Kathryn Heaviside, librarian and gallery coordinator at Northport–East Northport (N.Y.) Public Library, doesn’t do anything by halves. So when she got obsessed with tracking down different library card designs, she ignored her supervisor’s suggestion to limit her search to her home county: “I said, ‘I’m gonna do the world.’”

A couple of years and many, many emailed requests later, Heaviside has collected hundreds of public library cards from every US state and several foreign locales, including the Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Poland, Russia, Scotland, and South Africa. “It was like I couldn’t stop,” she says. Her persistence paid off: During September, the library’s gallery displayed all 1,200-plus cards to commemorate Library Card Sign-Up Month.

Many library-card collectors favor the designs with animals, such the one from Manatee County (Fla.) Public Library, which features a bespectacled manatee reading a book. For her part, Heaviside—who has a background in graphic design—is understandably biased toward the card she designed for Leach Public Library in Londonderry, New Hampshire, where her twin sister is director. That card depicts an apple atop a bookcase, to commemorate the orchard that once stood on the library’s site.

For institutions that want to create a library-card collection of their own, Heaviside has one important piece of advice. Find the staff member who handles your mail, she says, and tell them, “I’m so sorry, but you’re gonna be getting a lot of envelopes.”

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