You know what's amusing? I've never had to use a card catalog until college. The local library of my youth had one of the first completely digital search systems on these ancient black and amber CRTs. And a bulletin board service! I could order books at home from my Commodore 64. My college library, however had a card catalog specifically for their archived periodicals. Which were still on microfiche.
Microfiche, as in sheets? Usually they're microfilm (rolls). Anyway we got rid of our last microfilm periodicals only recently here at De Anza, a few years ago IIRC. (The disposal of such was one of the major summer projects - 2008 perhaps?) I don't personally remember a card catalog here, since when I started attending back fifteen years ago they already had a computer ILS. There's pictures of the card catalog from the early days of the college (late 60s) up in the break room though. My recollections of card catalogs -- besides the shelflist in my office which my predecessor insisted on genuinely maintaining in the Reference collection for reasons unknown to me (the only instructions for main circulating were "throw away cards when...) -- would be from public libraries, I guess, although I remember searching by computer in late elementary school and junior high school, too (I think our terminal screens were green).
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Date: Oct. 13th, 2010 10:25 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: Oct. 14th, 2010 01:38 pm (UTC)From:no subject
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