As you mentioned, more and more university and public libraries are automated. If K-12 schools are still teaching students 'card' catalog skills, we're not preparing students for the real world. You can search in many more ways and more quickly than with a card catalog. You can also search in many more ways. You can search for the tradional author, title, and subject and the automatd catalog allows you to search additonal for keyword, series, and call number.
Automation is wonderful.
Good luck with your grant process. On the off-chance that it is not too late, I will tell you about my experience in an elementary school when we put in an automated catalog. The day the catalog was finally automated, I was far too busy to do anything about it. There was a planetarium tent set up in the library for star shows, all the classes were coming through for the program, and library classes were meeting as scheduled even though all the furniture was pushed into the far aisles and-I was too busy for one more thing. But that afternoon, as I whisked by, I could hear the second graders explaining to each other how the new catalog worked.