The Card Index

1876 · Standard Catalogue Card · Work 544 of 1,871

The Card Index, 1876, Standard Catalogue Card

A shallow oak drawer withdrawn from a cabinet of many such drawers, cards standing upright in it behind guide tabs with plain raised edges, one card lifted forward on a finger rest, a steel rod running through the holes at the bottom of the cards to hold them in place, a brass pull and a small plain label frame on the drawer front, the cabinet beside a tall window on the left, a gas bracket with a frosted globe on the wall, a slant-top desk and a brass inkwell behind, the room reaching into shadow with dark unlit figures at the far desks.

What it was used for
The catalogue card brought the library's method into the office. The Library Bureau of Boston, whose 1899 catalogue carries "FOUNDED 1876 INCORPORATED 1888" on its title page, sold cards, trays and drawers. The card's size is defined in metric terms: the catalogue gives the commonest size as "No. 33. 7 1-2 x 12 1-2 cm. (3 x 5 in. approximately)" - the metric figure is the definition, the inches the rounding. Who used it, the catalogue says itself: business houses find it invaluable for lists of goods, customers, discounts and the 1,000 growing records of commerce. On cost: a thousand cards came to $2.00 to $3.00, the writing and arranging five times as much.
What was new
What was new was the unit record. The 1899 catalogue puts it briefly: each item being on a separate card, the whole may be rearranged over and over by simply shuffling into the new order - there is no copying nor waste of labor. The same source names the bound book's defect: one cannot foretell how fast the several subjects will fill, so the assignment of pages breaks down in the end and the entire work must be recopied. The format was not fixed by Dewey alone but at the American Library Association's first conference in New York on 4 and 5 September 1877; the Bureau's cards, the catalogue says, represent the experience of the Cooperation Committee of the ALA. Rearranging without rewriting did not work for Dewey himself. On 23 June 2019 the ALA Council resolved to remove Dewey's name from the Melvil Dewey Medal; the whereas clause recorded as adopted states that the resort owned by Dewey and his wife did not permit Jewish people, African Americans or other minorities admittance. The new name, ALA Medal of Excellence, was moved by the Awards Committee in 2020; the award was to be given under it from 2021.

What the sources leave open: I did not consult the 1877 conference proceedings; a second account gives the "postal" size adopted there as 7.5 x 12.25 cm, the 1899 catalogue 7.5 x 12.5 cm - the catalogue figure stands in the text. Wayne A. Wiegand's Dewey biography was not available to me; the ALA's magazine American Libraries reported in 2018 on the conduct towards women documented in it. No adoption figures for card indexes were found.

Further reading