Heythrop Library

While cataloguing books the past few weeks I have been pleased and at times surprised to find various bits of ephemera within their pages. These treasures range from the meaningful to the ridiculous.

Some provide insight into their previous owners’ research practices and reading habits. Some even give us a look into the library borrowing practices at the library back when it was still a part of Heythrop College.

I uncovered a few call cards or call slips dating back to the 1980s. In the days before a Library Management System (LMS), these slips would’ve been the only way library users could request books from the closed stacks (i.e., books not on the open shelves in the reading rooms). The user would write down the desired book’s class mark and their location in the reading room onto the call slip and hand it to the Librarian. This would allow the Librarian to locate the book in the closed stacks and deliver it directly to them at their desk.

These two call slips from 1983 and 1987 predate Heythrop Library’s LMS, which was adopted in 1990. The LMS likely replaced the use of the card catalogue and other analogue library tools. Heythrop no longer has closed stacks and offsite requests are made online, making call slips virtually obsolete for us. But call slips are still used in tandem with the LMS and discovery systems of many libraries, including New York Public Library.

Finding these call slips really transported me back in time to Heythrop College days and I look forward to discovering more treasures as I continue cataloguing.

AL