Alexandria Library Civil Rights Sit-In, 1939

On August 21, 1939 five young black men between the ages of 18 and 22 walked individually into the Alexandria, Virginia "whites only" public library and asked for a library card. When they were refused they walked to the stacks selected a book and sat down quietly at a table and began to read. The police were called and they were arrested for disorderly conduct. This was the first civil rights sit-in in a public facility in America. It was organized by Samuel Tucker, a mostly unheralded civil rights activist. This story reminds us of one of the darker sides of library history. This situation didn't just exist in Alexandria, Virginia. It was prevalent throughout the Southern states. By the time I started my first professional library job at the public library in Charlotte, NC in 1967, the situation, fortunately, had changed drastically. At the Charlotte library facilities were open to all and there was an aggressive outreach campaign to reach all parts of the community with library services. I was in Alexandria recently and admired their impressive main library building which I'm sure can now be used by anyone. Extensive coverage of the Alexandria Library sit-in can be found on the Alexandria Black History Museum web site. A nice article about Samuel Tucker can be found HERE. Interestingly, very little about this historic event can be found on the Alexandria Library web site. I became aware of this story through the special event envelope produced by Pushin' the Envelope Limited Edition Cachets which is shown above. I have information on how a library can go about producing souvenir envelopes such as this one HERE.

Carnegie Library for Sale in Duluth

For less than the cost of a small condo in a big city you can buy a restored Carnegie Library building in Duluth, Minnesota. The Duluth News Tribune reports in an article that the owners of the Carnegie Library building are offering it for sale for $862,000. The building generates revenue by renting office space. This sounds like a pretty good deal. All of the hard lifting has already been done. A listing for the property can be found HERE. A previous web article about the restoration of the building along with photographs can be found HERE. The former Carnegie Library building in Superior, Wisconsin just across the bridge from Duluth hasn't been so fortunate. It's a vacant building in search of a purpose. Thanks to Paul Nelson for a heads up on this story. Paul has an excellent blog which he calls Retiring Guy's Digest. Paul scours the Internet for stories on "libraries, publishing, technology, politics, social issues, and more". Click HERE for some of Paul's posts on Carnegie libraries. The postcard of the Duluth Carnegie Library which is shown above is from my collection.

Manchester's Historic Public Library Building

I find postcards depicting the interiors of libraries particularly appealing, especially when library users are shown. This postcard shows the interior of the Carpenter Memorial Library in Manchester, New Hampshire. It is unusual to see this many library users depicted on a postcard. The building still serves as the Main Library of the Manchester City Library. The building was dedicated as the Elenora Blood Carpenter Building in 1914 in memory of the wife of Frank Pierce Carpenter who funded its construction. A nice history of the library is located HERE. The history's location on the library's web site meets my "two click" criteria for online library histories. After reaching the library's web page, one click on "About" or "About Our Library" and one more click on "Library History". Every library should have a short history of the library on its web site.

Lester K. Born and the Library of Congress

The envelope (cover) above was mailed to Dr. Lester K. Born in Berlin on November 30, 1948 while he was working with the Reparations and Restitution Branch of the Office of the Military Government, U.S. Zone. The return address on the back of the envelope indicates that it was mailed by Dr. Ulrich Wendland. Wendland served as the director of the Gdansk Archive in Danzig from 1941-1945 and is credited with helping to save parts of the archive in the last days of World War II. After his post-war work in Berlin, Born joined the staff of the Library of Congress where he held several important positions. Interestingly, however, an action which Born took while working for the Military Government in Berlin was responsible for an investigation of the Library of Congress in 1997 for possible acquisition of books and manuscripts that should have been restituted to the victims of the Holocaust. Born allegedly wrote a memorandum in the late 1940s while at the Offenbach Archival Depot in Germany which suggested that members of the Library of Congress Mission in Germany had inappropriately removed items from the Archives for the Library's collection. The result of the investigation was that the Library of Congress Mission had acted appropriately and that "the restitution of books to their proper owners was handled with diligence, care, and respect, and characterized by close attention to existing regulation". The investigation took place long after Born's career at the Library of Congress had ended. More on the investigation and the Library of Congress Mission in Germany can be found HERE. Born's positions at the Library of Congress included serving as Special Assistant on the Microfilm Program, Coordinator of Microreproduction Projects, and Head of the Manuscript Section of the Descriptive Cataloging Division. Born played an important role in the development of the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections at the Library of Congress.

Spofford's Book Palace

On a recent trip to Washington, D. C. I was able to make a quick visit to the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress, one of many visits I have made over the years. The building never fails to be awe inspiring. The person most responsible for bringing about the construction of this magnificent building was Ainsworth Rand Spofford, the sixth Librarian of Congress. Spofford referred to the building as the "Book Palace of the American People". I scanned the first image shown above from the Harper's Weekly issue of February 27, 1897. It shows the crowded conditions in the old Congressional Reading Room in the Capitol just before the move to the new building. Spofford actually appears in the illustration. He is the tall bearded man walking from the right. The second image is the cover of a folder of postcards of the library. It calls the building "The World's Most Beautiful Building". The final image is a picture of the Great Hall which I took on my recent visit. It's a shame that at least one of the major buildings of the Library of Congress couldn't have been named for Spofford. After all, Spofford had more to do with making the Library of Congress the world's greatest library than did Jefferson, Adams, or Madison. More about the buildings of the Library of Congress can be found HERE.

British Isles Bibliophilately

For philatelists, London is the place to be in 2010. The London 2010 Festival of Stamps is well underway, and a major stamp show began there on May 8th. As noted in my post on April 26, the world's first adhesive postage stamp, the Penny Black, went on sale in London 170 years ago this month. I have put together a web page featuring postage stamps related to libraries of the British Isles as a salute to this important philatelic anniversary. The postage stamp above was issued in 1966 by Ajman. It features Winston Churchill in front of the British Museum at a time when the museum included what is now the British Library. The Museum still contains one of the most elaborate library reading rooms in the world. The British Library which is home to one of the world's most extensive collections of postage stamps is an active participant in the London 2010 Festival of Stamps and has scheduled a number of activities for this occasion.

Marketing Library History in Sheboygan

For me attending a conference of the Wisconsin Association of Public Libraries (WAPL), a division of the Wisconsin Library Association (WLA) is like walking into a bar called Cheers. There are lots of longtime friends and "everybody knows your name". These days my name is mostly associated with library history, and that was why I was in Sheboygan, Wisconsin on Thursday and Friday of this week. At a conference with the theme “Anchoring the Past, Setting Sail for the Future”, I was there to help anchor the past with a program which I called “Turning Your Library’s History into a Public Relations Asset”. The conference was held at the Blue Harbor Resort, the anchor to a major harbor development, right on beautiful Lake Michigan. Dick Nelson, the conference program chair, had to twist my arm a little to get me to do the program. Not that I would actually pass up on an opportunity to promote library history, but when competing with five other programs in the same time slot I wasn't optimistic about the size of the audience I would be talking to. With past programs about library history I have sometimes ended up talking to a very small choir of like minded individuals. In this instance, that turned out not to be the case. The size of my audience was a respectable percentage of the 300 plus conference attendees.

In any case to hedge my bets and to ensure that the preparation for my presentation was not wasted, I had taken this opportunity to enhance the

website of the Wisconsin Library Heritage Center (WLHC) by creating three new web pages. One of my responsibilities as Chair of the Steering Committee for the WLHC is maintaining the website. This also enabled me to avoid using technology onsite in my presentation (something I hate), and enabled the audience to avoid taking copious notes on my words of wisdom. This approach also allows those of you reading this post to benefit from the presentation without being there. Since a library has to have researched and compiled some form of a library history in order to turn it into a public relations asset, the first web page supporting my presentation deals with Researching and Writing a Library History. I want to acknowledge ALA's Library History Round Table, Bernadette Lear, and other members of the WLHC Steering Committee for much of the content on this web page. The second web page is about the core message of the program "Marketing Library History", and the final web page is focused on "Celebrating Anniversaries".

Attending the WAPL Conference was a great opportunity to talk to old and new friends. The reception on Thursday night at the Mead Public Library was a wonderful event. The library's outstanding facility includes many interesting spaces and artifacts. Among them is a portrait of Andrew Carnegie from their old Carnegie facility (shown on the postcard above). I'm hoping to take advantage of some of their display cases for an exhibit later in the year. While in Sheboygan I also picked up a vintage public library book box which WAPL Conference Chair David Weinhold had assisted me in obtaining via Craigslist. On the way home I swung up to Menasha to pick up a library history exhibit featuring the Tabard Inn Library, the Booklovers Library, and Wisconsin Library Memorabilia. All in all a great couple of days for a library history buff.

Note: This entry was also posted on the Wisconsin Library Heritage Center website.

Congregational Library, London

Although I collect postal librariana related to libraries throughout the world, most of my posts on the Library History Buff Blog pertain to libraries in the United States. Today (April 26) the Library and Information History Group (LIHG) of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP), the United Kingdom's equivalent of the American Library Association, held a one day conference on parochial libraries. So I thought I would do a post about a group of folded letters mailed to the Congregational Library in London in the 19th century. All of the letters are mailed to Reverend Algernon Wells in his capacity as Secretary to the Colonial Missionary Society. The Colonial Missionary Society evidently had its offices at the Congregational Library, but had no other direct connection to the library. The earliest of the letters was mailed in 1838 and the latest in 1844. All of the letters have postal markings, but only the 1842 letter has a postage stamp (shown above). You may know that it was Great Britain that issued the first postage stamp (commonly called the Penny Black) in 1840. The 1840 letter shown above was mailed just a month before the Penny Black became valid for postage on May 7. At the time the letters were mailed the Congregational Library was located on Blomfield Street in Finsbury, a location it occupied from 1831 to 1866. The use of the terminology "parochial library" is more common in the United Kingdom where one of the earliest pieces of legislation was the Parochial Libraries Act of 1708.

One of 5 Most Beautiful Reading Rooms

Today I visited the newly renovated library reading room at the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison. After its renovation I believe that it is one of the five most beautiful reading rooms in America. Others in my opinion include the main reading room in the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress, the main reading room of the New York Public Library's Research Division, and Bates Hall of the Boston Public Library. I invite you to nominate one or more libraries to complete or include in the top five most beautiful library reading rooms. When the American Library Association met in Waukesha in 1901, conference attendees came to Madison to visit the newly completed building of the Wisconsin Historical Society and, "There was but one opinion of the entire party in regard to the beauty and arrangement of the building, and that was satisfactory to the highest degree."

Revisiting Dartmouth's Social Friends' Library

In one of those unusual coincidences I wrote about the Society of Social Friends, a student literary society at Dartmouth College, on Saturday and on Sunday at a local stamp show I obtained an amazing 1829 letter from a student member of the Society. I am able to obtain some of the more interesting items in my postal librariana collection because a few stamp dealers (thanks Terry) keep their eye out for items for "the library cover guy". This item was a stampless letter (postage stamps didn't come into being in the United States until 1847) mailed by Dartmouth student Henry Hoit to his father Daniel in Sandwich, NH. The letter is almost totally about the need for Henry to make a donation for the library of the Social Friends and the case for why his father should advance him the funds to do so. Henry writes in part, "You probably well know that our libraries are made and increased entirely by the donation of its members. The usual sum is from $5 to $50 and this is all that we have to pay for the use of 8000 volumes of choice, interesting, instructive books consisting of History, Biography, Travels, Theology, Philosophy, Languages, etc." Henry goes on to say that all in his class have given $10 except a few have given $15 and two "charity scholars" have given $5 and $7 respectively. There is a notation on the letter by Daniel Hoit that indicates that Henry was successful and that funds had been sent. Daniel Hoit or "General" Hoit as he was addressed because of his rank in the state militia was a prominent person in New Hampshire and had served a number of terms in the State Legislature. He ran for Governor on two occasions. William Henry Hoyt (he later changed his name from Hoit to the original family name of Hoyt) graduated from Dartmouth in 1831 and then went to Andover Theological Seminary. He was ordained first as an Episcopal minister but later converted to the Catholic faith and became a priest. Henry's brother Albert graduated from Dartmouth in 1829 and became a prominent artist. Henry mentions Albert in his letter.