Digitized Card Catalogues

Dániel Margócsy

It would be foolish to think that online library catalogues truly reflect a library’s holdings. Sometimes, the conversion of paper card catalogues (if extant) to online entries has not even begun, or is incomplete, or contains many mistakes. It is thus always welcome when a library also has a digitized copy of the old card catalogue, an easy and trustworthy way of checking what books are in the collections.

I was thus very excited to learn about the International CIPAC List, which offers a list of digitized card catalogues across the world, whose entries do not show up on WorldCat or on union catalogues. A quick check through the CIPAC List has directed us to new copies of the Fabrica in Cieszyn, Fribourg, Kyiv, Linz, otherwise impossible to find on the web.

It also showed that once there was a Fabrica in Karlsruhe, before the library was destroyed in 1942. One more copy can be added to the list of those that disappeared during the ravages of the two world wars: Berlin, Greifswald, Halle, Leuven and Strasbourg.