While it’s currently August, an important library month is coming upon us quickly: September is Library Card Sign-up Month. This American Library Association-sponsored campaign has been going strong since 1987. At that time, then Secretary of Education, William Bennett, stated, “Let’s have a campaign…Every child should obtain a library card and use it.” There is more history available at the ALA website.
Recently, JCLS staff nerded out over an array of past library cards. It seems like sharing a tour of these older cards might be fun for our patrons as well…and so, welcome to our historic tour of library card designs.
The earliest card that appeared in our tour was from a staff person who grew up in Jackson County. This card is no longer useable and the number is no longer valid, but we’ve redacted out the name on the card to anonymize it. These cards would have been used prior to the 1990s. Have you lived locally long enough to remember when cards looked like this? Library technology has come a long way since we used these!
After this we moved on to cards that included the address of the old Medford Carnegie building as a main library. We believe these are the first cards that used scannable barcodes. There are definitely still some of these in active use. When a staff person spotted one in the wild, library staff began putting together the history of our cards.
Between 2002 and 2008 or so, cards had a SOLIS logo on them. This stood for Southern Oregon Library Information System. These cards worked in Jackson and Josephine counties, and at Rogue Community College.
There were an array of cards available from 2009 onward, with three different logos. There have been special edition library cards celebrating partnerships like Medford Comicon and Oregon Shakespeare Festival. There was a special design when we introduced our Computer Use Only cards. Take a gander at all these different designs:
We have had so many designs over time that I couldn’t fit them all in. If you carry a library card that wasn’t featured here, we are always excited to see unique designs “in the wild.” Stop by and show us your older (or special edition) card!
The beginning of the school year is a really good time to make sure the students in your life have one of the most important school supplies they can get their hands on…and the really cool bit about this particular supply (as any parent who has braved school supply shopping will know) is that THIS ONE IS FREE! While many of the designs featured in this post are no longer available, we’ve got a bunch of fun designs you can choose from today. So, stop by your nearest JCLS location and get a jump on Library Card Sign-up Month today!