Yes, card catalogs are now electronic records (which, FYI, makes it SO much easier and quicker, at least at my library), but they totally still do the “card in the pocket of the book to tell you the due date”, though our library puts them inside the front cover, not the back.

The only difference with the cards now in my library system is, get this: the card and pocket have RFIDs now. If you try to walk through the doors without one of their cards in the pocket, it sets off an alarm. I found this out because I have a bad habit of sometimes using the cards as bookmarks, and apparently it works as well going in as going out.

You can renew or reserve books online now though, and apparently my library now does ebook borrowing as well, for e-readers and PCs with apps for it. Which is honestly kind of neat. I’ve been debating going into library science and it’s kind of interesting in that, while there are some schools that still focus on teaching archival processes, most modern library schools focus on electronic information; the modern librarian is expected to be a whiz at finding any information anywhere in the world. NYPL even has a really awesome online feature where you can chat with a librarian and have them help you find information on pretty much anything, and I do mean anything, because seriously, I once was able to locate a small town in Texas, whose name I wasn’t sure how to spell and which I wasn’t entirely sure still existed or still had the same name and which GOOGLE MAPS COULDN’T FIND… purely because an NYPL librarian, half a continent away from me and nowhere near Texas, managed to find the modern zipcode for the town based on historical listings of cemeteries. Yes, really. It was pretty amazing.

Technology has certainly changed the way information is transmitted and stored and thus completely altered the modern library system, this is true. And made information technically more accessible, but it’s not always easy to navigate. Weirdly, this means that librarians are actually more needed than ever, because they’re the ones who have kept up the training to deal with the way information is listed and organized. So, while it’s changing, the library will probably stick around for a long while.

Ye gods, I’m old.

Christ I’m old. If I were a caveperson I’d be having my midlife crisis.