Uses for old catalog cards

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I posted a request for manual circ supplies and I got an offer of all the
cards in the (being pitched) card catalog.  That's the one item from the old
system I don't need (altho I may need blank ones if I get serious about
keeping my card catalog totally accurate someday).  Anyway, I wrote a list
of all the uses for old cat cards. Here's ideas from my experience:

        I got this idea from a librarian I interned with.  She uses old card
cat cards to write memos to teachers and principal.  Its always very clear
where the message came from.  Put them in a box next to your online catalog
for kids to write down call numbers or whatever.  Use them as book marks.
In my old school, the Winnebago system displayed info on a form that looks
like a catalog card.  So I made up card sets for books from each Dewey
section and did lots of exercises.  ("Everybody with a fiction book stand
up, everyone with an 800 call number stand up.  All the people with authors
beginning with "G" stand up" etc...the possibilities are unlimited.)  I put
a box of slips of paper out for kids to use as book marks.  I put cat cards
in the box (a status symbol with the younger kids).

Johanna Halbeisen
Rebecca M. Johnson School
(K-8) Springfield, MA
jhalbei@k12.ucs.umass.edu

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