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“Most historians agree that the decline of the Great Library of Alexandria was due to what endangers libraries of the present day--general indifference and bureaucratic neglect.”
― Library of Congress, The Card Catalog: Books, Cards, and Literary Treasures

“library catalogs are a tangible example of humanity’s effort to establish and preserve the possibility of order.”
― Library of Congress, The Card Catalog: Books, Cards, and Literary Treasures

“Alexandria's first librarian, Zenodotus, attempted to put this mass of scrolls in order. The first scrolls were inventoried and then organized alphabetically, with a tag affixed to the end of each scroll indicating the author, title, and subject. These three categories came to define the traditional card catalog and are still the cornerstone of library cataloging.”
― Library of Congress, The Card Catalog: Books, Cards, and Literary Treasures

“to have reached perfection that the seeds of its decay begin to germinate.”
― Library of Congress, The Card Catalog: Books, Cards, and Literary Treasures

“Callimachus divided the scrolls into separate classes, such as poetry, philosophy, and law, and then further subdivided them into a narrower range of subjects or genres.”
― Library of Congress, The Card Catalog: Books, Cards, and Literary Treasures

“obsolete subject headings; for example, the word aeroplanes was replaced by airplanes.”
― Library of Congress, The Card Catalog: Books, Cards, and Literary Treasures

“As the Library entered the twentieth century, it was no longer a cloistered legal library for Congress, or simply a vast, static warehouse of books acquired through copyright deposit.”
― Library of Congress, The Card Catalog: Books, Cards, and Literary Treasures

“Five thousand dollars was tacked on to the bill “for the purchase of such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress and such a catalogue as shall be furnished by a joint committee of both houses of Congress to be appointed for that purpose.â€� With that, the Library of Congress was established.”
― Library of Congress, The Card Catalog: Books, Cards, and Literary Treasures

“the Gordian knot that ties the present and future to the past.â€� In Greek mythology, an oracle claimed that whoever was able to untie an intricate knot tied by King Gordius would become the next ruler of Asia. Alexander the Great, unable to untie the knot, became impatient and swiftly cut it with his sword. The idiom is now meant to express an intractable problem solved with quick, resolute action.”
― Library of Congress, The Card Catalog: Books, Cards, and Literary Treasures

“We must either reduce the Library to the stinted and specific wants of Congress alone, or permit it to advance to national importance, and give it room equal to the culture, wants, and resources of a great people. The higher education of our common country demands that this institution shall not be crippled for lack of room.”
― Library of Congress, The Card Catalog: Books, Cards, and Literary Treasures