As with most technological advances, the shift from the card catalog to the online public access catalog (OPAC) didn’t happen overnight. At the UI, there was a decade of overlap during which users who wanted complete access to the Libraries’ holdings had to search both resources — the card catalog for materials published until 1980, the online catalog for materials published after. Library staff made repeated attempts to remedy this problem with in-house projects to convert the card catalog data from print to electronic — a.k.a. “retrospective conversion” or “recon” to those fluent in librarian-ese — but soon revised strategies after recognizing the immensity of the task.

In 1999, a library committee was formed to coordinate outsourcing for the catalog recon initiative. Their duties included: defining the project scope; contacting outsource companies to solicit bids (including an unsuccessful offer from sentimental favorites Electronic Scriptorium, staffed by monks); drawing up specifications; reviewing test data; re-drawing specifications; and helping to oversee day-to-day operations. Four years, 500,000 titles, and $1.5 million later, the project was complete.

The newly comprehensive catalog continued to provide the benefits that the library world had quickly come to rely on from OPACs. For library staff, this meant the liberation of cataloging data from the physical constraints of the 3 x 5 inch card, allowing records with additional information such as table of contents lists, longer summaries, and more subject headings. For users, the advantages included the same increased usability that we in DLS strive to provide for our digital collections: 24-hour access from any location with an Internet connection, enhanced browsing through hyperlinked access points, and increased access through free-text searching. Now, another four years after the recon project ended, we anticipate an even more user-friendly catalog thanks to the Libraries’ recent acquisition of the resource discovery tool Primo, which offers enhancements that include Web 2.0 functionalities such as tagging, rating and reviews.

That said, we were still a little sorry when the Libraries announced the decision to permanently retire the card catalog in early 2005, which is why members of DLS staff assisted in an effort coordinated by the Libraries’ assistant conservator Kristin Baum to rescue as many cards as we could from the recycling bin. The cards were then repurposed to become part of cARTalog, a public art project designed to pay tribute to the card catalog and its place in how many of us experienced libraries and reading. After a year of submissions, programs and exhibits, cARTalog has now found a home in the Iowa Digital Library, where the cards will live on as a permanent, globally accessible art collection.

To learn more about the cARTalog project, see Kristin’s article “The Story in the Cards: Intimacy, Empathy and Reader Response” from book arts e-journal The Bonefolder. The cARTalog digital collection can be viewed here.

— Jen Wolfe
Metadata Librarian

Artists’ statements:

Karina Cutler-Lake [a student at the University of Iowa School of Library and Information Science before switching to the MFA program in Printmaking]: “I can admit this now: I really wasn’t a very good student of library science. I will never be remembered for my scholarship within the program. Our online catalog at the time… was unfriendly and stubborn. The specifics of the LC system stymied me. (I’m a Dewey Girl. All the way.) I just wanted to draw things. That… night class on reference materials really sent me daydreaming. But a walk though the stacks was, and still is, an instant inspirational mood-booster. There are answers in there. You’ve just got to dig them out.”

Mary V. Marsh: “I requested title cards for ‘The story of…’ I wanted to create an endless story. I constructed the book with no beginning or ending. Images from fairy tales suggest the weaving of myth and fiction with truth to tell stories, a cyclical history of humanity.”

Cheryl Jacobson: “I was surprised at how precious these little cards, which at one time helped to find some of my favorite lettering books, were to me and I’m so glad to be able to create some sort of lasting visual tribute to them and the books they located.”