Welcome

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 hosting The Card Catalog at Plumfield and Paideia and 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.

Ask The Librarian

In our Ask The Librarian section of The Card Catalog, we are posting questions that are being asked all over the various librarian networks and sharing some of the best responses we have seen for them. Click here to see those questions and answers.

Librarian Notices

In this section of The Card Catalog, we post weekly testimonials, stories, and notes from a wide variety of librarians all over! Click here to see those! Do you have a library story? We would love to contact you about your story! If you are interested in chatting with us, please complete this short form.

Podcast

Many have asked if there could be a podcast specifically for private lending librarians. Something designed to encourage current librarians while also helping prospective librarians discern whether, if, when, and how they may be called to this special work. Beginning in September of 2023, long time librarians Sherry Early and Kristi Stansfield sit down with new librarians Diane Pendergraft and Sara Masarik each month to talk about what is going on in their libraries that month. On this page, you can find those discussions as well as many other librarians discussions that have been recorded at Plumfield Moms in collaboration with The Card Catalog.

Shelf Notes

In our Shelf Notes section of The Card Catalog, we are posting our librarian newsletter. You don’t have to be a lending librarian to subscribe! The newsletter, Shelf Notes, will be published and sent to your email monthly around the 15th of each month.

Michelle Howard Resource Page

It has been our great pleasure to speak with Michelle Howard several times about many things related to living books and homeschooling. It was our particular privilege to work with Michelle to create a video that librarians, homeschoolers, and lovers of good books could watch and share as we all endeavor to better understand what a living book truly is and why it matters so much. On this page, we hope to pull together those resources and a few others to make it easy for librarians to find it all and make use of it.

Since 2003, Sherry Early of Meriadoc Homeschool Library has been writing thoughtful book reviews on her blog, Semicolonblog.com. Sherry’s two decades of blogging has made Semicolonblog.com a treasure trove of book reviews! 

Diane Pendergraft and Sara Masarik got a little bit of a later start… they have also been aggressively reviewing nearly everything that they have been reading since 2016. 😂 Despite their late start, Plumfield and Paideia.com is also packed with careful reviews of books new and old. 

Now, the two blogs have been combining forces to read and review books for the 1924 and 1964 projects, Picture Book Preschool, Landmark Books, and other large bookish projects best tackled with friends. 

Many readers and librarians have asked how they can stay connected with all of the newest reviews. We decided that it made sense to launch a twice-monthly newsletter with teasers and links to all of the newest reviews. Instead of getting an email or seeing a social media post every time there is a new review, by subscribing to this newsletter, you can get a digest or roundup on the 2nd and 4th Fridays of every month.