ALA's 1903 Conference in Niagara Falls

On this date in 1903 (110 years ago) the American Library Association began its twenty-fifth annual meeting in Niagara Falls, NY with an evening reception at the Cataract House hotel (see postcard above). The meeting took place from June 22 to June 27 with most of the program taking place in Cataract House. The attendance at the meeting was 684 which included 447 women. The printed program for the meeting (see below) consisted of just eight pages compared to programs with over 300 pages at recent ALA conferences.  Perhaps the most substantive session at the meeting was a report of the ALA Library Training Committee chaired by Mary W. Plummer. The committee had conducted a major survey of all library training programs in 1902. Melvil Dewey reported on the plans for an ALA exhibit to take place at the 1904 world's fair in St. Louis in 1904. A meeting of the National Association of State Librarians took place in conjunction with the ALA meeting.