I received this question the other day and I have a guess but not an answer. Can anyone help? If so, please post it as a comment. Thanks.
I have a random, totally irrelevant question that I think you would be the perfect person to answer. I was looking through my library card collection (I have about 8), and I noticed that all the card numbers start with the number 2. I was wondering if you could look through your collection (which is much larger than mine) and see if you notice the same trend. I was also wondering if you have any information as to why this is so.
–Bud
(My guess is that it has something to do with the company that the cards/barcodes come from. Many of mine start with a “2” but others start with a “4” and cards from the Denver Public Library start with a “D”.
Michael Sauers is currently the Director of Technology for Do Space in Omaha, NE. Michael has been training librarians in technology for the past twenty years and has also been a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, serials cataloger, technology consultant, and bookseller since earning his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany’s School of Information Science and Policy. Michael has also written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines and his fourteenth book, Emerging Technologies: A Primer for Librarians (w/ Jennifer Koerber) was published in May 2015 and more books are on the way. In his spare time he blogs at travelinlibrarian.info, runs The Collector’s Guide to Dean Koontz Web site, takes many, many photos, and typically reads more than 100 books a year.
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Ours all start with 1000.