I once visited the Library of Congress on a day when their online library catalog was down. Like the British Library, the stacks are closed to the public, so you have to make requests and they'll deliver the books. Normally, the requests are made online, but that was impossible this day. The library staff found the paper tickets to make requests the old way, and I made a bunch of requests for books by call number based on what I had saved in Zotero. I'm glad that Zotero automatically grabbed the call numbers from the metadata. It was almost like being transferred back in time.

I wanted to get some journal articles that were not digitized. I didn't have the call numbers of the journals saved. I noticed that the Science and Business reading room had an old journal card catalog in the front. (It was still there the last time I visited about a month ago.) So I started pulling entire card catalog drawers to flip through at my desk. A librarian asked me where I got the journal card catalog from because they didn't know! (They also said to be sure to put back the drawers when I was done.)

I don't know how I would have figured out the call numbers for any books that I didn't have saved in Zotero. I guess they eliminated the other card catalogs.

I was still able to have a productive day despite the online catalog being down. I guess that's not as easy at the British Library.