what is card catalogue

A card catalog is a physical listing of all the contents of a library, organized with a single card for each item in the library. It was a familiar navigational tool in libraries for generations, but it has been effectively replaced by the online public access catalog (OPAC) . A catalog helps to serve as an inventory or bookkeeping of the librarys contents. If an item is not found in the catalog, the user may continue their search at another library. A catalog card is an individual entry in a library catalog containing bibliographic information, including the author's name, title, and location. The concept of the card catalog was introduced in the 1800s, and it was a great help to scholars. These catalogs can be configured in a number of ways, and their organization makes it easy to add or remove books, and to find particular ones. Most academic research libraries use the Library of Congress System.