I have been told that my organization developed a system, HABS, that pre-dated OCLC [0]. That OCLC used this system as an inspiration. However, I cannot confirm this. Closest I can do is to find a footnote that Thanks Fred Kilgore, the founder of OCLC [1]. I should reach out to Koh, a friend of a friend, while she is still alive to confirm the story. Nevertheless, we have a collection of punch cards in a dusty room in an attic that was once the HABS system. I think it is a pretty fascinating legacy, and I wish it was better preserved.
I know a bit about Henriette Avram and her work at LoC developing MARC, but it of course makes sense that other libraries were thinking along similar lines at the time.
[0] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/106939716900400... [1]https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/106939717300800...