#gender in libraries
Photo from Library Journal, Volume 116 Issue 7, April 15, 1991, page 32; Eric Smith possible photographer. Caption reads “Clare Beck says that present-day attitudes about reference service (and the reference librarian) stem from old-fashioned attitudes toward women in general.”
Today’s post is from Lorna Peterson, PhD, Associate Professor (emerita), University at Buffalo. This is Lorna’s fourth (!) year writing for WoLH; she has previously submitted posts on Aurelia Whittington Franklin(2016),Leonead Pack Drain-Bailey (2015), and Clara Stanton Jones(2014).
Government documents librarian and feminist librarian historian Mary Clare Beck was born and raised in the American Midwest and is a graduate of the University of Chicago with an A.B. in history. She earned the Master of Library Science degree from the University of Denver, and a MA in interdisciplinary social studies from Eastern Michigan University. Her reading in sociology for the MA degree is where her interest to apply gender theory to the examination of the gendered dynamics of librarianship was generated. The result of this interest is a body of research that invigorates library and librarian history.
Beck’s career at Eastern Michigan University was one of achievement and honor when she retired at the rank of full professor from the University Library. Beck’s achievements include but are not limited to, being one of the founders of GODORT, the American Library Association’s Government Documents Round Table, giving invited lectures on library history, and championing librarianship by writing letters to library publications and educating the general public regarding library topics by publishing letters in national periodicals. Examples of such letters are “Defending the Depositories” published in Library Journal(February 15, 1988), a letter that appeared in the March 30, 2009 Wall Street Journal critiquing the press coverage of Laura Bush’s professional librarian role in contrast to the First Ladies who were lawyers, and comments on a proposed remodel of the NYPL research library which appeared January 10, 2012 in The Nation. As an alumna of the University of Chicago, Clare Beck has contributed to the alumni magazine regarding library matters with her “The importance of browsing,” which tempered for her fellow University of Chicago graduates the allure of automation with the appeal of serendipitous perusing of library stacks.
It is Clare Beck’s contribution to library science research, particularly historical research, where her greatest achievements are. Through enriching library science scholarship by examining the complexities of gender issues, Clare Beck advanced library science research beyond the studies of administrative positions and gender. With critical analysis through the lens of feminist theories and gender studies, Ms. Beck added significantly and uniquely to the library literature canon.
Her work, “Reference Service: A Handmaid’s Tale” (Library Journal, April 15, 1991, p. 32-37) examines library reference work and its 1980s self-identified crisis through the lens of gender. Citing sources outside of the discipline of library science, Beck’s article gives the profession a fresh way to frame the tradition as articulated by librarian Samuel Green, of having a helpful sympathetic friend at a desk to take random on demand requests. [ed. note: if you have access to Library Journal archives, you should look up and read this article. A representative quote: “Thus we have the concept of on-demand service provided by a woman at a public desk, always ready to lay aside other work to respond ‘incidentally’ to questions. The underlying image would seem to be that of Mother, always ready to interrupt her housework to attend of the problems of others.”]
Beck’s other works include “Genevieve Walton and library instruction at the Michigan State Normal College” College and Research Libraries (July 1989). Genevieve Walton has a profile in the Women of Library History blog. Archival research figures prominently in “A ‘Private’ Grievance against Dewey,” American Libraries (Jan 1996, Vol. 27 Issue 1, p62-64), a model work of library event history that goes beyond chronology and biography that is not hagiography. [ed. note: again, if you have archival access to American Libraries, give this one a read.]
“Fear of women in suits: dealing with gender roles in librarianship” was presented at the University of Toronto and then published in the highly regarded Canadian Journal of Information Science Vol. 17 no. 3, pp.29-39, 1992. Her biography of Adelaide Hasse, The New Woman as Librarian: The Career of Adelaide Hasse, Scarecrow Press, 2006, is rich with archival material and careful analysis .
Invited lectures such as “How Adelaide Hasse got fired: A feminist history of librarianship through the story of one difficult woman, 1889-1953,” as organized by Cass Hartnett of the University of Washington, “Fear of Women in Suits: Dealing with Gender Roles in Librarianship,“ and "Gender in Librarianship: Why the Silence?” (given at the Canadian Library Association conference) introduced professional librarians, library workers, and graduate library science students to a sociological feminist examination of the library and information science professions. In her career, invited talks and juried presentations were given at such organizations as the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters (MASAL), Library and Information Science section, and ALA Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL).
Clare Beck’s contribution to library history advances our field with rigorous, iconoclastic research, enriching the understanding the practice of North American librarianship.
