Tulsa City-County Library System Annual Report
Tulsa City-County Library System Annual Report playing cards, USA, 1983.
The secondary use of playing cards is not a new phenomenon. Over time they have been used as emergency money, visiting cards, invitations to events, admissions tickets, bookmarks, and stiffening for book bindings, while the backs have long been employed as an effective advertising medium. This pack presents a novel and possibly unique example of secondary use – as the official 1982-83 annual report for the Tulsa City-County Library System. The choice of this medium for an annual report is explained: “just as playing cards are the most international foundation for all games, so is the public library society’s center for recorded thought and human knowledge”.
The work of each branch library and department is represented on a card, together with statistics, photographs and names of key staff. Further, the traditional suits have been replaced by people and films (red suits) and books and records (black suits) – so as better to depict library patrons and materials. There are 52 large-size cards (11 x 8 cm), 2 jokers (possibly one of the Library Directors?), and an information card.
Above: Tulsa City-County Library System Annual Report playing cards, USA, 1983.
By Peter Burnett
Member since July 27, 2022
I graduated in Russian and East European Studies from Birmingham University in 1969. It was as an undergraduate in Moscow in 1968 that I stumbled upon my first 3 packs of “unusual” playing cards which fired my curiosity and thence my life-long interest. I began researching and collecting cards in the early 1970s, since when I’ve acquired over 3,330 packs of non-standard cards, mainly from North America, UK and Western Europe, and of course from Russia and the former communist countries.
Following my retirement from the Bodleian Library in Dec. 2007 I took up a new role as Head of Library Development at the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) to support library development in low-income countries. This work necessitated regular training visits to many sub-Saharan African countries and also further afield, to Vietnam, Nepal and Bangladesh – all of which provided rich opportunities to further expand my playing card collection.
Since 2019 I’ve been working part-time in the Bodleian Library where I’ve been cataloguing the bequest of the late Donald Welsh, founder of the English Playing Card Society.
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