found: library catalog cards

i was up on the fifth floor of the San Francisco Main Library to do some research for a paper. from the corner of my eye, i saw a old library catalog card. it was handwritten in cursive and the paper was yellowed with age of course.

ive been known to raid the little boxes of scratch paper that are put out for people to write down call numbers and notes. sometimes the scratch paper has interesting images, i've found fragments of interesting maps, too. so i was thrilled when i saw a whole stack of library catalog cards! most of them were typewritten, but some also had little handwritten notes on them...

call me crazy, but in the future i will purposely go up to the fifth floor for more of those cards and since they are used for scratch paper, i figured they are free for the taking.. plus there's a typewriter there that anyone can use.

edit: if you are in the sf main library, be sure to check out the walls made up of library catalog cards. here's a photo on flickr & they have been written on by patrons with notes/drawings/etc that usually relate to the listing on the card. the walls are on the 3rd and 4th floors. in fact, i want to do a project sort of like that! except mine would be on a large canvas...

and really i think libraries are mysterious places. especially the big ones, you never know what you might discover.