Businessman and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie donated and built over 2,500 libraries worldwide between 1883 and 1929. The state of Ohio is ranked fifth in the nation for its number of Carnegie libraries with Cincinnati originally boasting nine libraries total. Today, Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library are still operating seven Carnegie branches. Our current Carnegie branches include: Avondale, Corryville, Hyde Park, Northside, Norwood, Price Hill and Walnut Hills. Cincinnati’s first Carnegie to open was Walnut Hills branch in 1906, with the others following soon after. Walnut Hills branch is currently part of Building the Next Generation Library plan and will see many updates including more square footage and greater accessibility.
We love this bookplate, in use in the mid-20th century at Andover-Harvard Theological Library (now Harvard Divinity School Library) partially because the Latin translation by St. Jerome (also called Hieronymous) is so important in the history of biblical studies, but also because Jerome is the patron saint of librarians. :)
President Roosevelt himself took this photograph of Daisy Suckley in the White House as she went through various papers, February 10, 1942. (Photo: FDR Presidential Library & Museum)
This post was written by Keith Muchowski, an Instruction/Reference Librarian at New York City College of Technology (CUNY) in Brooklyn, New York. He blogs at thestrawfoot.com.
Margaret Suckley was an archivist at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library in Hyde Park, New York from 1941 to 1963. But she was much more than that.
“Daisy” Suckley, as she was known to friends and family, was born in Rhinebeck, New York in 1891 and grew up on Wilderstein, the family estate on the Hudson River not far from the Roosevelts’ own Springwood in Hyde Park. This was a small, rarefied world and in the ensuing decades Daisy saw sixth cousin Franklin’s rise to prominence. She eventually became one of his closest friends and confidants, sharing the good times and the bad with the country’s only four-term president. Ms. Suckley was there for Franklin in the 1920s when he was struck paralyzed from the waist down with polio, knew him during his years in Albany when he was New York governor and he became a national figure, attended the presidential inaugural in 1933 in the depths of the Great Depression, offered a discreet and comforting ear during the dark days of the Second World War when, as commander-in-chief, he made difficult and lonely decisions affecting the lives of millions around the world. Finally, Daisy was one of the inner circle present in Warm Springs, Georgia when the president died in April 1945. Roosevelt was inscrutable to most—some called him The Sphinx—but if anyone outside his immediate family knew him, it was Margaret “Daisy” Suckley.
Ms. Suckley (left) in Roosevelt’s private office at the presidential library with actress Evelyn Keyes, and Library Director Fred Shipman. Ms. Keyes is holding the album-version of Ms. Suckley’s book The True Story of Fala, October 31, 1946. (Photo: FDR Presidential Library & Museum)
There were perks to being Roosevelt’s close friend. The two enjoyed picnics and country drives. Both loved to dish the gossip about Washington politicos and the Hudson River Valley families they had known for decades. Daisy helped President Roosevelt design his Hyde Park retreat, Top Cottage. She enjoyed the “Children’s Hour” afternoon breaks when Roosevelt would mix cocktails for himself and his friends to unwind. There were getaways at Shangri-La, the rustic presidential retreat in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains known today as Camp David. She attended services at Hyde Park Church with the First Family, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth when the royals visited in 1939. It was she who gave him Fala, the Scottish Terrier to whom he was so attached after receiving the pooch as a Christmas gift in 1941.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt stood at a podium on the grounds of his family home in Hyde Park and dedicated the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library on June 30, 1941. He was still in office at the time, having won re-election to an unprecedented third (and eventually fourth) term seven months previously. Roosevelt clearly believed that libraries and archives were themselves exercises in democracy in these years when fascism was spreading around the world. Ever the optimist even as World War Two raged in Europe and the Pacific, Roosevelt declared “It seems to me that the dedication of a library is in itself an act of faith. To bring together the records of the past and to house them in buildings where they will be preserved for the use of men and women in the future, a Nation must believe in three things. It must believe in the past. It must believe in the future. It must, above all, believe in the capacity of its own people so to learn from the past that they can gain in judgment in creating their own future.” Then he quipped to the two thousand gathered about this being their one chance to see the place for free.
Roosevelt had been an unrepentant collector since his earliest boyhood days, with wide-ranging interests especially in naval history, models ships, taxidermy, philately, books on local history, political ephemera, and—probably above all—anything related to the Roosevelt clan itself. His eight-years-and-counting administration had already produced reams of material via the myriad alphabet soup New Deal agencies that had put millions of Americans to work during the Great Depression. It was becoming increasingly obvious in that Summer of 1941 that the United States would likely become entangled in the Second World War; as Roosevelt well understood, that would mean even more documents for the historical record.
Presidential repositories of various incarnations were not entirely new. George Washington had taken his papers with him back to Mount Vernon after his administration for organization. Rutherford B. Hayes, Herbert Hoover, and even Warren G. Harding had versions of them. Nora E. Cordingley (featured in a March 2018 Women of Library History post) was a librarian at Roosevelt House, essentially a de facto presidential library opened in 1923 at Theodore Roosevelt’s birthplace on Manhattan’s East 20th Street whose papers and other materials eventually moved to Harvard University’s Houghton and Widener Libraries. What was new about Franklin Roosevelt’s creation was its codification of what is today’s presidential library system. Roosevelt convened a committee of professional historians for advice and consultation, raised the private funds necessary to build the library and museum, urged Congress to pass the enabling legislation, involved leading archive and library authorities, and ultimately deeded the site to the American people via the National Archives, which itself he had signed into being in 1934.
The academic advisors, archivists, and library professionals at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library were all important, indeed crucial, to the professionalization and growth of both the Roosevelt site and what would become the National Archives and Records Administration’s Office of Presidential Libraries. However, Roosevelt understood in those early that he also needed someone within his museum and library who knew him deeply and understood the nuances of his life and long career. That is why he turned to Ms. Suckley, securing her a position as junior archivist in September 1941 just months after the opening. The library was very much a working place for the president, who kept an office there, where—unbeknownst to museum-goers on the other side of the wall—he might be going through papers with Daisy, entertaining dignitaries while she looked on, or even making decisions of consequence to the war. Ms. Suckley worked conscientiously, even lovingly, in the presidential library, going through boxes of photographs and identifying individuals, providing dates and place names that only she would know, filling in gaps in the historical record, sorting papers, and serving in ways only an intimate could. The work only expanded after President Roosevelt died and associates like Felix Frankfurter and others donated all or some of their own papers. The work also became more institutionalized and codified. Other Roosevelt aides took on increasingly important roles after the president’s death in 1945. More series of papers became available to scholars in the 1950s and 60s as the Roosevelt Era receded from current events into history. Through it all Daisy Suckley continued on for nearly two more decades until her retirement in 1963.
Margaret “Daisy” Suckley lived for twenty-eight more years after her retirement, turning her attention to the preservation of her ancestral home there on the Hudson but never forgetting Franklin. In those later years when reporters, historians, and the just plain curious curious showed up at Wilderstein and inevitably asked if there was any more to tell about her friendship with Franklin Roosevelt she always gave a wry smile and demure “No, of course there isn’t.” After her death at the age of ninety-nine in June 1991 however a trove of letters and diaries was found in an old suitcase hidden under her bed there at Wilderstein. A leading Roosevelt scholar edited and published a significant portion of the journals and correspondence in 1995 to great public interest. While it is still unclear if there was every any romantic involvement between Franklin and Daisy—as some have speculated for decades—the letters do provide a deeper, more nuanced portrayal of their relationship and show just how close the two were. Franklin Delano Roosevelt may have been The Sphinx to many, hiding his feelings behind a veneer of affability and bonhomie. To his old neighbor, distant cousin, discreet friend, loyal aid, and steadfast curator Margaret Suckley, he showed the truer, more vulnerable side of himself.
Ms. Suckley later in life at Wilderstein, 1988. (Photo: FDR Presidential Library & Museum)
Further reading:
Hufbauer, Benjamin. “The Roosevelt Presidential Library: A Shift in Commemoration.” American Studies, vol. 42, no. 3, Fall 2001, pp. 173–193.
Koch, Cynthia M. and Lynn A. Bassanese. “Roosevelt and His Library, Parts 1 & 2.” Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives and Records Administration, vol. 33, no. 2, Summer 2001, Web.
McCoy, Donald R. “The Beginnings of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library,” Prologue: The Journal of the National Archives, vol. 7, no. 3, Fall 1975, pp. 137-150.
Persico, Joseph E. Franklin & Lucy: President Roosevelt, Mrs. Rutherford, and the Other Remarkable Women in His Life. Random House, 2008.
Ward, Geoffrey C. Closest Companion: The Unknown Story of the Intimate Friendship between Franklin Roosevelt and Margaret Suckley. Houghton Mifflin, 1995.
Today’s post, entitled “Camilla Leach: A sophisticated spitfire (1835-1930)”, comes from Paula Seeger, Design Library, University of Oregon, with significant contributions from Ed Teague, Retired Director of Branch Libraries, University of Oregon. All photos are courtesy of University of Oregon Libraries.
Summary
Ultimately known for her role as the founding librarian-manager of the Design (formerly Architecture and Allied Arts) Library at the University of Oregon, Miss Camilla Leach left a legacy of caring for student success and ambition throughout her long career. Only in the last third of her life did she find a role in the library, with the majority of her time spent in the classroom or dormitory, supervising and guiding the lives of young adults, especially girls. Miss Leach constantly updated her position during a long career trajectory, never losing her love of the arts and French culture and design. She travelled to Paris in her 30s, was committed to the plight of French orphans during WWI, and translated Auguste Racinet’s L’Ornement Polychrome (Paris, 1869-73) for the benefit of the students of the University of Oregon. This fascination with French culture and artistry bestowed an air of sophistication to Miss Leach. Combined with her “go-getter” determination that impressed the administration and faculty, Miss Leach’s keen observational skills and broad knowledge let her anticipate the needs and interests of her loyal colleagues and patrons. This unique mix allowed Miss Leach to win over those who doubted she could take an active role in organizing a new library and departmental administration office at the age of 79. Even though she “retired” twice from the libraries at the University, Miss Leach remained active in the community and social circles, giving talks on the relation of art to library work to civic groups into her 90s. Piecing together her history, as well as reflecting on her legacy, is a worthy exercise that re-emphasizes a lifelong commitment to arts education and wisdom born from the strength of longevity.
Background and Early Career
Miss Leach’s history has been difficult to completely trace. We assume certain facets of her life and try to fill the gaps within her story for which we do not yet have evidence, such as Miss Leach’s education and much of her early life. While we know she was born in Rochester, New York in 1835, and there are some accounts of her attending East Coast schools, we next find definitive mention of her in 1855. While still living at home in New York, her profession was listed as “teacher” at age 19 in the New York state census of 1855, indicating she began her teaching career early. Using broad searches of historical newspapers, we can see that she travelled south and west, taking a position at a teaching college in 1859. Her title was Governess and assistant teacher of the “English branches” at East Alabama Female College (also called “Tuskegee Female College” at its founding in 1854, later “Huntingdon College” after the institution moved to Montgomery). By 1865, she arrived in Chicago and was granted a teaching certificate to teach at a number of public schools including Skinner school and the main Chicago High School. It is during this time Miss Leach was elected to be “Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature” at the high school and a wage dispute was noted (1870):
Miss Camilla Leach was recently elected professor of English literature in the Chicago high school, but the board of education refuses to pay her over $1000 for work for which her male predecessor received $2,200.1
It is unknown whether this dispute led to her resignation, but shortly after, in 1871, Miss Leach applied for a passport to travel to Europe to study art and visited Paris in 1871-72, becoming well-versed in French art and architecture. After Europe, she returned to a position as a high school teacher in St. Louis in 1872-73, and was announced as a teacher at the Washington school for Minneapolis Public Schools in 1878. Another newspaper account in August 1878 mentioned that she was an art instructor in a Placerville, CA, ladies’ seminary and private school (TAE Academy). Having settled in Oakland, CA, from 1879-89, Miss Leach taught drawing and French at the Snell Seminary, a “boarding and day school for girls” that operated from 1878-1912. While at the Snell Seminary, Miss Leach perhaps learned more about opportunities that could be found in Oregon. During her tenure, one of the Seminary’s founders, Dr. Margaret Snell, began an affiliation with Oregon State University (then called the Corvallis College and the State Agricultural College of Oregon) through a Corvallis resident who happened to be staying in the Oakland area caring for an ailing relative. Dr. Snell went on to found the department of “Household Economy and Hygiene in the Far West,” the first in the western U.S. and went on to a great legacy at Oregon State.3
Perhaps also influenced by Dr. Snell’s continuing education in the East, Miss Leach attended Bryn Mawr with “Hearer” status in 1889-902 and it is assumed that this is where she completed her education about “library methods”. Returning to California, Miss Leach was introduced as Mistress of Roble Hall, a ladies’ dormitory at Stanford University in 1891, the first year Stanford started enrolling students. After administrative and facility restructuring, she was let go from Stanford in 1892, heading north to Portland, OR.
Miss Leach stayed five years in Portland working as a private tutor and head of a private school, perhaps of her own creation, within a wealthy businessman’s household. These many years spent as an educator, administrator, and overall caregiver of young student lives had now prepared Miss Leach for a more significant career transition as she was recruited by the University of Oregon in 1897 to become their first dual registrar-University librarian, beginning her new role in libraries. It is unknown what motivated this career change for Miss Leach at about age 60–or age 50: In subsequent census records Miss Leach somehow gets ten years younger.
University of Oregon Career
In 1897, the University of Oregon in Eugene recruited Miss Leach to be the school’s first registrar while also serving as the University’s librarian in a combined position. The dual job was split in 1899, when Miss Leach became “only” the University librarian and, later, the school’s first art librarian. She contributed to the school’s publications, offering a review of Bryn Mawr and several original pieces of poetry for the University’s yearbook and monthly journals. The University originally had a small library collection, based mainly upon generous donations from professors before state allocations were negotiated, and the collection was relocated several times before the first purpose-built library opened in 1906. In 1912, Miss Leach retired from her library position, but continued to teach in the art school as a drawing instructor and teacher of art history, which she continued throughout her next role. At the time of her “retirement” as a reference librarian from the main library, the local newspaper told of her reputation:
Miss Leach is perhaps better known than any other one character upon the Oregon campus during this time. She knew personally every student from freshman to senior, and has hundreds of sincere friends among the Oregon graduates all over the state.4
Resistant to fully retiring, and beloved by faculty and students, Miss Leach continued to work in the new main library until 1914 when, at the age of 79 years, she became the founding librarian and administrative assistant at the new School of Architecture and Allied Arts. Her transfer to the new location was met with doubt by the founding Dean of the school, Ellis F. Lawrence, who was resistant to hiring a 79-year-old to the post. He expressed his doubts to the University President, and was reassured that Miss Leach could hold her own and make worthy contributions. Dean Lawrence described his first meeting with her as particularly memorable:
When I [met] her at the first staff conference I was very conscious that there was a divine fire in the proud little figure before me. It was shining through the brightest pair of the darkest eyes I have ever felt boring into my soul. After listening to my outline of procedure and objectives, Miss Camilla leaned over the table and in the snappy, crisp utterance I was later to know so well, she said, “Sir, I was teaching art before you were born.” If she had said ‘thirty years before you were born’, I feel sure she would have been within the truth. Naturally I thought – here is a Tartar to deal with, and anticipated plenty of excitement. Little did I know how deliciously that excitement was to be; how surprising and invigorating it could be! Miss Camilla was placed in charge of the Art Library. Before I knew it she had that department functioning more efficiently than I had thought possible, even in my fondest dreams. But her work did not stop there. She became our matriarch, tradition builder, exemplar of manners, personnel officer – and very much in evidence as advisor to the Dean.5
Indeed, students took to calling her the “Mother of Our Library” and Aunt Psyche (Pidgy), a
[G]uiding spirit since its inception….All of us have been visited by her kindly interest, – the serious have been led to that exact niche where Volume X lies; the frivolous (and everyone knows that some of us often go to the library on missions quite foreign to study), – we have been ushered into her acquaintance by the sharp tap of her pencil or by the censure of her warning nod. But however that may be, each of us, as we step out into the world, is to carry a pleasant recollection of Miss Camilla Leach.6
Another story of Miss Leach helping students, while displaying her expertise in French architecture, is noted in the Eugene Guard newspaper from Saturday, April 20, 1918: A girl on campus had a friend stationed in France, but the US military would not reveal the location. The girl’s friend sent her a photo with a cathedral in the background. The girl didn’t recognize it but another friend suggested she take it to Miss Leach, the art librarian. Sure enough, Miss Leach immediately identified the cathedral and the girl was able to locate her military friend.7
In addition to her teaching, library, and administrative duties, Miss Leach consulted with library colleagues and was in attendance at the earliest foundational meetings of the Oregon Library Association (1904). Her attendance at local arts events is well-documented in the local newspapers, as are the frequent talks she would give to local civic organizations (one titled “The Relation of Art to Library Work”), and her reputation as a fine sketch and free-hand artist was known throughout the Northwest.
Philosophy of Academic Rigor and Student Advocacy
Miss Leach had a sense of humor that she rarely indulged, but there were certain topics that were sure to raise her ire. In one instance, as regaled by Dean Lawrence in his memorial writing, a painting professor teaching Civilization and Art Epochs was discussing symbolism with his class. It was reported that he used the example of the serpent, once a symbol of wisdom, but over the years mixed together with many ingredients and encased in a skin, much like a sausage. This description, when relayed to an incensed Miss Leach, caused her to question why culture and wisdom should be treated with levity. She often wondered why artists and architects could not have higher academic standards. Dean Lawrence described her struggle with the habits of scholarship:
Knowledge was to her the basis of her philosophy and conduct, though she little knew how much her intuitions and her fine intellectual common-sense tempered that knowledge. … [T]he idiosyncrasies of the creative artists often irked her. Yet she came to participate valiantly in the methods of the School which called for the freedom necessary to bring out the creative urge in each student.8
To demonstrate how Miss Leach advocated for her students, Dean Lawrence told of a new student who worked extremely hard and produced decent results for one who had no artistic background, which thrilled Miss Leach. However, after flunking out at the end of the term, causing the student to leave without even a good-bye, Miss Leach arrived at the Dean’s office, furious at a system that would let go of a potential genius and lobbied on his behalf. She urged the Dean to reconsider the student’s case and bring it before the Faculty. Together they won the case and the student was reinstated and went on to “make good,” much to the satisfaction of Miss Leach.
Legacy
Miss Leach completed a handwritten history of the University of Oregon in 1900, likely one of the first written of the 24-year old institution, with a volume still found in the library’s Special Collections and University Archives department. During her time at UO, Miss Leach, along with other library and University staff, were interested in caring for French children affected by the war, particularly in 1919. This seems entirely appropriate and in line with Miss Leach’s fascination with French culture and arts.
Camilla Leach finally truly retired in 1924, primarily due to declining health after a fall, and losing her eyesight. She moved back east and died in Jonesville, Michigan (near Battle Creek) in 1930, while staying with a relative. Dean Lawrence wrote a tribute to Miss Leach after her death, describing her ultimately as an “exquisite cameo who was classic in her perfection.” He noted that she was in the process of translating Auguste Racinet’s L’Ornement Polychrome (Paris, 1869-73) for the benefit of the students. The Racinet volume can still be found among the collections of today’s Design Library, which in 1992 was the focus of an expansion of Lawrence Hall, the home of the College of Design.
There are several other books still containing the bookplates indicating they were purchased with the fund set up for the “Camilla Leach Collection of Art Books,” a special collection in the University Library that remained well after Miss Leach’s death. The fund, set up in 1923, was described as a perpetual fund designed for purchasing art books from the interest earned each year. Mrs. Henry Villard, widow of one of the pioneer founders of the University, donated and suggested that a portion of the yearly endowment to the libraries from the Villard gift should be set aside to build up the Leach fund. There are several newspaper accounts of faculty members, and their families, donating books and financial support to the fund. In addition to books purchased, over the years as Miss Leach’s history became better known, library staff have unofficially named a two-story reading room the “Camilla Leach Room” in her honor. The room enables study and research and is used to present selections from the library’s collection of artist’s books, rare books, and other artifacts.
Perhaps the most touching of Miss Leach’s legacy is how she influenced her initial detractors. Dean Lawrence fancied himself a bit of a creative writer, and one can find several complete and incomplete short stories and novella manuscripts among his personal writings in the archives of the University of Oregon Libraries. In addition to the 6-page memorial tribute that Lawrence penned that was devoted to Miss Leach (excerpted above), one can also read an incomplete 60-page murder-mystery novella. The protagonist who is able to solve the case faster than the sheriff? A Miss Marple-like character named “Miss Camilla Chaffin” described as wearing a Paisley shawl, lace collar, and a lavender ribbon in her hair. She was the “oldest of the old-timers” and was friendly with the “dear old doddering Dean.”9
As we piece together Miss Leach’s legacy, her strength is revealed in her loyal determination to provide the best resources and environment for students in order to nurture their creativity and scholarly output. Her ability to expose interests, and proactively anticipate the materials needed for letting those interests flourish, were among her special gifts to the students she served and the colleagues she assisted. Her legacy continues today in the resources and services that are at the forefront of today’s Design Library.
4 “Veteran U.-O. Librarian Retires with Honor,” Oregon Daily Journal, October 4, 1912.
5 Ellis F. Lawrence, “Miss Camilla – A Portrait” (Eugene, Ore., 1930), in Ellis Fuller Lawrence papers, Ax 056, Box 13, Special Collections and University Archive of the University of Oregon Libraries, Eugene, 2.
6“Miss Camilla Leach,” in Oregana, 1912 vol., 23.
7“Censor Sleeps on Job,” Eugene Guard, April 20, 1918, 4.
8Ellis F. Lawrence, “Miss Camilla – A Portrait” (Eugene, Ore., 1930), in Ellis Fuller Lawrence papers, Ax 056, Box 13, Special Collections and University Archive of the University of Oregon Libraries, Eugene, 4-5.
9 Ellis F. Lawrence, “The Red Tide,” in Ellis Fuller Lawrence papers, Special Collections and University Archive of the University of Oregon Libraries, Eugene, also in Harmony in diversity : the architecture and teaching of Ellis F. Lawrence, edited by Michael Shellenbarger, Eugene, Or. : Museum of Art and the Historic Preservation Program, School of Architecture and Allied Arts, University of Oregon, 1989.
Other sources consulted
● 1903 Webfoot (University of Oregon Yearbook)
● Bishop’s Oakland Directory for 1880-81 “Containing a business directory, street guide, record of the city government, its institutions, etc.” (varies). “Also a directory of the town of Alameda” (issues for <1880-81-> also include Berkeley). Compiled by D.M. Bishop & Co. Description based on: 1876-7. Published: San Francisco : Directory Pub, Co., <1880-> Open Library OL25463540M. Internet Archive bishopsoaklanddi187778dmbi. LC Control Number 11012620. https://archive.org/details/bishopsoaklanddi188081dmbi (Listed as teacher at Snell’s Seminary)
● “Board of Education,” Chicago Tribune, October 9, 1865, 4.
● “Board of Education,” Minneapolis Tribune, June 22, 1878, 4.
● “East Alabama Female College,” South Western Baptist, November 17, 1859, 3.
● “General Register of the Officers and Alumni 1873-1907,” vol. 5, no. 4, University of Oregon Bulletin (Eugene, Ore.: University of Oregon, 1908), http://hdl.handle.net/1794/11152.
● “Gift of $100 Received,” Eugene Guard, November 6, 1924, 12.
● Henry D. Sheldon, The University of Oregon Library 1882-1942, Studies in Bibliography, No. 1 (Eugene, Ore.: University of Oregon, 1942), http://hdl.handle.net/1794/23064.
● “TAE Academy,” Placerville Mountain Democrat, August 10, 1878, n.p.
● “United States Census, 1900,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MSDX-B6R : accessed 15 April 2018), Camilla Leach in household of Mary E Cox, South Eugene Precincts 1 and 2 Eugene city, Lane, Oregon, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) 112, sheet 8A, family 162, NARA microfilm publication T623 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1972.); FHL microfilm 1,241,348. (age = ten years younger)
● “Untitled News Piece,” Eugene Guard, May 1, 1928, 6. – Talk “Relation of Art to Library Work”
Today’s post was submitted by Bel Outwater, Library Manager at the Auburn Public Library in Auburn, Georgia. She says “My library would not exist without [Miriam Wood’s] efforts, and I cannot count the number of lives she has touched.”The image above shows Miriam Wood sitting in the current Auburn Library.
Miriam Louise Wood was born July 30, 1930 to Rainey and Daisy Wood in Auburn, Georgia. She was the only girl with three brothers. She loved to read, and would sit for hours on the steps of the old Auburn School in the summer, waiting for the bookmobile lady in her big Buick to come by and check out books to Auburn’s children.
This small child’s love of books would grow into a big dream of access to books for all of Auburn. In 1991, Miriam and local Reverend Joan Biles started a book depository with Piedmont Regional Library System. It had a $100 annual budget and was located in a trailer behind the Methodist Church (now the Seventh Day Adventist Church). It quickly outgrew the space and a new location was sought. In 1995 it was moved into a small house without heat or air conditioning. Local support and continued growth of the library enabled a new location in 1997 into Auburn’s former post office building, the 1,134 square foot J.D. Withers Building. It received full library service status in 1999, and its first four computers through the Gates Foundation in 2000. 2001 began the process of fundraising for a new, dedicated library building that was brought to fruition in 2007. The Auburn Public Library is a beautiful 6,100 square foot building located in downtown Auburn next to the children’s park. Recognizing that this building would not exist without the dream and passion of Miriam Wood, her likeness is engraved on a plaque on the outside of the building.
In addition to founding the library, Miriam helped create the Auburn Museum. She was an amateur historian, a member of the Barrow County Historical Society, and one of the last members of the original Auburn Township. She taught in Dacula, Georgia for many years. On May 2, 2015, Auburn’s Mayor Linda Blechinger declared that day “Miriam Wood Day” at the city’s annual “History and Heroes” festival, recognizing Miriam’s role as both historian and hero. She passed away in June 2018.
The results of her efforts are reflected in users of the library and in the hearts of those fortunate enough to have worked side by side with her. Miriam Wood was a fierce champion of literacy and a passionate historian. She was a wonderful co-worker and an even better friend. The world is a little less bright without her light shining, but her dream lives on.
These days we take e-mail and electronic lists for granted, but imagine a world where there is no e-mail or exchange of information like we have now? That was the world for Humanities Librarian María Teresa Márquez at the University of New Mexico (UNM) Zimmerman Library and creator of CHICLE, the first Chicana/o electronic mailing list created in 1991, to focus on Latino literature and later on the social sciences. [1] Other Chicano/Latino listservs include Roberto Vásquez’s Lared Latina of the Intermountain Southwest (Lared-L)[2] created in 1996, and Roberto Calderon’s Historia-L,created in March 2003. [3] These electronic lists were influential in expanding communication and opportunities among Chicanas/os. CHICLE, nevertheless, deserves wider recognition as a pioneering effort whose importance has been overlooked.
In many instances the Internet revolution was shepherded by librarians in their institutions. Libraries and librarians were early adopters of this new technology. Márquez used computers and e-mail in her work in the Government Information Department at UNM. However, it was in the Library and Information Science Program at California State University, Fullerton, where she first learned about and used computers in a federally-funded program in the 1970s that sought to increase the number of Mexican American librarians. At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Márquez earned a Certificate of Advanced Study in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, where she learned more about computers and databases.
In April 1991, Márquez attended the Nineteenth Annual Conference (Los Dos Méxicos) of the National Association of [Chicana and ] Chicano Studies (NACS) in Hermosillo, Sonora, México. One of the panels, moderated by Professor Francisco Lomelí, University of California, Santa Barbara, presented papers on “Literatura Chicana.” While discussing the topic, scholars raised problems encountered in communicating with each other and in sharing information on new publications and current research. Márquez volunteered to create a listserv or electronic mailing list and explained how it could be of use in keeping scholars informed. At UNM, she developed the list and Professor Erlinda V. Gonzales-Berry, then a faculty member in the UNM Spanish Department, coined its name-CHICLE (which translates into gum in Spanish). CHICLE stood for Chicana/Chicano Literature Exchange.
According to Márquez, most faculty members were not willing to join CHICLE, citing no experience with computers nor did they wish to consider its potential use in academic work. Yet, Márquez launched CHICLE with eight subscribers. She attended numerous academic conferences to distribute fliers and talk to people about the list and recruit subscribers. Furthermore, she attempted to impress upon her listeners the need to be at the forefront of technology, but Márquez said she had few takers. Believing in the importance of the list and in this new form of communication, she persevered and she states: “One day, all of a sudden, membership went up to 800!” As more institutions and faculty members started using computers, the list exploded in the number of subscribers.
The idea for the list evolved from Márquez’s work in a library setting that was used to basicallycommunicating internally. At first Márquez sent out all of the information on the list because she had most of it. She would use librarian’s tools and lists of new books, information of upcoming conferences, calls for papers, and articles that would be of interest, but she received very little in return. The list was limited to her contributions in its early years. Later, as the number of subscribers in the social sciences increased the list moved away from literature. Numerous topics were discussed over the list’s ten–year history (1991-2001), but eventually its popularity led to its demise. Subscribers often stated that the list contained too much information and was time consuming.
Among the active subscribers to CHICLE wasarchivist Dorinda Moreno, [4] who later went on to work with Laredas well as withDr. Robert Calderón‘sHistoria-L.Moreno contributed history-related information. In contrast to Márquez’s effort, Calderón changed his list to a closed list with a finite number of subscribers where he posted items of interest to the Chicano/a academic community, as opposed to CHICLE which was an open forum. [5] Initially CHICLE was designed as an open forum to encourage broad participation. Dr. Tey Mariana Nunn, now Director and Chief Curator of the Art Museum and Visual Arts Program at the National Hispanic Cultural Center Art Museum in Albuquerque, played a large role in promoting the list in its early days. Nunn was a graduate work-study student. Additionally, Renee Stephens, now at San Francisco State University, then a graduate work-study student at UNM, was also editor for the list, a task inherited from Janice Gould. All these women were instrumental in the success of CHICLE. Eventually, the expansion of the Internet eclipsed Chicana/o listservs.
When CHICLE began, Márquez acted as the sole moderator, but over time, as it gained popularity, she trained students to run it. The popular list existed until her funding to hire work-study students ran out. Her institution was reluctant to provide further support. CHICLE was not considered an appropriate academic part of Márquez’s professional responsibilities. Management of the list competed with duties at the library and as subscriptions grew, it became overwhelming and difficult. Márquez who often managed the list on her own time, stated she would have continued the list but that itwould have required more energy than she was willing to invest. When Márquez decided it was time to move on and discontinue the list, she approached the UNM Technical Center to store the CHICLE files. The Center claimed it did not have sufficient storage space for her files. As news of CHICLE’s imminent shutdown spread, people volunteered to keep the list going but were deterred by the amount of work entailed.
Dr. Diana I. Rios, who has a joint appointment in the Department of Communication and El Instituto at the University of Connecticut among others, made attempts to create an archive of CHICLE. She made copies of conversations via cut and paste. There were attempts to incorporate CHICLE into another list but Ríos did not want that to happen. Eventually, Latino literary blogs such as Pluma Fronteriza [6] and La Bloga [7] emerged to continue where CHICLE left off.
After CHICLE, Márquez took her energy and enthusiasm in supporting Latina/o students and created a program called CHIPOTLE. [8] She used CHIPOTLE to familiarize Chicana/o rural students with the academic environment and to reach out to surrounding communities. Via grant and affiliated department funded sponsorship, Márquez would take posters and boxes of books by Chicana/Chicano writers to give to students when she visited Hispanic-dominate schools. As part of CHIPOTLE, she created a forum to bring Latina/o speakers into the library and encouraged Latina/o students to utilize the research resources available to them. She directed two programs funded by Rudolfo Anaya: Premío AztlánandCritica Nueva.Premío Aztlán recognized emerging Chicana/owriters and Critica Nueva was an award honoring the foremost scholars who produced a body of literary criticism based on Chicana/o literature. For many years, Márquez was the only Latina librarian at the University of New Mexico University Libraries. Presently, she is an Associate Professor Emerita. No Latina/o librarians have been hired since her retirement.
In the era of search engines, web browsers, blogs, wiki’s, intranets, and social media, it is important to recognize the efforts of a pioneering Chicana librarian and a pioneering electronic list that was a unique cultural creation. It was given life by so many who read it, posted on it, and worked on it. CHICLE brought many voices together and established a foundation for the future. As Márquez stated, “CHICLE was the catalyst for many things.” [9]
Notes
[1] María Teresa Márquez, interview by the author, Albuquerque, April 28, 2007.
[2]Lared Latina of the Intermountain Southwest, was established in the Spring of 1996 by Roberto Vásquez, as a World Wide Web Forum, for the purpose of disseminating socio-political, cultural, educational, and economic information about Latinos in the Albuquerque/Santa Fe Metro area and the Intermountain Region which includes Metropolitan Areas such as the Salt Lake City/Ogden region, Denver, Phoenix, Tucson, Boise, Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada, accessed January 30, 2014: http://www.lared-latina.com/bio.html.
[3] Dr. Roberto R. Calderón, interview by the author, College Station, Texas, December 20, 2007. Historia-l, focused on Chicano/a history, started as “96SERADC” with 200 subscribers in May 1996 and continued through October 1997. Originally housed at the University of Washington, it helped mobilize the first Immigrant Rights March on Washington, D.C., held on Saturday, October 12, 1996. The march had upwards of 50,000 participants, half of whom were Latina/o college students from across the country. The listserv list then changed venues and was housed at the University of California at Riverside becoming “2000SERADC,” from November 1997 through August 1999, at which point the listserv list was discontinued. This twice-named listserv list project lasted three-and-a-half-years.
[4] Dorinda Moreno, Chicano/native Apache (Mother, Grandmother, Great Grandmother) has worked bridging Elders, Women of Color, Inter-generational networks and alliances, with a focus on non-racist, non-sexist (LGBT community), non-toxic–Chicano/a, Mexicano/a, Latino/a, Indigenous communities, projects and networks that give voice to under-represented groups and enable feminist empowerment through social change networks and innovations. As an early Web pioneer and archivist, she has been actively using the Internet since 1973.
[5] Calderón interview.
[6] Pluma Fronteriza began as a printed newsletter, then became a blog and currently has a companion site on Facebook: Accessed February 8, 2014: http://plumafronteriza.blogspot.com/
[7]La Bloga hosts various bloggers who write on Latino/a literature. Accessed February 8, 2014: http://labloga.blogspot.com/
[8] According to the Memidex Online Dictionary and Thesaurus, Chipotle comes from the Nahuatl word chilpoctli meaning “smoked chili pepper” is a smoke-dried jalapeño, accessed January 30, 2014, http://www.memidex.com/chipotles.
[9] Márquez interview.
Miguel Juárez is a faculty member in the Department of History at the University of Texas in El Paso (UTEP), where he earned a doctorate in Borderlands History. He has a Masters in Library Science (MLS) degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo and a Masters of Arts (MA) in Border History from UTEP. In 1997, he published the book: Colors on Desert Walls: the Murals of El Paso (Texas Western Press). Miguel has curated numerous exhibits, as well as written articles in academic journals, newsletters, and newspapers focusing on librarianship, archives, and the cultural arts. From 1998 to 2008, Miguel worked as an academic librarian at the following institutions and centers: State University of New York at Buffalo; Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona; Texas A&M in College Station, TX; and the Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC) at UCLA. He is also co-editor with Rebecca Hankins of the upcoming book Where Are All the Librarians of Color? The Experiences of People of Color in Academia,part of the Series on Critical Multiculturalism in Information Studies of Litwin Books. The author would like to thank María Teresa Márquez, Dr. Roberto Calderón, Dorinda Moreno, Dr. Tey Mariana Nunn, Renee Stephens, Rebecca Hankins and Dr. Diana Ríos for making suggestions and recommendations for this article. This work is part of a larger body of research on Chicana/o electronic and digital projects during the advent of the Internet.
Welcome to another year of Women of Library History posts! Our first post will go up tomorrow (March 1st), and then we will have a post scheduled for every other Wednesday. Our goal for 2019 is to keep posts going all year, rather than only posting in March.
Submissions are still being accepted for 2019–please see our Call for Submissions for details.
2. We have a list of potential subjects who have been suggested by readers or located in the history of the Feminist Task Force newsletter. If you’re interested in doing some research and writing a post (or multiple posts) from this list, please e-mail Katelyn at womenoflibraryhistory at gmail.
3. Encourage a friend or colleague to write a post for us!
This year, we are planning to accept & run posts throughout the year, rather than focusing only in March. However, we definitely need some posts to get going in March–if you need a deadline to motivate you, let me suggest February 11th (next Monday)!
For over forty years Dr. Barbara Williams Jenkins greatly contributed to the library profession on a local, regional and national level. Even after retiring, she continues to contribute to her beloved profession.
Barbara was born in Union, South Carolina but grew up in Orangeburg, South Carolina, where she received her high school diploma from Wilkinson High School. She graduated from Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina, with a B.A. degree and earned a MSLS from the University of Illinois, Urbana, IL. Her post-Master’s work included advance study at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Atlanta University and Clemson University. These subsequent educational experiences were followed by her studying and receiving her Ph. D. in Library and Information Sciences from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick in 1980.
Her professional career began in her hometown of Orangeburg as a Reserve and Circulation Librarian at South Carolina State in 1956. After serving in this role for two years, she became the Reference and Documents Librarian. This was followed by her becoming Library Director at South Carolina State in 1962 where she served until 1987. In 1987 she was promoted to Dean of Library and Information Services at South Carolina State. She served as Dean until her retirement in 1997.
During her tenure at South Carolina State (now known as South Carolina State University), Barbara served with distinction in all roles. At the only public supported Historically Black College and University in South Carolina, Barbara worked diligently to provide leadership on the campus, in the state and beyond. She was an advocate for the library program.
Some of the leadership roles that she assumed included the following: the first African American President of the South Carolina Library Association 1986-1987; Southeastern Library Association- College Section Director 1978 – 1980; American Library Association Council 1978-1982; Association of National Agricultural Library, Inc. 1890 Land -Grant Library Directors’ Association Tuskegee University (President 1979-85); American Library Association Black Caucus – Chairperson 1984-85, Southeastern Library Network ( SOLINET) - Board of Directors 1989-92; and South Carolina Governor’s Conference on Library and Information Services (1978 – 1979) and National Endowment for the Humanities – Evaluator – 1979. In 1969 she served as a Library Evaluator – Institutional Self- Study for the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS). She continued to serve in this capacity until her retirement in 1997. She also served on the College Consulting Network in 1991 and served until retirement.
Because of her love of African American history and her passion for preserving that history, she was a member of the African-American Heritage Council and the Palmetto Trust for Historic Preservation. As a collector of African American history and a researcher, she played a significant role in the establishment of the institution’s historical collection. Her work extended beyond campus by her affiliation with the South Carolina Archives & History Commission. She was instrumental in locating and identifying campus historical sites and buildings in Orangeburg along with providing training sessions on how to preserve this history. Her actions led to her becoming a charter member of the South Carolina African American Heritage Commission.
For her service to the campus community and beyond, she received many accolades and awards during her career. She received the “Boss of the Year Award” in 1980 from the Orangeburg Chapter of the Professional Secretaries International; 1890 Land-Grant Director’s Association Award 1978-84; President’s Award, South Carolina Library Association, 1987; South Carolina State College Distinguished Service Award, 1991; SOLINET Board of Directors Service Award, 1992 and the college’s First President’s Service Award in 1997. Additionally, on February 27,2000 at the Founders’ Day program, Dr. Leroy Davis, President of South Carolina State University bestowed upon Dr. Jenkins the first emeritus award.
As a leader and advocate for the profession, Dr. Jenkins worked diligently to share and instill these values with her staff and others in the profession. She served as a role model for many librarians.
In addition to a very active professional life, she also held memberships in many civil and social organizations including Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc. (Past Regional Director for the South Atlantic Region). She is also a member of the Williams Chapel AME Church.
She was married to the late Robert A. Jenkins and they had two children and five grandchildren. As a retiree she continues to devote her time to African American and local history. She also loves to talk about the library profession and continues to serve as a role model for librarians and aspiring librarians.
“Retirement: A New Beginning Reflections of Dr. Barbara W. Jenkins and Mrs. Eartha J. Corbett”, June 7, 1997 Kirkland W. Green Student Center, South Carolina State University.
Our post today comes from Melissa Freiley, an LIS student at the University of North Texas and the library cataloging technician at Denton (TX) Indepedent School District.
“I get the biggest satisfaction from teaching,” Dr. Lois Mai Chan declared when asked about her greatest achievement in this 2014 video created by the Chinese American Librarians Association (CALA). From 1970 until 2011, Chan influenced hundreds of future catalogers as she taught cataloging at the University of Kentucky (UK) School of Library and Information Science in Lexington. But this wasn’t all she did.
Born on July 30, 1934, in Taiwan, Chan studied foreign languages at National Taiwan University and went on to earn a Master of Arts at Florida State University. In 1966, Chan began working at UK as a serials cataloger. She joined the faculty of the then-UK College of Library Science in 1970, and in 1980 became a full professor after obtaining her Ph.D. in comparative literature at UK.
Dr. Chan had a deep impact on cataloging and classification. Not only did she teach hundreds of future librarians during her forty-five years at UK, but she also wrote over sixty research articles and published over twenty books throughout her career, including the popular textbook Cataloging and Classification: An Introduction, now in its fourth edition. In 1989 she earned the Margaret Mann Citation, “the highest honor in cataloging bestowed by the American Library Association,” which has been given annually since 1951. [We just published a post about Margaret Mann, for whom the citation is named, earlier this month! –ed.] CALA awarded her the CALA Distinguished Service Award in 1992 for outstanding leadership and achievement in library science at the national and/or international level. In 2006 she received the Beta Phi Mu Award for her distinguished service in library education. During her career, she also served as a consultant to the Library of Congress and OCLC’s Faceted Application of Subject Terminology project.
Dr. Chan died on August 20, 2014, but her legacy lives on through the newly-created Lois Mai Chan Professional Development Grant, established by the Cataloging and Metadata Management Section (CaMMS) of the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) in 2017. The grant seeks to assist library workers from under-represented groups who are new to the metadata field in attending the American Library Association Annual Conference. The UK Lois Mai Chan Enrichment Fund also seeks to honor Chan’s legacy by providing assistance to UK students studying library science.
Dr. Chan may have believed that luck was the reason for her success, but her hard work and passion for library science and teaching are undeniable and inspiring.
This post was written by Polly Thistlethwaite, Chief Librarian, The Graduate Center, City University of New York. The photo above, taken by Liz Snyder in 2013, shows BC Sellen and Polly Thistlethwaite in New Orleans.
Betty-Carol “BC” Sellen was born 1934 in Seattle, WA. She is a librarian and a collector of American folk and outsider art and author of several resource books on the subject. She attended the University of Washington for both her Bachelor’s (1956) and Master’s (1959) degrees, and she earned a second Master’s from New York University in 1974. She held positions of increasing responsibility in the profession, starting at the Brooklyn Public Library (1959-60), then with the University of Washington Law Library (1960-63), and finally at the City University of New York Brooklyn College Library from 1964 until her retirement in 1990 as Associate Librarian for Public Services. She resides in Santa Fe, NM, and also spends time in New Orleans, LA.
As a library school student at the University of Washington, Sellen engaged with student government to pressure the university to concern itself with housing for students of color, with particular focus on students from Africa who struggled to find places to live. A media campaign called attention to discriminatory city housing practices and forced the university to support students impacted by them.
With a cohort of librarian feminists, she organized an American Library Association Preconference on the Status of Women in Librarianship sponsored by the Social Responsibilities Round Table Task Force on the Status of Women in 1974 at Douglass College, Rutgers University. In the Introduction to the proceedings from that Preconference [1], Sellen describes initial meetings of the group with the incisive directness characteristic of her commentary:
Most of this first meeting was consumed by men telling the women how to improve themselves, and furthermore that what the profession really needed was more men to improve the image. In spite of these helpful suggestions and the scornful attitude of many male SRRT members, who fancied themselves a part of the macho left, where women’s issues were considered frivolous, the women were able to organize together and to become an active and notable presence at ALA conference meetings.
Sellen further explains her cohort’s librarian-focused strategies to “utilize talents and abilities already present among women librarians and not call up experts or ‘big names’ outside the profession” to build professional self-reliance in a likely long-term struggle against systemic oppression.
The preconference generated tangible results: a national survey about union types and priorities; a feminist librarian directory and support network S.H.A.R.E. (Sisters Have Resources Everywhere); a library education resolution presented to ALA membership directing the Committee on Accreditation to practice nondiscrimination in hiring and promotion of library school members; a statement to ALA regarding the Ford Foundation-funded Council on Library Resources to examine grant awarding and promotion practices; a variety of watchdog efforts directed at library schools, the library press, and professional journals; and the recommendation that a daily ‘sexist pig’ award be reported in the ALA Conference Cognotes publication with accompanying instruction about how to make nominations for it. The conference also generated resolutions presented to the ALA for deliberation during the 1974 Annual Conference Meeting in New York City involving accreditation, child care services, position evaluation, sexist terminology, support for affirmative action, terms of administrative appointment, and women in ALA Council positions.
Sellen was also active in New York City library politics. She was President of the Library Association of the City University of New York (LACUNY) [2] during the tumultuous years of 1969 – 71 and co-chair of the 1968 LACUNY Conference [3] New Directions for the City University Libraries that laid the groundwork for the CUNY union catalog and growth of the productive coalition of CUNY libraries. Sellen’s engagement with library politics around the country introduced varieties of library organization, policies, and political concerns into CUNY library activism.
Sellen was engaged in efforts to obtain and to maintain faculty status for CUNY librarians, to match the salaries, benefits, and prestige afforded other university faculty colleagues, achieved in 1965 [4]. In her role as president of the LACUNY Sellen encouraged librarians to publish in scholarly and literary journals as appropriate platforms for librarians’ work. She wrote Librarian/author: A Practical Guide on How to Get Published (Neal-Schuman, 1985) to further that concern.
Sellen was also a defender of academic freedom. When Zoia Horn, librarian at Bucknell College in Lewisburg, PA, was jailed for refusing to turn over library borrowing records regarding the Berrigan brothers (who were imprisoned for anti-American activities) [5], Sellen organized NYC fundraising to support Ms. Horn’s legal defense. [More from WoLH on Zoia Horn here–ed.]
Sellen valued collaboration and often co-authored her academic and professional work on library salaries, alternative careers, and feminist library matters. She was a prodigious author of letters-to-the-editor of library professional publications. She wrote brief, widely-read letters for American Librarians and Library Journal on topics such as librarian faculty status, the sexist underpinnings of the librarian image problem, intellectual freedom in Cuba, sexism and salary discrimination in the library profession, suppression of gay literary identities, and on unacknowledged incidents of censorship. In 1989 she criticized appointment of Fr. Timothy Healey to head the New York Public Library on the grounds that as a CUNY administrator, prior to his NYPL appointment, Healey had systematically undermined librarians and libraries. Sellen remembered publicly that Healey, in a CUNY meeting she attended, announced that “college librarians were about as deserving of faculty status as were campus elevator operators” [6], exposing a cluster of problematic biases held by a man appointed a leading NYC cultural administrator.
In the 1970s, Sellen convinced several other librarians, including Susan Vaughn, Betty Seifert, Joan Marshall, Kay Castle, to take up residence on E. 7th Street in New York City’s East Village. She resided at 248-252 East 7th St. Sellen joined with a multi-ethnic group of residents to rehab neighborhood buildings and establish them as self-governed cooperatives. Sellen was active in the same block association that battled the drug trade that flourished in the neighborhood as early as the 1970s and continued into the 1990s [7].
In 1990 Sellen received the ALA Equality Award, commending her “outstanding contributions toward promoting equality between men and women in the library profession.” The commendation recognizes her tireless labor and sustained coalition building as a leader in several landmark conferences on sex and racial equality, and her “inspiration to several generations of activist librarians.”
Sellen’s eclectic expertise was reflected in her published works. She assembled and edited The Librarian’s Cookbook (1990). She co-authored The Bottom Line Reader: A Financial Handbook for Librarians(1990);The Collection Building Reader (1992) and What Else You Can Do with a Library Degree(1997).
In her retirement, Sellen became an accomplished collector of American folk art. She authored and co-authored several reference books on the topic, including 20th Century American Folk, Self-Taught, and Outsider Art (1993) and Outsider, Self-taught, and Folk Art: Annotated Bibliography (2002) with Cynthia Johanson; Art Centers: American Studios and Galleries for Artists with Developmental or Mental Disabilities (2008); and Self-taught, Outsider and Folk Art: A Guide to American Artists, Locations, and Resources(2016).
In 1882, Caroline M. Hewins had been a librarian in Hartford for only six years when, through a fledgling group called the American Library Association, she sent a questionnaire to twenty-five libraries around the country and asked: “What are you doing to encourage a love of reading in boys and girls?” (Hog River Journal, Vol 5, No. 3, Summer 2007, “Hartford’s First Lady of the Library,” page 28.) A devoted reader since early childhood, Bostonian Hewins came to Hartford in 1876 to serve as the librarian of the Young Men’s Institute Library, then housed at the Wadsworth Atheneum and a precursor to what became the Hartford Public Library. She stayed with the library for the next fifty years, and oversaw its transformation from a small lending library that charged fees into the free Hartford Public Library, complete with its own flagship facility including a room for children.
She came from a wealthy and cultured home where books had been her magic carpet, and she wanted them to be available to children at every economic level. The Institute Library had not welcomed children, but Hewins quickly changed that, and gathered together books by Grimm, Andersen, Hawthorne, Thackeray and Dickens to furnish a corner for children. She used the power of the local press and professional library periodicals to encourage parents to bring their children to libraries, to read with them, and to choose quality books that would inspire the young imagination. The same year that she sent out the questionnaire, she published a nationally available bibliography of children’s books she loved and thought valuable. During the time when a paid subscription to the library was $3 a year to borrow one book at a time, Hewins worked with local Hartford schools to encourage subscription cards for the children, at pennies per card.
By the time the library became a free service in 1892, Hewins had already lowered the annual subscription fee to $1 and doubled the membership. Opinionated, iconoclastic and not a follower of rules others had established, she believed that children deserved better books than the formulaic and often violent Horatio Alger stories and weekly novels of the penny press. The Children’s Room she established had furniture suitable for different ages of children, pictures of flowers, lots of light and a resident dog the children had helped name. When she was not working at the library or writing for a national audience about the need for books and library settings appropriate to children, Hewins traveled. On her many trips, she wrote letters home to the children of Hartford, which the local newspapers published, and she shopped for books and dolls which she brought back to the library and shared with the children.
She collected books to be used in city classrooms, and made the library a place for book groups, theatrical skits, exhibits for parents and parties. By building connections between local school schools and the library, and between the library and the urban poor, as well as encouraging children reading for pleasure, Caroline Hewins anticipated by more than a century the common practices of today. She promoted library branches and believed that if the poor could not come to the books, the books should come to them.
Hartford Public Library’s Hartford History Center is home to her collection of more than 150 dolls, originals of some of the letters she wrote to Hartford children from Europe, correspondence and newspaper clippings, and the large collection of European and American nineteenth- and twentieth-century children’s books she acquired for the library. Scholar Leonard S. Marcus guest curated a popular Hartford History Center exhibition (December 2009 to April 2010) of fifty of Miss Hewins’s books, and is one of the nation’s leading authorities on children’s literature wrote in the accompanying catalog, “The fine collection…sampled throughout this exhibition bears witness to the adventurous spirit that powered her innovative life’s work.” (footnote page 1, catalog of exhibit.)
Born in Pennsville, Morgan County, Ohio, on May 13, 1899, librarian Frances Lydia Yocom’s contributions to librarianship are many, but most notably are marked by her thoughtful, groundbreaking works on subject retrieval of research about and by African Americans, her book reviews of works concerning African Americans, and her bibliographies, which preserve for us titles that without her documentation would likely remain lost to future readers.
Her published works provide a bibliographic foundation for understanding the complexity of subject information retrieval, controlled vocabulary, and implicit bias. Notably, her Berkeley MA thesis published as A list of subject headings for books by and about the Negro, by the H.W. Wilson Publishing Company in 1940 and cited in Arna Bontemps 1944 Library Quarterly article “Special Collections of Negroana is one such seminal work. Her 1942 review of The Negro Federal Government Worker by Lawrence J. W. Hayes in the Southern Economic Journal minces no words on discrimination and shortcomings of the Civil Service merit system as researched and described by the author Lawrence Hayes. In the same issue of the Southern Economic Journal Ms. Yocom reviews with great care and praise, Eliza Gleason’s The Southern Negro and the Public Library[1]which in turn has been cited by library historian Cheryl Knott.[2] These titles are just a few of the works published by a scholar who is in need of remembering and deserving of a deep, and rich, biography.
Who was this white woman who worked at historically black colleges and universities as well as predominately white institutions, and was a librarian who used her bibliographic skills in the crusade for racial justice? Who and what shaped her mission to live in a world of racial equality?
The Yocom family moved to Oberlin in 1907, where the father, Eli King Yocom owned a dry goods store with his brother Joseph. Frances attended Oberlin public schools; she graduated from Oberlin High School in 1917, and graduated from Oberlin College in 1921 with a major in English. Her obituary lists her having earned the Master of Arts degree from Columbia University Teachers College in 1925. Oberlin alumni magazines from 1927 and 1929 report on Ms. Yocom working at Straight College (a predecessor of Dillard University) as a librarian and also as an English teacher. Frances Yocom’s interest in librarianship was greater than in teaching, as evidenced by her move back to Ohio to work in a library. She is listed in the 1930 Census as living with her mother and working as a librarian at Oberlin College.[3] She also lived in Cleveland where she earned the B.S. in library science from Western Reserve University (now Case Western Reserve University) in 1931.
In 1939, Yocom earned the M.S. in librarianship from the University of California, Berkeley. Her MA thesis was “List of Subject Headings for Books by and about the Negro,” 1939, M.A. (California) as cited in “Graduate Theses Accepted by Library Schools in the United States from July, 1938, to June, 1945” by Dorothy Ethlyn Cole, Library Quarterly, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Jan., 1947), page 56.
The January 1946 issue of CRL News, lists Ms. Yocom as a Fisk University associate librarian and cataloger “for a number of years” who has taken a position at Humboldt State College, Arcata CA.[5] From Humboldt State College which is now Humboldt State University, Frances Yocom took a cataloging position at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill where she retired from in 1964. Her career at Chapel Hill was memorialized by Betty Bolton “Small in Stature, great in spirit: A Tribute to Frances Yocom ” North Carolina Libraries, Volumes 22, no.3, Spring 1964, pages 87-89.
After retirement, Frances Yocom returned to Oberlin, Ohio and later, moved into Copeland Oaks Retirement Community, Sebring, Ohio. From her obituary, it is stated she kept up an active correspondence with friends and former colleagues. One can only hope that the letters, diaries, and photos of this remarkable librarian have been preserved. This was a life rich in work, education, travel, living in various sections of the United States, and quiet social activism. She was involved in the American Library Association and attended its meetings. She presented at the Southeastern Library Association once it integrated. She is acknowledged in the works of some the nations foremost civil rights activists and historians—for example, Harry Emerson Fosdick[6] and John Hope Franklin. She was a librarian dedicated to civil rights and social justice, using the expertise of librarianship to make positive social change. Her story needs to be told.
Notes
[1] Yocom, Frances L. (1942) Review of The Southern Negro and the Public Library. Southern Economic Journal, 8 (April): 521–2.
[2] Knott, Cheryl The Publication and Reception of The Southern Negro and the Public Library, Race, Ethnicity and Publishing in America pp 51-76, Springer 2014.
[3]1930 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2002; Original data: United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1930. T626, 2,667 rolls.
[4] Franklin, John Hope, Mirror to America, 2005, page 47.
[5] “New from the Field” College and Research Libraries, January 1946, vol 7, no 1, page 83.
[6] Miller, Robert Moats, Harry Emerson Fosdick: Preacher, Pastor, Prophet, Oxford University Press, 1985, page 572.
This post was written by Keith Muchowski, who is an Instruction/Reference Librarian at the Ursula C. Schwerin Library, New York City College of Technology (CUNY), in Brooklyn, NY. He blogs at thestrawfoot.com. Keith also provided the image above of Nora E. Cordingley’s 1931 naturalization card.
Nora E. Cordingley died on March 14, 1951. The name may not be familiar, but Ms. Cordingley was active for three decades in one of the most significant projects in presidential librarianship: the collection, preservation and dissemination of the letters, papers, and hundreds of thousands of other items related to the short, strenuous life of Theodore Roosevelt. When the twenty-sixth president died on January 6, 1919, his family, friends, and close associates formed the Roosevelt Memorial and Woman’s Roosevelt Memorial Associations. One of the first moves of the RMA and WRMA was purchasing the East 20th Street site upon which Theodore Roosevelt was born in 1858, and where he lived until his early teens. The groups also bought the neighboring lot where young Theodore’s uncle, Robert B. Roosevelt, resided. Roosevelt House, as it was originally called, opened to great fanfare on October 27, 1923, what would have been Theodore Roosevelt’s sixty-fifth birthday. The institution had two missions: to be a museum & library and to serve as something of a center for American Studies. Ironically however one of Roosevelt House’s most important players in these years was not American, but Canadian: Nora Evelyn Cordingley.
Ms. Cordingley was born in Brockville, Ontario on January 23, 1888. She came to New York City to attend Queens College, from which she seems to have graduated around 1910. Cordingley was a student in the first class of the Library School of The New York Public Library in 1911. The NYPL’s new initiative was not a library program as we know it today, but more a vehicle to train para-professionals who would go on to work in various support services. (The New York Public Library program lasted fifteen years. It was merged along with the New York State School at Albany to become part of Columbia University’s new School of Library Service.) Somewhere in these years—the chronological record is unclear—Cordingley, her parents, and her sister settled in Tuckahoe just north of New York City in Westchester County. Cordingley worked as an assistant in the library of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. The work was probably unrewarding, but in all likelihood it was through this position that she got her break, for it happened to be at the Metropolitan Life Tower at 1 Madison Avenue and 23rd Street that the Roosevelt Memorial Association opened its headquarters in 1919. It was there in 1921 that the RMA offered Ms. Cordingley a job as a cataloger with the Bureau of Roosevelt Research and Information.
Memorial officials had been collecting material even in these years before the House opened in 1923. By 1921, the year she hired on, the RMA had gathered nearly 15,000 individual items. The items were as disparate as the life they represented and included many of the over 100,000 letters that Roosevelt penned, various editions of the nearly three dozen books he authored, positive and negative political cartoons that captured his unique physical bearing and caricaturist’s dream of a visage, scrapbooks, political campaign ephemera, speeches, a vast film archive, and much more. One must remember that this was something of a new and original enterprise; presidential libraries did not exist at tis time and would not for another two decades when another Roosevelt, Franklin D., created the first one at his home in Hyde Park. The Theodore Roosevelt Collection only grew after the opening of the house in 1923. Assessing the RMA’s work in 1929, a decade after its founding, Director Hermann Hagedorn told an audience at the American Library Association conference in Washington D.C. that a New York Public Library official had informed him that Bureau of Roosevelt Research and Information was the largest library dedicated to one individual in the United States. The work continued into the 1930s. Meanwhile, Ms. Cordingley became became a naturalized American in 1931. In 1933-34 she served as chairperson of Museums, Arts & Humanities Division of the Special Libraries Association.
After twenty years on East 20th Street the Roosevelt Collection moved to Harvard’s Widener Library in 1943. When the collection relocated, so did Ms. Cordingley. She moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts and continued her work. She gave an address on the rarities within the collection at the Bibliographical Society of America conference in January 1945. One of her many projects in these years included assisting with the organization and eventual publication of Roosevelt’s correspondence. Starting in 1948, the Harvard Library, Roosevelt Memorial Association and Massachusetts Institute of Technology began a project to edit and annotate Theodore Roosevelt’s 150,000 letters. Harvard University Press published volumes one and two of The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt in April 1951. These were the first installments of what would eventually be an eight volume undertaking. About 10% of Roosevelt’s total output—nearly 15,000 some odd letters—were eventually published in the set over the next several years. Sadly, Nora was not there to see any of it. Nora Evelyn Cordingley died of a heart attack in her office in Harvard’s Widener Library on March 14, 1951.
Bibliography:
Cordingley, Nora E. “Extreme Rarities in the Published Works of Theodore Roosevelt.” The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, vol. 39, no. 1, 1945, pp. 20-50.
Hagedorn, Hermann. “Building Up the Roosevelt Memorial Collection.” Bulletin of the American Library Association, vol. 23, no. 8, 1929, pp. 252–254.
Roosevelt Memorial Association: A Report of Its Activities, 1919-1921, Roosevelt Memorial Association, New York, 1921.
Today’s submission was written by an anonymous submitter from New England who is passionate about public libraries’ roles to educate the public on digital privacy and surveillance.
Alison Macrina is a librarian, internet activist, the founder and director of the Library Freedom Project, and a core contributor to The Tor Project. Alison is passionate about connecting surveillance issues to larger global struggles for justice, demystifying privacy and security technologies for ordinary users, and resisting an internet controlled by a handful of intelligence agencies and giant multinational corporations.
Alison was a longtime public librarian and left her job to found the Library Freedom Project. This non-profit’s mission is to train and lead librarians on key privacy issues. Their services are free, and the Project offers timely tools, articles, and resources for the general public as well as librarians. Alison started the Library Freedom Project because she is a believer in access to information. She notes that, as stewards of information and providers of Internet access, librarians play a central role in meeting the information needs of communities and are in an obvious position to educate patrons about how to shield their privacy from surveillance threats.
The Library Freedom Project began by teaching privacy tools to librarians all over New England, and they have scaled their work in a huge way, bringing anti-surveillance workshop to libraries across the country. The Library Freedom Institute has started in 2018, which is a privacy-focused collaborative program between New York University and the Library Freedom Project. Alison has inspired many libraries and librarians to walk the privacy walk, not just talk about privacy. She taught over 50 classes in 2017, and while she continues to do outreach, her work is on training others in the Library Freedom Institute to spread the privacy bug.
Libraries provide access to information and in doing so should protect patrons’ right to explore new ideas, no matter how controversial or subversive, unfettered by the pernicious effects of online surveillance. What’s more, public libraries serve communities that have historically come under more surveillance and scrutiny than the general population, including people of color, Muslims, queer people, transgender people, political activists, the formerly incarcerated, and people living in poverty. Libraries are centers of democracy, and the Library Freedom Project gives librarians the information and tools they need to ensure their institutions remain beacons of intellectual freedom in an open society. Alison works with organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union, the Tor Project, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Free Software Foundation.
(Sections used with permission from Libraryfreedomproject.org)
Today’s submission is by Christopher A. Brown, Special Collections Curator for the Children’s Literature Research Collection, Free Library of Philadelphia. The image of Mrs. Field is courtesy of the Children’s Literature Research Collection, Free Library of Philadelphia.
It’s impossible to think of the field of children’s librarianship without thinking of Carolyn Wicker Field. Mrs. Field (as she is still known at the Free Library of Philadelphia) was a driving force across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as well nationally. In her 30-plus year career, Mrs. Field headed the Office of Work with Children and oversaw the creation of the Children’s Literature Research Collection, the second largest repository of children’s literature, original artwork, manuscripts, and ephemera in the nation. Field’s passion for the promotion of children’s literature was unquenchable; she served as the president of the Children’s Division of the American Library Association (now known as the Association for Library Service to Children) and the Pennsylvania Library Association. From 1958-1960, Mrs. Field was a member of the Newbery-Caldecott Medal Selection Committee and chaired the committee in 1958.
Mrs. Field was honored with numerous awards throughout her lifetime. In 1963, she was awarded the Scholastic Library Publishing Award. In 1974, she was named a Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania, an award given to Pennsylvania women whose accomplishments have state or national importance. In 1994, Mrs. Field was the recipient of the Association for Library Service to Children’s Distinguished Service Award, and in 1996 she was the first recipient of the Catholic Library Association’s Mary A. Grant Award for outstanding volunteer service. She was honored by the Pennsylvania Library Association in 1984 when the Youth Services Division named an award in her honor. The Carolyn W. Field Award is presented annually to a Pennsylvania children’s author or illustrator.
Carolyn Wicker Field died from congestive heart failure in Philadelphia on July 24, 2010. A copy of her favorite quote by Walter de la Mare still hangs in the Children’s Literature Research Collection: “Only the rarest kind of best in anything can be good enough for the young.” It is a philosophy that is still firmly embraced at the Free Library of Philadelphia.
Today’s post is from Ashley C. Huser, Digital Resources Librarian at the Evans Library, Florida institute of Technology. The photographs of Barbara Gittings are from LGBT History Month, where additional resources about Gittings are available.
Born on July 31st 1932, Barbara Gittings “is widely regarded as the mother of the LGBT civil rights movement” (LGBT History Month, 2006, para. 1). Her involvement in the movement began in 1956, long before the infamous Stonewall Riots of 1969 (Stein, 2009). Her prolific pioneering activism spanned far and wide, including within the world of libraries.
Gittings’ immersion into library service happened organically. While attempting to accept and learn about her own homosexuality, she scoured libraries and bookstores on a quest for literature on the topic, but remained largely empty-handed and unsatisfied (Kniffel, 1999). Therefore, when she got wind that a collection of gay librarians had formed a group within the American Library Association (ALA), she decided to join their mission, hoping to help increase the availability and discoverability of gay literature (Kniffel, 1999). In 1970 she created “a list of 37 gay-positive books, magazine articles, and pamphlets – the first version of a resource that would be known as ‘A Gay Bibliography’” (ALA, 2017, para. 3). In 1972 she officially joined the ALA and became the Task Force Coordinator of what was then known as ALA’s Task Force on Gay Liberation (ALA, 2017). This task force was the first professional organization of its kind. Today, this trailblazing group is known as the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table (GLBTRT).
Although not formally trained as a librarian, Gittings was welcomed by the ALA with open arms (Kniffel, 1999). She went on to become an essential activist within the library community, serving as the Task Force Coordinator for fifteen years (Independence Branch Library, 2012). In an interview with Kniffel in 1999 she reflected that,
What has changed, in the nearly 30 years since the task force started, is simply that librarians have not only become accustomed to gay literature – which is now, happily, a flood of gay literature – but they have embraced it and taken it up. You don’t have to have quite the nudging and pressure that we had to use in the early years to get librarians to pay attention at all to the emerging gay literature. (p.75)
Gittings died at the age of 74 on February 18th, 2007 (Fox, 2007). However, her legacy and accomplishments live on in infinite respects within the library world and the LGBT community as a whole. Several library related tributes have been created to memorialize her legacy including: the Barbara Gittings Gay & Lesbian Collection of the Free Library of Philadelphia, the Barbara Gittings and Kay Tobin Lahusen Gay History Papers and Photographs collection of The New York Public Library, and the GLBTRT’s Barbara Gittings Literature Award.
This article was written by kYmberly Keeton, who is a writer, independent publisher, and art librarian. A version of this article previously appeared in the Dallas Weekly, and kYmberly has updated it with her recent research findings. She notes, “I am also a native of Fort Worth, Texas–[Horace] lived there the majority of her life… I have had the opportunity to visit where she lived, did extensive research, read the book mentioned in the article, and now continuing on to include her in a forthcoming book that I am writing. I am the second author and only librarian to have documented her life at this point.”
The image is courtesy of the Tarrant County Black Historical and Genealogical Society.
Texas’ first African American woman novelist was also a biographer, diarist, educator, publisher, and librarian. Lillian B. Horace was born on April 29, 1880 in Jefferson, Texas. Her parents were Thomas Armstead and Mary Ackard. The family moved to Fort Worth, Texas when Lillian was a young toddler. She would go on to receive her early and formal education, graduating from the historically black institution, I. M. Terrell High School. Lillian enrolled in Bishop College in Marshall, Texas, where she took classes from 1898 to 1899. She focused her entire life around writing, entrepreneurship, community activism, philanthropy, and her faith.
Like most women in the south, Lillian B. Horace began her journey in education before she graduated from college. She taught in area schools in Fort Worth, Texas, for six years, and then traveled to different universities throughout the United States to further her education. Lillian received a Bachelor’s Degree in 1924 from Simmons University in Louisville, Kentucky. After graduating from college, Lillian B. Horace was appointed as Dean of Women at Simmons University for two years. She then returned to Fort Worth, Texas, to become the Dean of Girls at I.M. Terrell High School where she established the school’s library, journalism, drama departments and the school newspaper. Lillian B. Horace was a member of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Alphin Art and Charity Club, Progressive Woman’s Club, and the Order of the Eastern Star. Through all of Lillian B. Horace’s contributions in the community, little is known or has been publicized about her writing career until now. The writer’s papers are available in Fort Worth, Texas at the Genealogy, History & Archives Unit at the Fort Worth Public Library, and at the Tarrant County Black Genealogical Society.
During the early part of the 20th century, few African American women were known to carry the title of writer or entrepreneur in the south. Horace was a publisher and shared an office with James I. Dotson where they established the Dotson-Jones Printing Company. Lillian B. Horace self-published her first book in 1916, Five Generations Hence –a utopian novel. Lillian’s themes in her first body of work focused on black women’s education, philanthropy, economic self-empowerment, and social etiquette. She used her first novel as a platform for discussion about blacks returning to their origins – the continent of Africa. The writer began working on her second novel, Angie Brown, in the 1930’s; married a preacher, Joseph Gentry Horace of Groveton, Texas; and became a member of the National Association of Colored Women’s Club. The couple divorced and Lillian B. Horace continued writing and added another genre to her literary prowess: Biography.
Dr. Lacey Kirk Williams presented Lillian B. Horace with the opportunity to write his biography. In 1938, the writer began documenting his life, and produced Sun-Crowned: A Biography of: Dr. Lacey Kirk Williams, published in 1964, by L. Venchael Booth. In the writer’s own words at the beginning pages, she clearly expresses to the reader that this is an accurate portrait of the subject:
“This is not a report on notes gathered from out-of-the-way sources, nor an additional stroke to an already developed portrait. The subject stood before me a living, breathing human being, plodding this work-a-day world shackled by all superstitions, inhibitions, and privations and restrictions of a member of an underpriving group. I saw that he had the furnace finer than most given the same test, and he rose about the mediocrity that might have been his.”
Lillian B. Horace begins the biography with a stroke of prose about the life of Dr. Lacey Kirk Williams. His parents, Levi and Elizabeth Williams were both slaves; and were given their freedom in 1865, per the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation by President Lincoln. They had seven children; Lacey Kirk Williams was the second son born on July 11, 1811. The writer provides the reader with information about the Williams family migration from the backwoods of Alabama to the southwest region of Texas. In like manner, the author states that she does her best to have the voice of an interviewer, but filled with the spirit of her faith, her talent for writing prose seeped into the biography to paint a portrait vividly for the reader, ultimately always wanting to offer an honest and thorough visual depiction of the subject’s life.
Dr. Lacey Kirk Williams received a major part of his education and life-skills, religion, society, and culture from Thankful Baptist Church, in Alabama. He received his formal education under the direction of a white church member that was originally from the east coast. His father was ordained as a deacon in the church and his mother became a prayer leader. They became a religious force in their community, gaining the trust of their peers. Levi Williams received with word from another well-known preacher that resided in their town about the opportunities given to newly freed slaves in the southwest region of Texas. He decided to leave his family for a brief time and visit the southwest, to check out the possibilities that were available for black people. In the late 1800’s, the Williams family migrated from the state of Alabama to Burleson County, Texas. Once there, young Lacey Kirk Williams attended a school that his father helped found, River Lane Public School. Their lives never were the same after they migrated to Texas.
Levi Williams would go on to run for County Commissioner, was into education, and ordained a reverend. Lacey Kirk Williams followed his father’s every move and mimicked a preacher every time a chance presented itself. Lillian B. Horace portrays his character from boyhood to a young man as a life filled with wisdom passed on from generations of slaves and freedmen. The young man’s journey as an educator and minister led him through many doors and cities; opportunities opened up for him in many ways. He married one of his pupils, Georgia Lewis; their families had migrated to the southwest together. As a family man, Lacey Kirk Williams took full advantage of everything that came his way, including passing the state educator’s exam, and receiving his call and license as a minister in December of 1894. In the early 1900’s the Baptist minister enrolled in Bishop College in Marshall, Texas, and supported his young wife’s quest for knowledge; she enrolled in a women’s school and became a student-teacher. Lacey Kirk Williams’ first sermon was given at a revival in Cookespoint, Texas.
Lillian B. Horace documents in the biography that Dr. Lacey Kirk Williams would go on to receive a D.D. degree from Selma University and an LL.D degree from Bishop College. He then began preaching on a full-time basis. During his tenure as a religious leader, he led congregations at Macedonia Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas in 1907 and then took over Mt. Gilead Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas in 1909. He was a leader and supporter of the Lincoln Association, Baptist Missionary, and the Educational Convention. Williams transitioned out of Texas to become pastor of Chicago’s Olivet Baptist Church in 1916; it was the largest Black church in the United States with 12,000 members. He went on to receive awards and accolades for his work in the black community on a national scale. Lacey Kirk Williams died shortly after accepting an award on October 29, 1940 in Flint, Michigan. He was buried at Lincoln Cemetery in Chicago.
Lillian B. Horace documented the southern migration of an African American male born to parents of slaves, his rise to prominence as a Baptist minister, and national leader. The biography is listed in The Papers of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: Advocate for Social Gospel–referencing the work of the author.
Horace, L. B. (1995). Daring to Dream: Utopian Fiction by United States Women Before 1950. In C. F. Kesslee, Daring to Dream: Utopian Fiction by United States Women Before 1950 (pp. 175-186). Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press.
Horace, L. (1964). Sun-Crowned: Biography of Dr. Lacey Kirk Williams. Fort Worth: L. Venchael Booth.
Margaret Mann (1873-1960) was a librarian and educator whose work and scholarship emphasized the role of theory in cataloging and classification. Her passion for information organization inspired the many students she taught to see cataloging and classification as an essential service to library users.
Born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on April 9, 1873, as an adolescent Mann moved with her family to Chicago and graduated from Englewood High School. She enrolled at Chicago’s Armour Institute in 1893, as one of the first twelve students in the library program (the Armour Institute was only the fourth school for the education of librarians in the U.S. and the first west of the Alleghanies). There she studied preservation, cataloging, accessioning, and shelf-listing, as well as learning library hand. After graduating a year later, most of her cohort moved on to library jobs, but Mann was asked to stay on as an assistant at Armour, serving as a cataloger and occasional instructor. When the library science department was moved from Armour to the University of Illinois in 1897, Mann was appointed to the staff of the new program. While teaching at the University of Illinois, she also worked towards creating consistent policies of cataloging and classification within its library. Mann moved on to the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh in 1902, serving as head of the Cataloging Department until 1919. From 1919 to 1924 she undertook a massive reorganization of the collections of the Library of the Engineering Societies in New York City.
After returning from teaching cataloging and classification at the École de Bibliothécaires in Paris in 1926, she began as an instructor at the University of Michigan as one of the first three faculty hired at the beginning of the school’s library science program. Unlike her own library school experience thirty years earlier, which was highly focused on everyday library practice, Mann’s publications and teaching focused on the need to understand the theory of cataloging and classification to serve library users well. Her textbook, “An Introduction to Cataloging and the Classification of Books,” first published in 1930 by ALA, was widely used by library schools and helped standardize the cataloging content taught to library students. She would remain at the University of Michigan until her retirement at age 65 in 1938, impressing upon her many students the important role of information organization in libraries.
Mann died in 1960 but her name and legend live on in the University of Michigan’s Margaret Mann Award, established in 1938, as well as in the Margaret Mann Citation, awarded yearly by ALA to recognize outstanding professional achievement in cataloging or classification. Mann was also listed within American Libraries’s 1999 article on “100 of the Most Important Leaders We Had in the 20th Century”.
Resources consulted:
Clack, Doris H. (1993). Education for Cataloging.Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, 16:3, 27-37, DOI: 10.1300/J104v16n03_04
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.”
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.
It feels like a good time to bring Lorna Peterson’s profile of Clare Beck back around–I’ve mentioned things I learned from “A ‘Private’ Grievance Against Dewey” SEVERAL TIMES lately.
Our final post for Women’s History Month 2017 comes again from Lorna Peterson, Emerita Associate Professor, University at Buffalo. The photo above was provided by family and printed on memorial service program and online obituaries; see The Oberlin News Tribune from Feb. 23 to Feb. 24, 2017 (accessed March 16, 2017)
Betty Jo Lanier Jenkins February 27, 1936 - November 11, 2016
Raised on Historically Black College and University campuses (HBCUs) as well as two years in Monrovia, Liberia by her professor and diplomat father and librarian mother, influenced by a Quaker education in Iowa, and educated at a Seven Sisters college and an Ivy League university both in New York City, Betty Jo Lanier Jenkins lived an outstanding librarian career that encompassed the transitions of the United States civil rights era.
With the enactment of civil rights legislation in the 1960s, the development of public policy to implement the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 was challenged by competing philosophies of integration versus black separatism within the black community. One response to that challenge was the establishment of a consortium and research institute of social scientists called MARC, Metropolitan Applied Research Center. Founded by psychologist Dr. Kenneth B. Clark, an aim of the institute was to provide a non-partisan forum for discussion between black and white politicians at city, state, and federal levels regarding the issues, policies and programs most relevant to the officials’ constituents and communities. Central to the MARC institute and its work was the library, and the head of that library was Betty L. Jenkins. Building the collection and directing the library influenced Ms. Jenkins’s own research and publication output. Her contributions to understanding race relations in the United States, as well as in American librarianship, are unique and foundational.
Born February 27, 1936, in Harris County, Texas, to professor, college administrator, and diplomat Ralphael O’Hara Lanier and librarian Garriette Lucile Green(e) Lanier, Betty was raised on the campuses of Texas State University for Negroes (now Texas Southern University), Hampton Institute (currently Hampton University), and other HBCUs along with her younger sister, Patricia. The family lived in Monrovia Liberia from 1946-1948, where her father was U.S. Minister to Liberia.
Educated for high school at the Quaker Scattergood Friends School in West Branch, Iowa, she developed a lifelong respect for Quaker principles, although she did not become a member of the Religious Society of Friends. She began her first college year at Grinnell College in GrinnelI, Iowa, and then transferred to Barnard College in New York City, where she earned a BA degree in history. Following the baccalaureate degree, she entered and graduated from the MS program in Library Service at Columbia University and later earned a MA in American history from New York University.
As part of her duties at MARC and at the request of the Hastie Group, Betty Jenkins, along with Susan Phillis, compiled and published the annotated bibliography Black Separatism in 1976. The bibliography is organized by two parts. Part 1 concerns separatism vs. integration within a historical perspective, citing and annotating materials from 1760-1953 and then followed by the twenty years since BrownvBoard of Education. Part 2 lists citations concerning the institutional and psychological dimensions regarding identity, education, politics, economics, and worship within the context of segregation and desegregation. Works that concern redressing racial inequities are also documented in Part 2 of the bibliography.
Betty Jenkins was a bibliographer and scholar librarian who published, presented, and created exhibits that documented the black experience in America. Works by Betty Jenkins include but are not limited by the following: • a bibliographical essay written with Donald Franklin Joyce, “Aiming to publish books within the purchasing power of a poor people”: Black-owned book publishing in the United States, 1817-1987,” Choice February 1989, vol. 26, pages 907-913; • solo authored and groundbreaking critical race biography of Ernestine Rose: “A white librarian in black Harlem,” Library Quarterly; July 1990, Vol. 60, pages 216-231; and •Kenneth B. Clark: A bibliography, MARC 1970, 69 pages.
With assistance from the City College of New York (CCNY) Libraries, these additional contributions by Betty Jenkins are identified: • CCNY issue of The Campus February 19, 1991: “Leading City College Black Faculty Discuss their Progress and Achievements at CCNY,” which is based on an event partly organized by Betty Jenkins; • Principal Investigator for a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to host a conference and create conference proceedings for “We Wish to Plead our Own Cause”: Black-Owned Book Publishing in the United States 1817-1987 held May 1988 at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of NYPL; • One of the curators of the CCNY Libraries Cohen Library Atrium exhibit “Parallel Worlds: African Americans in Harlem and Paris in the 1920s” February-June 2001.
As well as working for various libraries in the CCNY system, Betty Jenkins also worked at Howard University. Through her careful scholarship of bibliography, mounting exhibits, and writing a librarian biography within a context of race conflict and cooperation, Betty L. Jenkins preserved and interpreted the history and lives of Americans, particularly black Americans.
References
Ancestry.com. Texas Birth Index, 1903-1997 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2005. Original data: Texas Birth Index, 1903-1997. Texas: Texas Department of State Health Services. Microfiche.
Obituary of Betty Jo Lanier Jenkins of Oberlin Ohio, Dicken Funeral Home
