A few times in recent years I've seen various crafters/makers chortling over getting hands on a finely-wrought old card catalog cabinet from a library that had no further use for it; after stripping the brass rods from the drawers they were ecstatic to repurpose those heavy old oaken furniture pieces to store seed packets or woodworking hardware or whatnot.
I wonder now if I'll last long enough to see someone ecstatic to find an old card catalog that they can restore to its original purpose?