With no advance notice or apparent fanfare, Brodart, one of the major library supplies and furnishing companies in the United States, has quit manufacturing, distributing, and selling library card catalogs and library charging trays. This seems sad news for analog library enthusiasts coming just two days after Melvil Dewey’s 174th birthday on December 10th.
I’ve got word in for specific details about end dates for manufacturing and the last sales on some of these products. Apparently the last purchase of charging trays was someone wiping out their stock of 50 remaining units in the last two weeks.
This news comes a decade on the heels of the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) announcing that it printed its last batch of library card catalog cards on October 1, 2015.
I’m not at all surprised by this, beyond surprised that they were still making them this late. I have one at home, and I love it (we use it as a wine cabinet), but I can’t imagine the demand for new card catalogs was still there.
@chrisaldrich I dream of being the kind of person who needs a card catalog.
First of all, we use hsi system, but let’s not ce;brate the guy. Secondly, I’m also hear to say they were still making these?
End of an era, sadly.
Phew … I was kind of rattled after seeing “Breaking news: Brodart” at the beginning of that headline.
I can’t imagine manufacturing them is very profitable these days.
Very shocked to know they were still manufacturing these! I assumed they would’ve stopped well over a decade ago.
I was also going to comment that OCLC doesn’t stand for anything anymore, but looked it up and realized that in 2015 it still did! They didn’t go acronym-only til 2017. I thought it was much earlier than that.
Who was still purchasing card catalog cabinets? Local history societies? I just can’t think of the use case.