REMEMBER THE CARD CATALOG: Celebrating LAPL’s 100th Anniversary

Souvenir catalog card with anniversary stamp of the Central Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library

Do you remember thumbing through the library card catalog, looking for a book to read or to use for a school report? Each drawer of the wooden cabinet was filled with index cards, arranged in alphabetical order and subdivided into sections by topic. Each card had the name of the author, title, publisher, and most importantly for nonfiction books, the Dewey Decimal number indicating where it would be shelved. The cards of popular topics were always well thumbed.

In the early days of my writing career there were no computers and no internet. (My first book was published in 1980.) The card catalog was essential for finding information.  Searching it was always the first step in doing research for one of my books.

Card catalogs have long since been abandoned. Now you just have to sit down in front of a computer screen and type in the topic you are searching for, and Bingo! there is a list of relevant library resources. So, what have libraries done with all those carefully typed cards? The Los Angeles Public Library put them in storage. Some have been used by an artist to decorate an elevator at the Central Library and to create a large sculpture. Now the library needs to get rid of the rest.

So, in celebration of the 100^th anniversary of the Central Library building in downtown Los Angeles, the library will be giving the cards away. Each card is a little bit of history. Last week I helped assemble packets of cards that will be distributed to the branch libraries to give out to patrons. People will be able to have them stamped with a special anniversary stamp (a different stamp for each branch) and use the cards as bookmarks, art projects, or whatever they want. And for those people who are old enough to remember the days when they depended on the card catalog to help them find what they needed in the library, the souvenir cards will bring back memories of days gone by.

Flower Street entrance to the Los Angeles Public Library

Note: Although the history of the Los Angeles Public Library goes back to the 1870s, the Central Branch was not built until 1926. The dedication ceremony was held on July 15th, 1926.