The Missouri Valley Room holds a unique piece of library history

Continuing with the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Kansas City Public Library, this week's blog post highlights the card catalog system, which was adopted in 1887. Before the convenience of computers and online catalogs, there was the card catalog system: a card index organized in drawers that made it easy for librarians and patrons to find the location of a book, as well as materials pertaining to a certain subject.

An 1887 article from The Kansas City Star describes the laborious task undertaken by librarian Carrie Westlake Whitney and her two assistants, who hand typed the names of 14,000 books onto each notecard. To prepare, the library was closed for a total of six months beginning in July of that year. In the words of Whitney, “The card catalog is the real key to the library shelves.” A decade later, Whitney and her team would take on a similar challenge: creating a card catalog for the library’s collection of Harper’s Weekly .

Established in 1857 in New York City, Harper’s Weekly was a political magazine known for its illustrations created by cartoonist Thomas Nast, who is considered the father of American political cartooning. The content focused on political campaigns and featured caricatures that criticized political figures.

The Missouri Valley Room houses the original card catalog for Harper’s Weekly created by Whitney. Each drawer contains dozens of cards, typewritten with the names of articles, their subject type, the author's names, and the call number.

Little knobs underneath the drawer handle control a metal rod from inside the drawer, and each card has a hole punched at the bottom, so that the rod can hold them in place. When turning the knob counterclockwise, the rod moves away from the back of the drawer, leaving space to insert more cards.

In the 1897 Board of Education Annual Report, Whitney writes, “The most important feature of the year’s work is a complete card index to Harper’s Weekly from volume 1 to date … and though the volumes were full of good material the kernel could not be reached. Our index makes the full contents of the set valuable to the public.” Forty years’ worth of magazines would have equated to approximately 2,080 volumes.

KCPL’s card catalog would be utilized by librarians and patrons alike for the next 100 years until computers made them obsolete. All library locations had online catalog access by 1990 and the old card catalogs were removed. Although many of the original cabinets and cards have since discarded, the Missouri Valley Special Collections still houses two original card catalogs for the purpose of preserving that part of our history. We invite anyone who is interested in viewing the old card catalogs to visit the Missouri Valley Room.