Today, people use the antique wooden cabinets to store their knick-knacks. But these card catalogs once held the keys to a world of information. A new Library of Congress book explores their history.

“I’ve grown up with the card catalog,” said Howard Goldberg, 66, a former aircraft engineer with Hamilton-Standard. “A lot of older people are afraid of computers, they might not use them.

Now, I had to learn how to search the online catalog and teach library customers to use this radically different new tool. For our patrons, the online catalog was a monumental challenge. I vividly ...

"Being able to catalog or contain and make sense of all of this information is what the card catalog represents." Union catalogers at work at the Library of Congress in 1927.

If you do a Google search for "card catalog" it will likely return Pinterest-worthy images of antique furniture for sale — boxy, wooden cabinets with tiny drawers, great for storing knick-knacks, ...

"Being able to catalog or contain and make sense of all of this information is what the card catalog represents." Union catalogers at work at the Library of Congress in 1927.