Historical Perspective: Cataloging’s Early Years

I started work at the bottom, bringing catalog-page materials jackets to the merchandise departments for their writers. Back then, writers were embedded in individual departments rather than working in one group. The jackets contained reference materials on the products for each page for 11 catalogs, some as large as 1,200 pages. The jackets made their way from the creative division, where layouts were developed based on space allocations determined by each department’s sales manager and buyers, to the type-markup department across the aisle.