- Feb 2024
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news.virginia.edu news.virginia.edu
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The information neatly typed on the cards – which library workers sometimes supplemented with handwritten notes on front and back – includes details that in many cases are not typically part of the electronic catalog system, Virgo, that the University Library switched to in 1989. At the time, the catalog was transferred by scanning that captured only the front of the cards.
Libraries may have handwritten notes on the back of library card catalog cards in the 20th century, a practice which caused data loss in the case of the Alderman Library which only scanned the front of their cards in 1989 when they made the switch from physical cards to a digital catalog.
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Created over a 50-year span from 1939 to 1989, that catalog grew to about 4 million cards in 65 cabinets with 4,000 drawers.
This is roughly 65 cabinets of 60 drawers each.
4 million cards over 50 years is approximately 220 cards per day. This isn't directly analogous to my general statistics on number of notes per day for individual people's excerpting practice, but it does give an interesting benchmark for a larger institution and their acquisitions over 50 years. (Be sure to divide by 3 for duplication over author/title/subject overlap, which would be closer to 73 per day)
Shifted from analog cards to digital version in 1989.
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