Washington Overdue at New York Society Library

The story about George Washington's overdue books at the New York Society Library, New York's oldest library, in the New York Daily News yesterday (April 17) is receiving a lot of media attention. In 1789 when the books were borrowed by Washington, the nation's seat of government was in New York City, located at City Hall (called Federal Hall while occupied by the national government) where the library was also located. The New York Society Library likes to call itself the first Library of Congress. The Library Company of Philadelphia which served the Continental Congress also likes to make this claim. During the period April 1774 to December 1788 while hostilities with the British raged, the Library was out of commission. According to one history of the library its books were "scattered, burned or bartered for grog by the British soldiers". It's a wonder that there were any books left for Washington and the members of Congress to borrow. The New York Society Library is one of the few surviving membership libraries in the United States. The oldest artifact in my collection of librariana relates to the Library. The note above, dated March 1, 1793, is from I. Pearsee to Isaac L. Kipp. It promises to pay the sum of $15 for one share in the New York Library by the first of May. The Library was raising funds for a new building which it occupied in 1795. By March 1, 1793, Washington probably owed less than a hundred dollars on his overdue fines. They could have helped pay for the new building.

Dartmouth's Student Literary Societies

Early academic libraries, unlike those of today, were not very friendly to students. This led to the creation of student literary societies that established their own libraries which had more popular collections and more liberal lending policies. Dartmouth College is an excellent example of this situation. An online history of the Dartmouth College Library includes the following description of student access to the official college library in 1802: "The collection numbers approximately 3,000 volumes, many of which are duplicates and of little practical use to the students and faculty. Library hours are very restricted: 1 hour per class every other week, with no more than 5 students in the library at one time. No one is permitted to take a book down from the shelves without permission of the librarian. A use fee of $1.50 per year is assessed from each student, one quarter of which goes to the librarian. Circulation is limited to one volume at a time for freshmen, two for sophomores and juniors, and three for seniors." In 1783 a student literary society called the Society of Social Friends was founded at Dartmouth. A similar student society, the United Fraternity, was founded in 1786. For many years the libraries of these two student organizations were the primary source of books for both students and faculty. In 1817 in the midst of a controversy between the State of New Hampshire and the Trustees of Dartmouth over the control of the College, the student societies decide to move their collections out of Dartmouth Hall into a building controlled by the societies. The College attempts to prevent this and a student "riot" ensues. As a result both sides press charges and both students and faculty are arrested. The matter is ultimately settled out of court. The controversy between the State and the Trustees is settled in favor of the Trustees in a United States Supreme Court case argued by Daniel Webster (class of 1801; see postage stamp above). In 1874 in return for more favorable access the student societies agree to combine their libraries with the college library under a single head. In 1904 the societies disband and full title to the libraries was transferred to the college. A bookplate for the Social Friends' Library of Dartmouth is shown above.

A follow up post on the Social Friends' Library of Dartmouth was made on April19.

Book Automobiles

On April 14, the American Library Association (ALA) will celebrate the first National Bookmobile Day. I recently acquired the 1937 ALA publication Book Automobiles, Library Equipment Studies: Number One. It was prepared by the ALA County and Regional Libraries Section Book Automobile Committee. The introduction reads: "The steady and growing demand for exact specifications and pictures of book automobiles from city and county librarians who are considering this method of book service and who wish to profit by the experience of others, has led to this first effort to compile information on the subject and to present it in convenient form." The publication includes information and pictures of: small book automobiles with outside shelving; large book automobiles with outside shelving; large book automobiles with inside and outside shelving; book trailers; simpler forms of service; and delivery trucks. The picture above shows the large book automobile with outside shelving used by the Davidson County Library in Lexington, NC. A caption for the pictures notes that the shelving for the book automobile is four shelves high and that the lower part of the back door is let down and used as a table for charging books. A high stool for the library worker was carried inside the book automobile. "Simpler forms of service" included adapting passenger cars for this purpose. The Vanderburg County Library in Indiana adapted a Ford roadster by adding a box at the back with two enclosed shelves holding about 150 books.

New York School Libraries and School Library Month

April is School Library Month and in recognition of that occasion I have compiled this post which features two pieces of New York school library ephemera. The first piece is a letter written on October 31, 1844 from a County School Superintendent in Epex, New York to Samuel S. Randall, the General Deputy Superintendent of Common Schools for the State of New York. The County Superintendent writes: "My Annual Returns are ready for transmission with the exception of the Library Returns required of the Town Superintendents. They have been slow to forward the necessary catalogues and I have just written to nine delinquents urging speedy compliance ... . Shall I be permitted to delay a few days to secure the complete returns? Or shall I forward my own Returns without them?" Those darn Town Superintendents! Governor De Witt Clinton of New York advocated collections of books attached to common schools as early as 1827 but it was not until 1835 that legislation implementing this requirement was passed. Samuel S. Randall wrote a history of the New York common school system in 1871.

The second piece is a small Library Catalogue of Public School No. 19 in Buffalo, New York dated 1885. The catalogue is 4 1/4 inches by 6 inches and has 18 pages. The catalogue is organized by topic/subject but the books are labeled in consecutive order going from 1 to 449.

The American Association of School Libraries (AASL) is celebrating the 25th anniversary of School Library Month. Originally the celebration was titled School Library Media Month, but in an interesting development the AASL Board decided this year to readopt the professional title of "school librarian" to replace "school library media specialist" and also decided to change the name of the monthly celebration to School Library Month. A decision that I heartedly applaud.

With all the Red Tape on the Box

A few years ago I attended a reception at the Menasha Public Library in conjunction with the Wisconsin Library Association's annual conference and discovered that the library owned one of the unusual revolving bookcases of the former Tabard Inn Library. I have written a previous post about the Tabard Inn Library which was a was a for-profit membership library founded in 1902 by Seymour Eaton. It was administered by the Booklovers Library, another Eaton enterprise. Over the years I have accumulated a collection of ephemera and artifacts related to the both the Tabard Inn Library and the Booklovers Library and this month I have an exhibit of those items at the Menasha Public Library. The exhibit is supplemented by a selection of items from my Wisconsin Library Memorabilia exhibit. "With all the Red Tape on the Box" was a slogan that Eaton used to highlight the simplicity of borrowing books from the Tabard Inn Library. Seymour Eaton was an extremely interesting individual and I wrote a recent post about Eaton's connection to the Roosevelt Bears.

Japanese Postcard from St. Louis 1904

I recently purchased a Japanese postcard on eBay that was mailed from St. Louis, MO on October 20, 1904 to a Mrs. Alice Stevens at the Library of Congress. I have an extensive collection of postal items mailed to and from the Library of Congress and this seemed like an interesting addition to the collection. After all, its not every day that you find a Japanese postcard mailed from a location within the United States. The postcard has significance to a library history buff and collector of postal librariana in that it was mailed by a librarian attending the 1904 American Library Association conference in St. Louis. George Eberhart has done an excellent job of recounting the ambience and significance of this conference which took place in conjunction with the St. Louis World's Fair (Louisiana Purchase Exposition). The conference ran from October 17 to October 22. The personal message on the back of the postcard from someone with the initials S. B. P. reads in part: "If I didn't do the Fair I am sure it will entirely "do" me. But it's fun if one takes it leisurely and the A.L.A. is all right." The postcard came from the Japanese Exhibition at the Fair. The postcard is stamped with one of the stamps which is part of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition postal issue of 1904. It also includes a receivers mark made by the M. & S. Division of the Library of Congress. As Eberhart points out in his article, the American Library Association had a major exhibit at the Fair which was located in the Missouri Building. I have written a previous post about that exhibit. The Library of Congress also had a separate exhibit at the Fair which was located in the U. S. Government Building. That exhibit included a large model of the Library of Congress building of 1897, now known as the Jefferson Building. This was the first direct participation of the Library of Conference in one of the large international expositions.

"@" and the ALA

National Library Week is April April 11-17 and for the 13th straight year the "@" symbol will be a prominent part of the slogan for this annual promotion by the American Library Association (ALA). This year the slogan is "Communities thrive @ your library". In 2001 ALA launched a major multi-year public relations campaign tied to "The Campaign for America's Libraries" using the "@ your library" theme. In 2003 "@ your library" became a registered trademark of ALA with heavily prescribed allowable and un-allowable uses. I'm not terribly enamored of the continued use of the "@" symbol as a public relations device for promoting libraries. I'm more of a "Libraries change lives" kind of guy. I'm not sure if ALA will be allowed to continue to use the "@" symbol in any case. It has just been acquired by the Museum of Modern Art. Daniel Soar has written an interesting piece about the "@" symbol in the London Review of Books. For a philatelic tribute to National Library Week along with a list of previous National Library Week slogans click HERE. What's your favorite library slogan?

Charles Everett Rush 1885-1958

Today (March 23) is the 125th anniversary of the birth of Charles Everett Rush. Rush began his library career as a library assistant at Earlham College in 1904 and retired as Director of the Library of the University of North Carolina in 1954. In between he held a number of library administrative posts, both public and academic. He directed the public libraries of Jackson, MI; St. Joseph, MO; Des Moines, IA; Indianapolis, IN; and Cleveland, OH. He served as Associate Librarian of Yale University and Director of Libraries for the Teachers College of Columbia University. Rush took a leave as Director of the Indianapolis Public Library in 1918 to work for the Library War Service of the American Library Association (ALA). Rush was active in ALA and other library associations and served as Vice-President of ALA (1931-32). A biographical entry for Rush by Robert L. Logsdon appears in the Dictionary of American Library Biography. A photograph of Rush is located HERE. The American Library Association Archives contains some of Rush's papers. The envelope above was mailed from the Yale University Library to the Stadtbiliothek in Frankfurt, Germany on January 30, 1935 while Rush was Associate Librarian.

Spencer Iowa's Carnegie Window

The Spencer Public Library in Spencer, Iowa has become famous because of a cat named Dewey. But long before there was a cat named Dewey, there was a Carnegie library building in Spencer. Like Dewey, the Carnegie is no longer around to please or inspire. It met the wrecking ball in 1970, but a special architectural detail of the building still survives. That architectural detail is the leaded glass window with the word "Carnegie" which was above the entry to the library. The window is now in the possession of Paul Brenner, a resident of Spencer, IA. Paul is interested in finding our if this is a unique artifact or if something similar was used in another Carnegie library building. The architectural firm that designed the Spencer Carnegie building was Patton & Miller of Chicago, a firm that designed many libraries in the Mid-west. Placing his name on the building was not a condition for receiving a grant for a library building from Andrew Carnegie.

The Western Library Association

The American Library Association (ALA) was founded in 1876. In its early years it was primarily oriented to the Northeastern states with its greater concentration of population and libraries. It was not until 1881that ALA ventured out of the East, holding its annual conference in Cincinnati, Ohio. Only forty six people attended that conference. The difficulty of travel was a major reason for the low attendance. A growing interest in library meetings at the local and state levels where travel was less of a factor led F. J. Soldan, librarian of the Peoria (Illinois) Public Library, to issue a call for a convention of librarians in the Western states. That convention took place in Springfield, Illinois on November, 22-23, 1881. It was presided over by William F. Poole, librarian of the Chicago Public Library and President of ALA in 1885-1886. As a result the interest expressed at that convention, the Western Library Association was formed "supplementary to the American Library Association". Arrangements were made to meet again in Indianapolis in October, 1882, but a second meeting was not held until December 3, 1884 in Rock Island, Illinois. Arrangements were again made to meet in Indianapolis, this time in October 1885, but there is no record that another meeting was ever held. In the 1890s state library associations were created at a rapid pace across the nation starting with the New York Library Association in 1890. The Illinois Library Association was founded in 1896. Information about the Western Library Association was found in Katharine L. Sharp's Illinois Libraries first published in 1906. The unused pre-stamped envelope above is for the Co-operative Committee of the Western Library Association with a Peoria, Illinois return address. It is a small reminder of this short-lived association which was evidently the first association of librarians created after the American Library Association.