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Archive: May 2025 (2 Posts)

Preservation in Motion: Moving the Library’s Card Catalog

Posted by: Amelia Parks

For over a hundred years, endless rows of oak drawers filled with index cards served as the primary guide for collection information for countless Library staff. The Library’s card catalog is actually a combination of many catalogs and served as the public’s main bibliographic information access point for books and periodicals until 1980, and despite our current online catalog, staff continue to use the wealth of information found on these index cards. Recently the Library decided to move these catalog cards from the oak cabinets found across the Capitol Hill campus to offsite storage and the Collections Management Division was tasked with inventorying and transporting the cards while simultaneously ensuring their accessibility.

Posted in: Collections Care, Collections Management, Collections Storage, Offsite Storage

Our Part 3 featured image

125 years of Binding, Part Three: Annexed

Posted by: K.F. Shovlin

Our exploration of 125 years of binding at the Library of Congress finds a period of great movement and change for the binding office both in physical space and where they fit in the Library structure. Starting the 1940’s with a large onsite bindery in the new Library Annex, the binding office that prepared to move to the James Madison Memorial Building in 1981 had changed in every possible way.

Posted in: Collections Care, Preservation