Library Cards

This bedraggled, well used library card is for my local public library, the Middleton Public Library in Wisconsin, which is a member of the South Central Library System.

This is my library card to the University of Wisconsin General Library System. I used to get it for free as a state employee, but now as a retiree I pay $15 a year. For this I get access to a collection of books and other materials that numbers in the millions. I'll have to get a new card in July. This one is all punched out.

My card for the Library of Congress. It's been a few years since I used it to do some research in the Rare Book Library. What a treat.

This is an honorary card presented to me back in the early 90s when Florence County became the last county in Wisconsin to get county-wide access to free public library service and to become part of one of Wisconsin's regional library systems. I even got to ride in a convertible in a local parade.

Front of a library card for the public library that I served as director of from 1974 to 1980.

This letter was written by Edward I. Sears on June 7, 1861 to S. Haskins Grant, Librarian of the New York Mercantile Library from 1849 until 1866. Sears was a well known writer and editor of the National Quarterly Review. In the letter Sears writes: “As mentioned to you some time since, I have lost my library ticket. As sometimes have occasion to call at the reading room, I do not like to transgress ‘the regulations,’ I would like to have another if you please. I shall be more careful in future. Though I am very apt to lose anything of the kind.” This letter illustrates that a library card or ticket was an essential ingredient to any substantial library's charging or circulation system. At the time the New York Mercantile was using a ledger system, the predominant charging system for libraries up to the 1850s. This system, however, was not satisfactory for an active library. Just prior to Grant's resignation as Librarian of the New York Mercantile Library, the library implemented a temporary slip system. The lending transaction was recorded on the slip instead of a ledger, and the slip was disposed of when a book was returned.

My oldest library card is for a Sabbath school library dating from 1877. Sabbath school libraries were one of the many kinds of public library forerunners that existed in the 18th and 19th centuries.

A library card for the Lowell City Library in Massachusetts used in 1886. The card states: "Marking of All Sorts on Books is Punishable by Statute With Fine and Imprisonment, and the Directors will Prosecute". They didn't mess around.

Library card for the San Francisco Mechanics' Institute Library. Date of issue unknown but probably in the 1920s or 30s..

A well used library card expiring on July 1, 1927 for the Milwaukee Public Library.

Library Card for Camp Cooke (Texas) Library circa World War II. The Army's 13th Armored Division along with other armored and infantry divisions was trained at Camp Cooke. Army libraries were a legacy of the American Library Association's Library War Service in WWI.

Library card for the Library of Hawaii in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii expiring in February, 1956.