What are those cards they have at the library that tell you what books they have and their number?

Remember how back in the day if you needed to find a book in the library, they'd have a cabinet full of index cards that would have the title, the author, and the number? What are those called?|||I believe that they are called 'catalog cards'.





Libraries used to have hardcover catalog books that would list the names, authors, location numbers, etc. of books published before 1986. After that, they went to the card system and called them catalog cards. The cards made it easier to add or remove books from the inventory.|||Ken is right about the term: they're called catalog cards.





Certain cards might be called the "author card," the "title card," the "subject card," or the "main entry card," but these terms would probably only be used by a catalog librarian.





Ken is mistaken, though, about how long they've been around: they've been around since the 19th century. Actually, 1986 is about the time that libraries started _closing_ their card catalogs and replacing them with online catalogs. If you're interested, LISwiki has a nice history of the card catalog.





The dictionary catalogs were always a bit of a problem: they were expensive to produce and were out-of-date before they even went to press; for this reason the dictionary catalogs were an option only for larger libraries with more important collections, and were primarily useful for scholars who could not search the card catalog personally because of geographic distance. |||what you are remembering is a card catalogue