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Like you, I look askance at the author's assertion that the card catalog is "truly democratic". Lindgren writes > A national card catalogue system was the or

Like you, I look askance at the author's assertion that the card catalog is "truly democratic". Lindgren writes > A national card catalogue system was the original “search > engine” — one that needed no electricity, no service > providers or broadband or smartphones, and that was truly > democratic. failing to explain that in order to access that card catalog, patrons would have had to travel from their homes all the way to Washington DC. For someone living in rural Wyoming, Ohio, or even Southeast Virginia, the offline card catalog was hardly "more democratic" than a computer in a public library. EDIT: Readability.

acdha 9y ago
> failing to explain that in order to access that card catalog, patrons would have had to travel from their homes all the way to Washington DC. This is not strictly true: the Library of Congress sold copies which were widely used by libraries around the country in the pre-electronic era: https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0112/cds.html https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0112/cds.html > By the 1960s, CDS had become the Library's largest division, with a staff of some 600 people who shipped more than 78 million cataloging cards each year. This operation occupied floor space larger than a football field "including the end zones," said Ms. Mendenhall. "It was a monster that gave way to the miracle of MARC."