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The Library | The Card Catalog | Works of Art
ABOUT THE LIBRARY CARD CATALOG
The Library's card catalog contains records for all books, journals, maps, and musical scores acquired from 1894 to 1992. The first mention of a card catalog dates from 1895/96, when Frederick Shipley, a Fellow, compiled a subject and author catalog for the new library of the American School of Classical Studies in Rome. Two copies were made, one for the School and one for the Director-elect. Each book had "a subject number and an individual number written on a label on its back." Shipley's work was continued by other Fellows on a volunteer basis. No trace of the early shelving system survives. The present classification scheme, created by librarian Albert Van Buren FASCSR'06 and Stanley Lothrop was adopted in 1915, following the merger of the ASCSR and the American Academy in Rome and the move to the Janiculum.
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These wooden cabinets were made in 1928, when the Library adopted the use of Library of Congress catalog cards as a standard, replacing most of its old handwritten cards. Until 2003, the card catalog was located in the central room on the main floor of the Library, opposite the stairwell. New cards were added until 1992, when the Library began converting all of its records to the online catalog of URBS, the Unione Romana Biblioteche Scientifiche. Full, updated access to the holdings of the Library is now available via the URBS database. Also found in these cabinets are a shelf-list updated regularly, which lists books in their order on the shelves and is used to take inventory, and an old periodical index (created in the mid-1920s and covering periodical articles of more than 10 pages in length on various subjects). The landscape photos at the very end, a project of Edward Lawson FAAR'20, are destined for the Photographic Archive. |
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