Raise your hand if you remember the days of the card catalog. Every library had one—a large handsome wooden file cabinet of numerous drawers constructed to just the right size to hold thousands of index cards.

When you wanted to find a book, you'd pull out a drawer, using the handy brass pull, flipping through the cards until you found the title and where it was located on the shelves. The catalogs served more than one function.

"The original purpose of the cards was as a cataloging tool, but they were also used for inventory control, as a key to arrangement of material and subject access to specific and related subjects," says Library Center Local History Librarian Michael Glenn.

Two developments in the 1960s changed the future of cataloging and spelled the beginning of the end for the venerable card catalog first used in America around 1876. The Library of Congress created the MARC format so that machines were able to read bibliographic records and the Online Computer Library Center in Dublin, Ohio, began providing cataloging information via cable and terminal to its member libraries.

Enter OPACs, Online Public Access Catalogs, the computers that now hold all the information—and more—that used to be on those 3x5-inch index cards.
As "dumb terminals," as they were called, were installed, libraries began discarding their wooden drawers of printed and written cards. Some were dramatic about it: Alfred University in New York burned 100,000 cards. The Danbury, Connecticut, Public Library held a mock funeral.

Here at the Springfield-Greene County Library District, the librarians methodically began the process in 1983 with its first computerized catalog. It was shock at first to patrons, but soon computers caught on and the public could see the convenience and value of being able to access thousands of books and other items online.

Now, through COOLcat.org (the Consortium of Ozarks Libraries catalog), you can easily and conveniently access and search for more than half a million items owned by the Library District. You can do category searches specifically for audio books on CD or cassette, Playaways (self-contained audio units), music CDs, videos and DVDs, CD-ROMs, toys, large-type books, test and repair manuals, electronic books plus online magazines and newspapers.

You can log in to your account, reserve and renew items and check your library card information. You can rate and review titles online and create and manage the lists of books you've checked out. You can pay fines and fees and request a book through interlibrary loan. And, if you don't have a card, you can register for one online.

Oh, and those thousands of index cards; your frugal Springfield-Greene County librarians used the backs of them as scrap paper for years.