Hello! Welcome to The Card Catalog, a resource for private lending librarians, wanna-be librarians, and people just interested in living books libraries and how they work. We, a group of both experienced and novice librarians, are working together to bring you encouragement in your own library journey, answers to some of your burning questions about how to start and manage a private lending library, and of course, some book talk along the way. We all love the books.
We will have quite a few people contributing to this resource page, and we will be introducing you to librarians from many places with libraries both big and small. For now, suffice it to say that we are thankful to Sara Masarik and Diane Pendergraft for masterminding both the content and the design of this webpage. Also contributing to the Big Idea of a web resource for living books libraries and librarians are Tanya Arnold and Sarah Kim of Biblioguides, Kristi Stansfield, librarian at Maryland Living Books Library, and Sherry Early, librarian at Meriadoc Homeschool Library. You can listen and learn more about several living books librarians and their libraries at the Plumfield Library Ladies podcast page here at Plumfield and Paideia.
So now you know enough to get started. Scroll down to explore our Ask the Librarian questions and answers, Shelf Notes, our archive of library newsletters, and Library Notices, encouragement for the library journey. And if you're here because you are looking for a private living books lending library near you, check out the Private Lending Library Directory at Biblioguides.