Clare Marie Schneider in NPR (thanks to Mary M.)
A review card of Virginia Woolf’s 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway, written by a Los Angeles Public Library staff member around the time of the book’s publication.
James Sherman/Los Angeles Public Library
Before the internet made book reviews widely accessible, where would curious minds go to find information about a new novel’s subject matter or a plot?
If you lived in the Los Angeles area, you could reference the Los Angeles Public Library’s index of fiction book review cards. The reviews, a collection of thousands of index cards, contain library staff members’ thoughts and opinions about new fiction releases that the library carried. The library system was used starting in the 1920s and into the 1980s.
Robert Anderson, who has worked as a librarian at the Los Angeles Public Library since 1980, says the staff review cards were a handy tool that library staff used to answer specific questions the public had about different books.
“In the the pre-internet days, when you couldn’t just Google something, if people called and said, ‘I’ve heard about this book and I just want to know what it’s about,’ you could pull out the card and read it to them or show it to them if they were in person,” Anderson said.
The reviews, along with being a helpful public tool, also helped staff pick which books the LAPL would order for their shelves. “They didn’t always write reviews for every book, but it was a major way they made the decision on what to buy, particularly for newer authors,” Anderson said. If a staff member reviewed a book favorably, they were more likely to carry the title and order multiple copies, he said. (continued)