Discarding of these catalogs is a huge mistake. What if there is no power? What if there is a war, the IT system breaks and no one is able to fix it for the lack of parts and eventually lack of knowledge? These records are too valuable not to have a physical human readable backup.
What is the excuse? "The company that printed the cards went out of business" I bet there is a lot of companies that could print a batch of such cards upon order. How hard would it be to set up a printer that filled and updates the cards and the it system to be in sync?
I remember using libraries without computerised catalogs for a long time. When I used electronic search for the first time I thought it is huge. I could find stuff in minutes instead of hours (or asking a librarian to do the search for me). However, it t is extremely short sighted to just discard or let these old catalogs to rot.
What is the excuse? "The company that printed the cards went out of business" I bet there is a lot of companies that could print a batch of such cards upon order. How hard would it be to set up a printer that filled and updates the cards and the it system to be in sync?
I remember using libraries without computerised catalogs for a long time. When I used electronic search for the first time I thought it is huge. I could find stuff in minutes instead of hours (or asking a librarian to do the search for me). However, it t is extremely short sighted to just discard or let these old catalogs to rot.