Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Charles Francis Gosnell ( 1909-1993). Gosnell was Librarian of the Queen College Library (1937-1945), Director of the New York State Library (1945-1962), and Director of the New York University Libraries (1962-1974). Gosnell is one of 77 individuals included in the Second Supplement of the Dictionary of American Library Biography (Libraries Unlimited, 2003) which was edited by library historian Donald G. Davis, Jr.. The Dictionary of American Library Biography and its supplements are the most comprehensive and authoritative compilations of information about individuals who have made the most significant contributions to the development of America's libraries. The entry about Gosnell was written by Christopher J. Prom. As State Librarian of New York, Gosnell's major achievement was the development of the regional library system in New York. At the New York University Libraries, Gosnell oversaw the construction of the Elmer Homes Bobst Library building. This building replaced the library building designed by Stanford White which is shown on the postage stamp above. Gosnell served as President of the New York Library Association in 1969. His presidency of the NYLA was marked by a controversy over a decision to hold the 1969 conference in Lake Placid. After his retirement in 1974, Gosnell played a major role in the creation of the Chancellor Robert R. Livingston Masonic Library in Manhattan. Click here for the New York Times obituary for Gosnell.
Tomorrow (July 7, 2009) will mark the 160th anniversary of the passage by the State of New Hampshire of the first general free public library law in the United States. The passage of this law in 1849 marked a major milestone in the development of the American public library. The New Hampshire law said in part: "Every public library ... shall be opened to the free use of every inhabitant of the town or city ... for the general diffusion of intelligence among all classes of the community ...". In 1872 Illinois passed a more comprehensive law allowing for the establishment of free public libraries. Both state laws served as models for other states. The New Hampshire version of a public library law was sometimes referred to as the "short" law while the Illinois law was referred to as the "long" law. Although Massachusetts passed a special law authorizing the creation of the Boston Public Library in 1848, it was not until 1851 that a general public library law was passed by that state. New Hampshire is also home of the Peterborough Town Library which is generally considered to be the first tax supported free public library in the nation. It was established in 1833. One of the major short comings of almost all state public library laws is that they are permissive. The establishment of public libraries by a community is normally a voluntary action. The result is that 160 years after the passage of the New Hampshire free public library law there are millions of American without access to free public library service. I'm pleased to have been part of public library development in several states that have achieved universal access to free public library service. Elizabeth W. Stone's American Library Development 1600-1899 (H. W. Wilson Company, 1977), the primary source of this information, provides an excellent summary of early public library development in the United States. The envelope above was mailed in 1889, 40 years after the passage of the New Hampshire public library law.
Next weekend (July 11-12) I will be in Chicago for the Annual Conference of the American Library Association. I'm looking forward to the conference with great anticipation. This will be the 34th annual conference that I have attended in my 40 years of continuous membership in ALA. My first conference was the 1969 conference in Atlantic City, NJ. This will also be the 9th annual conference I have attended in Chicago. I am especially pleased to be able to attend this conference since it will mark the 100th anniversary of ALA's headquarters being located in the City of Chicago. The most momentous annual conference that I attended in Chicago was the Centennial Conference in 1976.
This year I am looking forward to the activities of the Library History Round Table. Of special interest is the "New Perspectives in American Library History" program that will take place on July 12 at 1:30 p.m. in McCormick Place West Room W-192b. It will feature several outstanding library historians. There will be a library history exhibit "Art and Architecture in Illinois Libraries" in the McCormick West Convention Hall. The exact location of the exhibit is not finalized. It may be on Level One near the transportation center or on Level Three by the Auditorium. Kudos to Allen Lanham of Eastern Illinois University and others who developed this traveling exhibit. While in Chicago I plan to visit the Chicago Cultural Center, former Central Library of the Chicago Public Library, to view the recently restored dome of the building which features Tiffany glass. I would like to make it to the Newberry Library on this trip to see their Rudolph's Continuous Indexer. Tours of the Library are scheduled on Saturday's at 10:30 a.m. Of course, I plan to visit the most extensive library vendor exhibits in the world, and the social highlight will be the big Scholarship Bash at the Chicago Art Institute on Saturday evening. And most of all, I'm hoping to see old friends who have traveled part of this 40 year ALA journey with me.
After AL Direct mentioned the web page on The Library History Buff website dealing with Harvard's catalogue cards, I was contacted by Ed Vermue, Special Collections and Preservation Librarian for the Oberlin College Library. Vermue has put together a very nice web page on the history of Oberlin's early card catalog. Kudos to Vermue for his efforts in preserving some of the early catalog cards and catalog card cases used by the Oberlin College Library. Unfortunately not enough librarians value the artifacts of our library heritage. It is refreshing to find one who does.
The Library Cover Story on the Library History Buff website for July features a postal card showing the Woman's Building of the the World's Colombian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. The Woman's Building included a library which housed 7,000 literary works by women from around the world. A list of the books included in the library is located here. The exposition attracted over twenty-seven million visitors. The Winter issue of Libraries & Culture for 2006 contained six essays related the Woman's Building Library. This special issue was edited by Sarah Wadsworth . The Fair Women by Jeanne Madeline Weimann (Academy Chicago, 1981) provides an extensive overview of the story of Woman's Building. Also at the exposition was a library exhibit developed by the American Library Association. The ALA exhibit was in the Government Building of the exposition. The Chicago History Journal blog contains a post on the Library. The Official Souvenir Postal Card at the top of this entry is on the back of the Grant postal card issue of 1891. These souvenir cards were predecessors of picture postcards. The postal card was mailed to Hamburg Germany in July 1893. The one cent stamp of the Columbian Exposition issue of 1893 has been added to makeup the international postal card rate.
A couple of my recent posts have dealt with the catalogue cards of the Harvard College Library. So it is timely and appropriate to wish a happy 150th birthday to William Coolidge Lane (1859-1931) who was born on June 29, 1859 in Newtonville, Massachusetts. Lane was appointed Assistant Librarian at the Harvard College Library in 1888. He had previously served as Superintendent of the Cataloging Department. In 1893 he left Harvard to become Head Librarian of the Boston Athenaeum. In 1898, at the age of 39, he returned to Harvard as a the head librarian of Harvard College Library, a post he held until 1928. Lane was also elected President of the American Library Association in 1898. When the post of Librarian of Congress became available in 1899 due to the death of John Russell Young, Lane met with President McKinley and reportedly played a significant role in the appointment of Herbert Putnam as Librarian of Congress. In 1910 when Harvard created the position of Director of the University Library, Lane was passed over for this post. Reconnecting to the library card catalog story line, Lane directed a major transition of the University's card catalog. This included the move to standard size catalog cards from the 2 x 5 inch catalog cards which originated at Harvard. The unused stamped envelope above (issue of 1887) was preaddressed to Lane.
I have an interest in catalog cards and card catalog cabinets that is reflected in both the Library History Buff Blog and the Library History Buff website. One of my more recent blog entries on this topic was "Battle of the Catalog Cards." Allen Veaner, the former Director of Libraries at the University of California at Santa Barbara, became aware of my interest in library history and contacted me to see if I would be interested in a collection of "catalogue" cards that he had salvaged from his time as a cataloguer at the Widener Library of Harvard University. I, of course, said yes. The collection was of particular interest to me because of the role that Harvard played in the early adoption of the card catalog by libraries in the United States and by its use of a 2 inch by 3 inch catalog card instead of what became the universal standard 7.5 x 12.5 cm catalog card. Allen's collection consisted of five of the 2 x 3 inch cards, 42 standard size cards, and three order cards used by the Harvard library. Allen was kind enough to provide as essay explaining the collection which I have put on the Library History Buff website here along with scans of some of the cards. The catalog card above is one of the earlier handwritten cards. It is stamped "HCL" for Harvard College Library. Note the hole to the left of the card. The earlier card catalogues used by Harvard were designed by Assistant Librarian Ezra Abbot and the retainer ran through this hole. Harvard was one of the first libraries to employ women. Beginning in May 1862 these women began writing information on catalog cards intended for the public card catalog, the first in the United States. In the first year they produced 35,762 hand written cards for the catalog. Incidentally, Harvard used "catalogue" not "catalog" which is the reason for the variations in spellings in this entry. For a history of the card catalog click here. For more examples of catalog cards and their current uses click here. For information on card catalog cabinets and some current uses click here.
In an earlier post I discussed Google Books and its value to the library history buff and library historian. I also acknowledged that there were some limitations to retrieving documents using this feature of Google. As a regular user of Google Books I have been building a library of books and periodicals relating to library history using the "My Library" feature of Google Books. The Google Books "My Library" for Larry Nix is located at here. There is a permanent link to the library on the Library History Buff Blog home page. My "My Library" contains over 200 library history related publication along with a limited number of items related to philately. I have created labels for these publications on the left side of the home page. A major flaw in Google Books is the difficulty in locating periodicals. I have created labels for the library periodicals that I have been able to locate. These include many volumes for ALA Bulletin, Library Journal, Public Libraries, ALA Proceedings, and others. I encourage you to create your own "My Library" and select items from my "My Library" which may be of use or interest to you. The hit and miss nature of Google Books as it relates to library history calls for a more proactive approach by the library history community in identifying priority publications for digitization and working to get them digitized. In Wisconsin we have succeeded in getting the Wisconsin Library Bulletin digitized by Google Books and a few years of this publication are beginning to appear, but much more needs to be done. Also, because of the poor quality and organization of some of the digitization by Google Books, other approaches to the digitization of library history materials need to be explored.Full views of items in Google Books are included for many publications. Limited views, snippet views, and no views are included for others depending on copyright status and agreements with publishers. In the future if the proposed agreement between Google and publishers is finalized, full views of many more items will be available either through institutional or personal subscriptions.
Hooray for Great Falls, Montana for dedicating their library plaza in the name of former public librarian Alma S. Jacobs (1916-1997). In a period when you can buy your name on just about anything, its refreshing to see something named for a librarian who deserves to be so honored. Alma S. Jacobs served as the director of the Great Falls Public Library from 1954 – 1973 and as Montana State Librarian from 1973 – 1981. She was chosen as one of the top 100 Montanans of the 20th century in 1999. Mayor Dona Stebbins also proclaimed June 16-22 as Alma Jacobs Week in Great Falls. Click here for the story of the dedication and more background on Jacobs.
"The battle as to whether 32 or 33 size cards are preferable has been waged up one side and down the other, and after quantities of oratorical blood have been spilt, the invariable result is that each side is more than ever convinced that they are in the right." - Agnes Van Valkenburgh, Head Cataloger of the Milwaukee Public Library, at the 1906 American Library Association Conference. In 1877 the American Library Association adopted two sizes of library catalog cards as standards for use by libraries. Under the influence of Melvil Dewey, a strong proponent of the metric system of measurement, the standard sizes were set in centimeters. The first size was 5 x 12 1/2 cm (approximately 2 x 5 inches). This was the size currently in use by Harvard College and the Boston Athenaeum. The second size was 7 1/2 x 12 1/2 cm (approximately 3 x 5 inches). The height of the second card was very similar to the height of Post Office Department pre-stamped postal cards, and this size was sometimes referred to as the postal size. The Library Bureau, the primary provider of library supplies, assigned no. 32 to the smaller card in its supply catalog and no. 33 to the larger card. The major argument in support of the smaller card was that it reduced the space required for catalog card cases. As the ALA Cooperation Committee which recommended the standard sizes said in its first report: "There is complaint that the cards take too much room, and some have expressed fears that the books might be compelled in time to camp outside the building to make room for the catalogue-cases." Those who argued for the larger size felt there was a need for more room for headings and additional book related information on the card. The push for cooperative cataloging and printed catalog cards was the major motive for moving toward a single standard. At the 1901 Waukesha, Wisconsin ALA Conference, Anderson H. Hopkins, Chair of the Cataloging Section, stated the goal: "Now what do we want? We want an arrangement whereby any one may be able at reasonable cost to get accurately made and well printed cards for any book at any time. This and nothing else will do." The ALA Publishing Board had been providing printed cards in both sizes but the Library of Congress was being encouraged to take on the production and distribution of printed catalog cards. The continuation of both formats by the Library of Congress was not seen as feasible. The overwhelming sentiment expressed at the Cataloging Section meeting at the Waukesha Conference was to go with the no. 33 size cards but with a wide border at the top and no printing below the punched hole on the catalog card. This would allow libraries using a no. 32 size card to cut the no. 33 card down to the smaller size and libraries using the no. 33 size cards to use the wider border at the top for subject headings. The Library of Congress did indeed begin the centralized printing and distribution of catalog cards in 1901 using the no. 33 size cards. In explaining the decision to do so, Librarian of Congress Herbert Putnam stated: "American instinct and habit revolt against multiplication of brain effort and outlay where a multiplication of results can be achieved by machinery. This appears to be a case where it may." The 7 1/2 x 12 1.2 cm size no. 33 catalog card is, of course, the standard catalog card used by almost all libraries up to the widespread demise of the card catalog. A number of libraries using the no. 32 size cards continued to use them for many years. The New York Mercantile Library was one of those libraries. The image above shows a card catalog at the New York Mercantile Library with no. 32 size cards. For more information on the evolution of the card catalog click here. There is a nice overview of the Harvard size catalog cards on the Harvard Law School Library Blog. A more recent post on Harvard's Catalogue Cards is located here.
