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Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Rare Books
[Accession cards for numbers 1-265749]
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- Description
- Original format 5x8 inch accession cards for rare book materials, with accession/call numbers 1-265749. Lodewyk Bendikson became a cataloger and bilbliographer for Henry Huntington in 1916 and was responsibile for the use of the 5x8 card format rather than than the standard 3x5 in use by most libraries. In the 1930s, Bendikson, then in charge of the new Department of Photographic Reproduction at the Huntington, used the photostat process to convert the larger format cards to the standard 3x5 format. The resulting prints with white lettering on black backgrounds are referred to as "black cards" in the original Huntington card catalog. The versos of the original cards sometimes contain information which was not transferred to the "black cards". The Huntington seems to have transitioned to using 3x5 duplicate accession slips sometime in the mid 1950s (after call number 200401) and these later accession slips are stored in the Technical Services offices. There is some overlap in coverage in both accessioning methods, especially in the 192000 numbers and up. Earlier numbers may have slips in the main 3x5 accession drawers if they represent rare book materials that were discarded, or the call numbers transferred. There is a single drawer of A-Z author index entries, but that is probably incomplete. The "black cards" were sometimes misread during the RECON project to convert the card catalog to online records and the black card itself, or the original 5x8 card may need to be consulted to resolve questions.
