by Annette DeFuso
I first started working in a library as a college student, and one of my tasks included filing catalog cards. They were paper index-sized cards that contained information for every item in the collection. There were hundreds of drawers of cards within several large, wooden cabinets standing along an entire wall of the building. While we could input cataloging information into a computer database, there was not yet an electronic version of a public catalog, so we still needed to print out cards. The card catalog allowed us to search for books or other items in a limited way, just by the title, author, subjects, or series. At that time, thousands of cards provided the only way to find the resources available in the library.
In the years since then, online catalogs have replaced those grand old cabinets. Advancements in technology have greatly improved our ability to describe and share more details about our collections. Now we have the possibility to search for and find items by almost any detail, such as publication date, language, and the all-powerful keyword. We can further limit our searches, for example to only include a specific media format, reading level, or shelving location. I can’t imagine the number of file cabinets that would be needed to maintain all of that data.
Our library’s catalog also reaches beyond our physical collections to include digital materials grouped together in one easy search. It provides links to ebooks and eaudio in Libby and streaming video in Kanopy. By using the mobile app we launched earlier this year, anyone can search the library’s collections from their cell phone. While library catalogs may have changed in appearance and continue to evolve, what hasn’t changed is that they still provide a gateway through which we can discover all of the amazing resources available for free with a library card.
Annette DeFuso is Technical Services Director for the Adams County Library System.