How did libraries keep track of who borrowed what before computers?

[BobT]

*Originally posted by Zsofia *
**A big library (no, I don’t actually remember this - we just talked about it a few weeks ago in my library school indexing class) would have dates or numbers or however you wanted to organize a thing by running up the side of the card your name was on that they took out of the pocket and holes next to the numbers. When you checked it out, they took a hole punch thing and cut a chunk out of the due date one so the hole was no longer closed. Then when time’s up, they put all the cards together and ran a probe-knitting-needle-thing through the hole they were looking for and shook the thing - theoretically, yours would fall out. Sometimes you’d get “false drops”, which I’ve heard bad search engine results referred to these days sometimes, which is where that comes from. Obviously, you couldn’t do this too many times over with a single card, though, so it seems like a pretty wasteful system. **

This particular system usually came with cards that had 10 or 12 holes along the side. The items were usually checked out in intervals so that you couldn’t repeat punching a hole without having to fill out a new card.

When I was just a humble student assistant, I finally graduated up the ladder where I got to use the needle to shake the cards. It was an auspicious day.
After two or three times, it wasn’t particularly fun and you realized that it was usually the same people who fell out. Or it could be professors and there was nothing you could do to them to get them to return materials.