--- title: National Library Week: The Story of the First Card Catalog description: This excerpt from 'The Card Catalog: Books, Cards, and Literary Treasures' explains the Great Library of Alexandria's innovative catalog. canonical: https://time.com/4730810/first-card-catalog/ author: TIME article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-04-09T16:00:06.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T04:58:56.776Z article:section: History og:title: National Library Week: The Story of the First Card Catalog og:description: For National Library Week, an excerpt from 'The Card Catalog: Books, Cards, and Literary Treasures' og:url: https://time.com/4730810/first-card-catalog/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcfe5d323054d19a8/6988c1fdab6d77b2646ad886/woman-at-main-reading-room-card-catalog.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4096 og:image:height: 2304 og:image:alt: Woman at Main Reading Room Card Catalog og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: National Library Week: The Story of the First Card Catalog twitter:description: For National Library Week, an excerpt from 'The Card Catalog: Books, Cards, and Literary Treasures' twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcfe5d323054d19a8/6988c1fdab6d77b2646ad886/woman-at-main-reading-room-card-catalog.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The Genius Innovation That Made the Great Library of Alexandria Work > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. by [The Library of Congress](https://time.com/author/the-library-of-congress/) ## The Library of Congress Apr 9, 2017 4:00 PM UTC  Woman at Main Reading Room Card Catalog, Library of Congress, circa 1930s. Woman at Main Reading Room Card Catalog, Library of Congress, circa 1930s.Jack Delano—Library of Congress by [The Library of Congress](https://time.com/author/the-library-of-congress/) ## The Library of Congress Apr 9, 2017 4:00 PM UTC _As National Library Week begins — it runs from April 9–15 this year — the Library of Congress looks back at the ancestor of the card catalog, in this excerpt from_ The Card Catalog: Books, Cards, and Literary Treasures _(Chronicle Books, 2017)._ From Pythagoras to Euclid, Homer to Sophocles, and Plato to Aristotle, the scholars, poets, playwrights, and philosophers of ancient Greece profoundly influenced Western civilization. Much of Western science, literature, and philosophy — and the methods used to organize them — can trace their roots to this period of antiquity. Macedonian king Alexander the Great conquered Greece and much of the known world in the third century B.C. In the wake of his conquests, the most dynamic hubs of Greek culture could be found outside of Greece. On the Nile Delta he planned a monument to Greek cultural supremacy, the Library of Alexandria, the greatest library of antiquity. The library would attempt to encompass a universal scope never before seen, and was destined to become the intellectual center of the Mediterranean. As no archaeological evidence remains, what this library looked like can only be gleaned from hints found in a few written accounts. The collection did not consist of books but rather scrolls. When Alexandria was founded in the fourth century B.C., the written word had moved on from the sturdy clay tablets to a fragile form of paper called papyrus. Papyrus was made from reeds found along the Nile and was fairly simple and cheap to produce but difficult to preserve over time. After the composition was complete, the papyrus was rolled over a peg and precariously stacked in piles. It is in this library, dedicated to arts, intellectual exploration, and the advancement of science, that one finds the true precursor to the card catalog. As the scrolls began to pile up, the library staff faced a challenging job, for unlike modern books, the scrolls had no title page, table of contents, or index. In many cases the scrolls did not even list an author, and longer works, such as the plays of Sophocles or Euripides, would often take up many scrolls with no indication as to their proper order. Alexandria’s first librarian, Zenodotus, attempted to put this mass of scrolls in order. The scrolls were inventoried and then organized alphabetically, with a tag affixed to the end of each scroll indicating the author, title, and subject. These three categories came to define the traditional card catalog and are still the cornerstone of library cataloging. With some semblance of structure applied to the collection, the Greek poet and scholar Callimachus was chosen to devise a way to provide reliable access to the scrolls. His cataloging and classification of the papyrus scrolls made him one of the most important figures in library history. Around 250 B.C., he compiled his _Pinakes_, or _Tables of Those Who Were Outstanding in Every Phase of Culture, and Their Writings—in 120 Books._ The _Pinakes_ functioned as both a bibliography and an aid to finding the most important Greek works held by the Library of Alexandria. The _Pinakes_ was arguably the first time anyone compiled a sophisticated list of authors and their works. From the surviving fragments, scholars have deduced that Callimachus divided the scrolls into separate classes, such as poetry, philosophy, and law, and then further subdivided them into a narrower range of subjects or genres. Within each class, the scrolls were arranged alphabetically by author. While this seems obvious to anyone who has ever browsed a bookstore or library, it was groundbreaking in its day. In the _Pinakes_, Callimachus also included data on the scroll itself, such as the total number of lines and, perhaps most important for scholars, the opening words of individual scrolls. This cataloging feature continued through to the catalog cards of the nineteenth century, where in many instances the opening lines of a book would fill the front and back of a card. Callimachus created the _Pinakes_ during a time when Greek scholarship focused on gathering and compiling the creative works of the past. Encyclopedias, anthologies, dictionaries, and other curatorial endeavors begin to surface in this period. With the _Pinakes_, Callimachus was attempting to both list the holdings of important Greek works and provide the bibliographic details that would help readers find a particular work. In doing so, he is regarded as having invented the tools used by modern catalogers. The fate of this ambitious library is obscured by historical myths as Greek supremacy gave way to Roman dominance. Legend has it, however, that the library and its collection were burned when Alexandria was besieged by Julius Caesar in 48 B.C. Although the library suffered some damage during the battle, its demise was probably gradual and much less dramatic. As the Roman Empire expanded across the Mediterranean, the center of culture and intellectual life shifted to Rome, and the rise of Christianity brought with it a suspicion of secular knowledge and the “pagan” scrolls held in the library. Most historians agree that the decline of the Great Library of Alexandria was due to what endangers libraries of the present day — general indifference and bureaucratic neglect.  Chronicle Books _Excerpt and photographs taken with permission from_ [The Card Catalog: Books, Cards, and Literary Treasures](https://www.amazon.com/Card-Catalog-Books-Literary-Treasures/dp/1452145407) _(Chronicle Books, 2017)._  Artist rendering of the interior of the Library of Alexandria Library of Congress  Supply catalog from the Library Bureau, 1897-1920. Library of Congress  Union catalogers at work, 1927. Library of Congress  Library of Congress Data Processing Office, 1964. Library of Congress  Woman at Main Reading Room Card Catalog, Library of Congress, circa 1930s. 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