To all who are interested -
here are the comments I got. The last one is from Mr Rayward himself.
Many thanks to those who replied.
Geoffrey
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The source I saw said that it was in the fact the French
revolutionaries when they raided the homes of the aristocrats. For some
reason they decided to make an inventory of the libraries they ransacked
and quickly found the packs of playing cards lying around made excellent
material for listing books. I have seen playing cards of this date and
earlier and can confirm that they did indeed have blank backs. I have
also seen cards of this date used for writing notes on so it does
suggest that this story might be true. And in the library in which I
work I believe cards were used for the catalogue by about 1880.
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I understood that the standardisation of cards for library catalogues
was one of the many activities of the industrious Melvil Dewey. He set
up the Library Bureau in 1876 to provide uniform library furniture and
equipment, so presumably card catalogues were in use prior to Otlet's
work in 1892.
Dewey was also a supporter of the metric system and what is so often
loosely referred to as a 3" by 5" card was originally specified in
metric as 75 mm by 125 mm, which is slightly smaller. Libraries that
ordered 3" by 5" cards might find them too big for their catalogue
drawers.
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Playing cards were first used for bibliographic purposes at the time of
the confiscations of the French Revolution. When Otlet began to think
about creating bibliographies he thought of a long thin upright card,
something like what was being used at the time for the international
repertory of the mathematical sciences in Paris. This had begun in the
late 1880s and Otlet describes it in great detail in his Un Peu de
Bibliogrphie of 1893 which I have translated and annotated in
International Organisation and Dissemination of Knowledge. Selected
Essays of Paul Otlet, Edited and Translated By W. Boyd Rayward.
Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1990.
He switched to the 3x5 card as result of the influence of Herbert
Haviland Field, an American botanist who was setting up in Zurich around
1895 --just when Otlet was creating he International Institute of
Bibliography -- what was called the Concilium Bibliographicum to manage
the literature of zoology and related sciences. Field agreed to
collaborate with Otlet if Otlet adopted the 3x5 card that had become
standard for library use in the US - and for which I assume Melvil Dewey
bears some responsibility, though I don't actually know the story of the
3x5 card in the US. Maybe Wayne Weigand's biography of Dewey might say.
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