The Card Catalog Books, Cards, and Literary Treasures - The Library of Congress - by Carla Hyden and foreword by Carla Hyden

The Card Catalog Books, Cards, and Literary Treasures - The Library of Congress - by Carla Hyden and foreword by Carla Hyden Librarian of Congress is a superlative book by Chronicle Books.

A celebration this one of the historical Cards of Catalog Books associated with the most celebrated and beloved books and items at the Library of Congress.


The Library of Congress is the biggest American reality with more than 165 million items, 38 million cataloged books, and for not forgetting  anyone and any country the Library contains print material in 470 different languages! The story of this Library, the oldest federal institution of the USA is fascinating.

In the remote past the most remarkable library created by Alexander the Great.
Library of Alexandria of Egypt the biggest reality of the past.
The cataloger was Callimachus.
Unfortunately a big fire deleted that temple of culture and just tales of what it meant that library can report us its lost magnificence.

Libraries became with centuries impressive considering that more books were in the while published.

1774: in the USA it was revolutionary time, but although people were breathing an atmosphere pretty warm, the idea of a Library of Congress started to take shape considering also that politicians had chosen the city that would have been the capital of all the USA in Washington D.C. That first library has been destroyed in 1814 by the english during a war and then it was completely re-built.

Now: time passed by and new systems, more moderns replaced the old ways of cataloging books and other items. Question was: what to do of all that amount of cards accumulated?
Because History is not just a first edition of a book entered in the Library, but also that old card, witness of the physical presence of it, written by a librarian in a certain day, month and year.
If  a card was written in 1880 or before shouldn't be considered a historical piece? Of course it should and it must.
For this reason this book wants to celebrate that little, oldest cards that made possible the existence of Library Of Congress and it's immense catalog.

Old handwriting, I tried to imagine the faces of the librarians who wrote that cards. Someone who did care the moment, someone in love for books and someone who provided a great service for the community.

You will see more than 200 full-color images of original catalogue cards and many first editions of beloved books in this book.

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, The Cat in the Hat by Dr.Seuss, William Tell Told Again by P.G.Wodehouse one of the funniest authors of this world, Francis Scott Fitzgerald with The Great Gatsby, William Faulkner, E.B. White with Charlotte's Web and many, many others starting with the oldest books you can imagine.

The purpose of this book wants, in a crucial moment in which digitization  doesn't pass anymore through paper, to remember and never forget what the old Library of Congress' system has been.
No one knows what the future will bring, time will tell, but it's necessary to remember a romantic age when men and women in libraries cataloged millions of books manually.

I thank so much Abrams&Chronicle Books for the physical copy of this dreaming book.



Anna Maria Polidori