College and Research Libraries


Marginal Punched Charge Card Form 
Facilitates Sending Overdue Notices 

BY F R E D E R I C K G. K I L G O U R 

IB M C A R D S and marginal punched cards were introduced as charge records in 
the 1930's because these punched cards 
made possible the reduction of costs in 
academic and special libraries by com-
bining the chronological record with the 
book record. One of the next major re-
ductions in staff time required to ad-
minister circulation records will come 
from simplifying the sending of overdue 
notices. Although the recently published 
Study of Circulation Control Systems 
mentions that the Bookamatic charging 
system can supply overdue notices me-
chanically1, the Study does not describe 
in detail a system which dispenses with 
writing overdues aside from those sys-
tems producing photographic or other 
image reproductions. 

However, descriptions of systems, in-
cluding Bookamatic, that make writing 
notices unnecessary have appeared in 
the literature. In 1955 the Annual Re-
port of the Yale Medical Library gave a 
brief account of a system installed in 
December 19542. T h e new charge card 
was a triplicate marginal punched form 
with one-time carbons inserted. In the 
same year, Helen T . Geer briefly de-
scribed the Bookamatic system which 
the Addressograph-Multigraph Company 
was then developing3, and in 1956 she 
again reported on Bookamatic stating 
that a pilot project had been installed 
in the Midland Public Library, Mid-
land, Michigan, during the summer of 
1956.4 In the next several years, there 

1 George F r y & Associates, Inc. Study of Circulation 
Control Systems. (Chicago: ALA, 1961). 

- ' Y a l e Medical Library. Annual Report 1954/1955. 
pp. 8-11. 

3 Helen T . Geer. Charging Systems. (Chicago: ALA, 
1 9 5 5 ) , p. 153. 

4 Helen T . Geer. "Charging Machines," Library 
Trends, V ( 1 9 5 6 ) , 244-55, 251. 

4 0 2 

Mr. Kilgour is Librarian, Yale Medical 
Library. 

were published upwards of a half dozen 
articles reporting on Bookamatic sys-
tems, including the project at Midland. 
More recently, William H. Richardson 
has published a paper on three I B M 
circulation systems which write and ad-
dress overdue notices mechanically.5 

T h i s paper describes the operation of 
the present system at the Yale Medical 
Library and a new triplicate form, 
slightly different from the 1955 version. 
T h e basic element of the system is a 
triplicate marginal punched card printed 
on National Cash Register chemical car-
bon paper and card stock. New England 
Business Forms, Inc., of New Haven, 
Connecticut, manufactures the forms. 
Figure 1 shows the top or first slip of 
the form that constitutes the charge. T h e 
second slip is a second overdue notice, 
and Figure 2 is the third part of the 
form which serves as the first overdue 
notice. T h e first two slips are paper, but 
the third qualifies as post card stock. 
Dimensions are 614 by 31/2 inches. T h e 
Harvard Medical Library has adapted 
this form so that the first part is the first 
overdue notice, the second part is the 
second notice, while the third, on card 
stock, is the charge record, remaining in 
the file until the borrower has returned 
the volume. Also, the Harvard form is 
smaller, measuring 3]/4 by 5 inches. 

When a borrower fills out one of the 
Yale charge slips, he automatically makes 
out a first and second overdue notice. 

5 William H . Richardson. "Circulation C o n t r o l / ' 
Special Libraries, L I ( 1 9 6 0 ) , 494-96. 

C O L L E G E A N D R E S E A R C H L I B R A R I E S 



FIGURE I 

Before filing the charge form, the circu-
lation desk attendant notches the hole 
corresponding to the date on which the 
volume will be due. If the borrower does 
not return the volume on or before the 
date due, the form drops out when the 
attendant sorts the file. She then removes 
the post card on the back of the form, 
mails it to the borrower, renotches the 
form to drop out one week later if the 
borrower does not return the book, and 
refiles it. T h e second overdue notice goes 
out in a window envelope, and the third 
is a form statement on a card. Except to 
say that the forms are filed by author or 
by journal title and that there are no 
fines, details of the routines followed in 
a marginal punched card charging sys-
tem are not given here, for Helen T . 
Geer has described them extensively.6 

As pointed out in 1955, these Yale 
charge forms are wide, thick, and expen-
sive. T h e i r size makes them impractical 
for a library with a big circulation rec-
ord file, but Harvard has shown a smaller 
version to be effective. In recent years 
the Yale Medical Library has been lend-
ing nearly thirty thousand volumes an-
nually, and the charge file has not ex-
ceeded four tub trays with outside di-
mensions of 67/% by 15i/2 inches. T h e 

8 Op. cit. pp. 110-127. 

S E P T E M B E R 1 9 6 2 

forms cost $16.54 per one thousand in 
an order of fifty thousand whereas 3 X 5 
paper charge slips used prior to Decem-
ber 1954 would now cost $2.14 per one 
thousand in considerably larger orders. 
Since the new forms are used at the rate 
of 37,500 per year, the increase in cost 
over a system using plain, untabbed 
charge slips is $540. 

During January through J u n e 1961, 
the library charged out 15,605 volumes 
for one and two weeks. Overdue notices 
approximately corresponding to these 
loans were those sent in F e b r u a r y 
through July 1960, when 3,592 first over-
dues and 1,631 second notices went out. 
T h e number of first overdue notices as 
proportion of total circulation is 23 per 
cent. T h i s percentage is far higher than 
the mode of 2.9 per cent and high of 
"14.9-15.6" per cent which George Fry 
& Associates found in thirty-two college 
and university libraries.7 

T h i s charging system provides two 
principal benefits over the former, plain 
charge card record which called for so 
much staff time in hand sorting and in 
writing overdues that notices could be 
sent out only during academic recesses. 
First, for $540 a year, a date-due record 
and over 10,000 filled-out overdue no-

7 Op. cit. p. 42. 

403 



STAMP 

HERE 

F I G U R E 2 

tices that actually go into the mail are 
obtained. T h e second benefit is increased 
availability of books and periodicals, for 
in the first six months of 1955 (following 
the installation of the original system in 
December 1954) the recorded circulation 
increased 18 per cent, excluding renew-
als, over the first six months of the previ-
ous year, despite the fact that in each 

Readers' Services . . . 
(1Continued from page 401) 

not particularly novel, bear repetition) 
a point of view regarding reference serv-
ice is implicit which has been expressed 
before but acceptance of which is not 
always implicit in library plans. Refer-
ence service should be pervasive. Library 
activities can scarcely survive inadequate 
acquisition, catalog, and circulation serv-
ice; but they can—and do—survive in-
adequate reference service. Why is ref-
erence service so often inadequate? Be-
cause for thing, it is, unlike Mount 
Everest, so often simply not there. In 
too many libraries, reference service is 
available in the sense that it is on call 
(if you know how to call it) but is not 
present at various points, e.g., front doors, 
catalogs, stack entrances, where it is 

month of the last six of 1954, circulation 
had been lower than the corresponding 
month of 1953. During the six months 
following the installation, there was no 
other variation to affect the amount of 
circulation such as more borrowers or 
new educational or research programs. 
Here, then, is a nearly one-fifth increase 
in service achieved at relatively low cost. 

needed. One solution is to station non-
professional help at such points and to 
train it to call on professional help when 
uncertain how to answer inquiries: 
surely a rather roundabout approach— 
and hardly foolproof, as so often it is 
just the thing one is least correct about 
that he is most certain about. A second 
solution is to hire more professional li-
brarians, but this may result in a waste 
of professional skill (as one sits and waits 
for people to wait on); and, in any case, 
who has that much money? Still another 
solution is the one offered in this paper: 
to plan buildings so as to make arrange-
ments of rooms, services, and collections 
easy to apprehend and so as to enable 
reference service, however small the ref-
erence staffs, to be as nearly as possible 
ubiquitous. 

4 0 4 C O L L E G E A N D R E S E A R C H L I B R A R I E S