Interactive Reading

Read the passage and answer the question.

In 1845, a librarian named Antonio faced a frustrating problem. His library owned thousands of books, but readers could rarely find what they wanted because the volumes were arranged only by the date they had arrived. Antonio spent two years creating a system of cards, each listing a book's title, author, and subject. Readers could flip through the cards to locate a book before searching the shelves. At first, some colleagues complained that the project wasted time better spent buying new books. Within a decade, however, libraries across the region had copied his method, and borrowing rates more than doubled.