters that first replaced handwritten library cards. But I do believe the gift was appropriate. It seemed right somehow to have the Librarian with the fine library hand make it possible for us to move on to computer text. Because she always tried to stay up-to-date with library trends. Because she always supported good library service for children and today, children love computers.

We still have some card catalogs at the Beatrice Public Library. I have the oldest one located outside the Heritage Room, and I mention it on every tour. "What is a card catalog?" students usually ask me, and I show them because I want them to know how libraries used to work. At least, that is the official reason. The truth is that I have always loved card catalogs and I probably always will.