Before there was HOLLIS, researchers used to find books in the Fine Arts Library by using the card catalog. Some of our staff remember them very well! Mary Jane Cuneo, senior serials cataloger who works on FAL materials, shared the following memory:

“I have to admit, I was there as a cataloger at the time of card catalogs. We typed subject headings on cards we had ordered from the Library of Congress, on a typewriter equipped with a card platen to hold the card steady; and used the red-ink part of the ribbon.

Students would interfile new cards “above the rod” and a supervisor would drop them after checking the filing by pulling out the rod and re-inserting it. To correct an error printed or typed on a card, we used a beast of a thing: the electric eraser. It was really heavy.

Also in our toolkit was a razor blade, to scrape and scratch away the unwanted text. When I started at the Fine Arts Library as a library assistant in 1976, this was part of my job. Truly amazing how far things have come!”

The first photograph dates from 1952 when our library was located within the Fogg Art Museum. The second photograph shows the card catalog for auction sales catalogs that we still have at the library. And the last image? An electric eraser.

Image description:

Image 1: A woman hunching over card catalogs on a pulled-out drawer of the card catalog cabinets. Card catalog cabinets stand against the wall on the right.

Image 2: Tinted photograph of a close-up view of card catalogs in the drawer.

Image 3: Photo of the electric eraser

Image 1: Fogg Art Museum. Interior, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States Fine Arts Library. Visual Collections. Card catalog, photographed ca.1980s. Sculpture at left is Marino Marini's "Horse and Rider", 1952, from the Harvard Art Museum's collection  Author/Creator Coolidge, Shepley, Bulfinch & Abbott, Boston, Massachusetts, United States [architect] HOLLIS number: olvsite34738