RIP - card catalogues, long dead but not forgotten

Nothing lasts forever.

So it will be said about the University of Michigan Library's card catalogs when they are removed from their home in the bowels of the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library on March 8.

Twelve and a half million volumes strong, the card catalog has been in disuse for more than 20 years, ever since the university established the MIRLYN electronic catalog in 1988.

By 1991, every book in the library system had been catalogued onto MIRLYN, and the card catalogs were a relic of the past.

"I'm sad to see them go," said Paul Courant, U-M's Dean of Libraries. "This is truly the end of an era. But it is time to move on."

"This is a beautiful space," Courant said from the basement of the grad library, where the catalogs will remain until study tables and additional seating replace them. "This building is full of people, all day and all night long. Students want and need places to work - keeping 108 big, unused boxes out in areas better used for study is just not efficient."

Even if it is tradition. That the university kept the card catalogs around more than two decades after they outlived their usefulness is a testament to the importance of their sentimental value.