You might even balk at this point, wondering if you even deserved to be within these hallowed halls. But a reassuring look at your own personalized library card would set you at ease, you were indeed a full-fledged member of this community, with every right to be in this wonderful place.

The pictured library card is missing something: a piece of metal with five or six letters or numbers stamped on it, embedded in the card itself. That card would be presented to the librarian when you wanted to actually check out the books. She would place your card into a mechanical device which would then accept another card from a sleeve found inside the particular book you wanted. The card would slide into a slot in the top, you would hear a "ka-chunka" sound, and a permanent record would be made that you had, indeed, borrowed the book in question. She would then place another pre-stamped card back into the book's pocket with a date that was two weeks away, added to the queue of previous dates.

I tried hard to find a picture of one of those checkout machines, to no avail. The return date cards were produced by a different machine that would take a tiny bite of paper out of the edge of the card, stamping a return date in the process. That card could be used through four cycles, turning it around once the top side was full, and turning it over once an entire side was full of dates.

Finding books was something that we were expected to do on our own. As soon as we were old enough to read, our schoolteachers taught us about the Dewey Decimal System, an amazing way of assigning every book ever written a unique number, and placing a record of it into a paper database that was quite easy to use. The Dewey cards were all the same size no matter what library you were in, it seemed, and they all were located in the same set of sliding drawers, a kid could quickly find them.

School libraries were another, lower-budget matter. Few of them had the machines, thus manual labor was required on the part of the librarian or his or (usually) her assistant, a volunteer student. You would hand a book to the person in charge, they would remove the book's card, stamp the due date, and either write in your name, or direct you to do so. There would usually be a date due card affixed inside the book which would be stamped, and off you'd go.

I found it fascinating to look at the history of the book's check outs, readily available on the venerable cards. My own high school had a long tradition, being established in the 19th century, and some of the books were quite old. The names and dates on the check out cards might well go back to the early twentieth century, and the monikers were often of local business owners, entrepreneurs, or folks notorious for less savory things.

The ways that the library conducted its business were things that we grew up with, and that we took for granted. Change comes slowly in the often-low-budget world of public and school libraries, so the equipment that the librarians used was often antique in nature. Even today, I'm sure that old-fashioned hand-stamp type libraries can be found in the US, certainly so in less developed parts of the world. But in my own town of residence, a certain mega-corporation likes to make itself known by putting its family name all over donated works, including a state-of-the-art library where even a keyboard is rarely touched, most checkouts are done by laser scans or RFID.

Additionally, Google Books has made many, many works freely available to anyone with an internet connection, some students get by without ever visiting a brick-and-mortar building at all.

If anything, that only makes our own treasured memories of visiting the library even more precious. After all, Google Books doesn't make that cool "ka-chunka" sound, and it also doesn't have a wonderful smell produced by well-worn tomes.

Most importantly, it doesn't hand out a kid's first prized public recognition, to be earnestly guarded and kept safe: a library card, equipped with a unique metal-stamped number, proudly stating that the bearer can be trusted with a book for two weeks.

Recommend I Remember JFK to your friends!