Best Bookmobile Websites

Happy National Bookmobile Day! For this occasion I've selected some bookmobile websites for your enjoyment. The image above is of the cover of a large brochure put out by the Gerstenslager company in the 1970s. According to the inside copy, "This book has been written and printed with one basic purpose...to help the professional librarian and library board member plan and develop a highly effective bookmobile...one that completely fills the need, both of basics of body style, size and book-carrying capacity." I picked it up at an ALA conference.

The American Library Association's National Bookmobile Day webpage

American Libraries Magazine's Pinterest Bookmobiles Image Collection

The Library History Buff's Tribute to Bookmobiles

Bookmobiles: A History

Wisconsin Library Heritage Center Bookmobile Page

Bookmobiles Parnassus on Wheels (Flickr Group)

The First Bookmobile, WHILBR webpage

Bookmobiles on Postage Stamps

Google Bookmobile Image Search

Celebrating National Library Week With Exhibits

For several years I have displayed portions of my librariana collection in Wisconsin libraries during National Library Week. As I mentioned in my previous post I have an exhibit of my ALA Library War Service collection on display at the Hales Corners Public Library for April. During April and parts of May I also have an exhibit of my Wisconsin library memorabilia collection on display at the Waupaca Area Public Library. The exhibit at Waupaca features Andrew Carnegie's Wisconsin Library Legacy but also includes souvenir items for non-Carnegie libraries. Although the Waupaca library is now located in a fairly new facility, for many years it occupied a Carnegie building which now houses the Waupaca Historical Society. My exhibits are under the auspices of the Wisconsin Library Heritage Center for which I am chair of the Steering Committee. For 2012, exhibits will be on display in a library for every month except December. Exhibits are a great way to help publicize National Library Week and to encourage people to visit the library. Exhibits which focus on library history are especially appropriate. Why not plan one for your library for next year's National Library Week. The images above are of the Waupaca exhibit.

Books for Soldiers and Sailors in WWI - An Exhibit

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have put together an exhibit on the American Library Association Library War Service for the month of April at the Hales Corners Public Library in Wisconsin. I've included some images of the exhibit below.

Deaderick and Rothrock, Uncommon Women

Both Rothrock and Deaderick were directors of this library.

Looking back over my library career I feel fortunate to have met and come to know many exceptional library people. Since this is Women's History Month I thought I would close it with a post about a couple of those exceptional people who happen to be women. After I was released in 1969 from a military obligation that had interrupted my library career, I managed to land a job as Director of the Clinch-Powell Regional Library System located in East Tennessee.   The library system consisted of six rural counties in Appalachia and I was the only public librarian with a library degree in the six counties. Feeling a little isolated I sought out connections with librarians in the nearby Knoxville urban area. It was through this effort that I met Lucile Deaderick (1914-2006) who had recently taken the position of Director of the Knox County Public Library. Tennessee had twelve multi-county regional library systems and four metropolitan county library systems. The directors of all of these library systems met quarterly with the state library staff in Nashville. For one of those meetings Lucile invited me to ride with her and a friend. The friend turned out to be Mary Utopia Rothrock (1890-1976), a pioneer in rural public library development and former Librarian for the Tennessee Valley Authority.  Rothrock was also a former President of the American Library Association (1946-47). While Lucile and I were in meetings Rothrock conducted research at the Tennessee State Library and Archives. This trip was a memorable one for a young librarian embarking on a library career. Thinking about that trip I did some online searching and came across an online article about Lucile Deaderick in Metro Pulse written by Jack Neely shortly after her death in 2006. Neely used the phrase "An Uncommon Life" in the title of his article about Deaderick.  In addition to a varied library career which included a stint as editor of the A.L.A. Bulletin, Deaderick and a friend operated a small farm for a number of years. Read Neely's article to learn more about her "uncommon life". Both Deaderick and Rothrock were strong individuals who chartered their own courses. Both were also historians which makes their story even more appropriate for Women's History Month.  

Yale University Library and World War I

One of the biggest challenges faced by historians is the absence or loss of historical records which in many instances have been deliberately disposed of. The historian's best friends are those individuals who have the vision to acquire and preserve records that document important historical events. John Christopher Schwab, Yale University Librarian 1905-1916, was one such individual. In the early stages of World War I when the United States was still neutral, Schwab and the Yale University Library, as documented in the letter and circular above, aggressively sought to collect "the ephemeral publications on every phase of the present war which appear as well in the neutral as in the belligerent countries." The two items are in my collection along with the envelope in which they were contained addressed to a Yale alumnus in Natal, South Africa and mailed on May 1, 1915. It's difficult to determine where the materials collected by Yale in this effort are currently located, but Yale does have an extensive portal to its World War I resources on its website.

March Birthdays for Former Library Leaders

Envelope mailed by Charles A. Cutter on Oct. 20, 1896

Below I have listed the significant birthdays in March for former American library leaders. All are included in the Dictionary of American Library Biography (Libraries Unlimited, 1978) or the 1990 Supplement.

Thomas Lynch Montgomery (1862-1929), 150th anniversary of birth on March 4. Served as State Librarian of Pennsylvania (1903-1921) and Librarian of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (1921-1929).

Henry Augustus Homes (1812-1887), 200th anniversary of birth on March 10. Served as Supervisor of the General Library of New York State Library from 1862 to 1887. He was one of the three original Vice-Presidents of the American Library Association following its establishment in 1876.

Charles Ammi Cutter (1837-1903), 175th anniversary of birth on March 14. Served as Librarian of the Boston Athenaeum (1869-1893) and Librarian of the Forbes Library in Northampton, MA (1894-1903). He was a founding member of the American Library Association and served as President in 1887-1889. He is noted for his contribution to cataloging and classification in libraries. He was a contemporary and sometimes rival of Melvil Dewey.

James Bertram (1872-1934), 140th anniversary of birth on March 17. Bertram was Secretary to Andrew Carnegie and the Carnegie Corporation of New York from 1897 to 1934. He played a major role in the distribution of Carnegie grants for library buildings in the United States and other Carnegie Corporation projects.

Nathan Van Patten (1887-1956), 125th anniversary of birth on March 24. Served as Librarian of Stanford University Libraries (1927-1947).

Guy Elwood Marion (1882-1969), 130th anniversary of birth on March 25. Served as librarian for several special libraries. He was a charter member of the Special Libraries Association and served it in several capacities including President in 1919.

A Good Pleasant Job on the S.S. Washington, 1921

As I've mentioned on earlier posts, I like used postcards and I look for interesting messages on the cards. The postcard above has a picture of the harbor in Cherbourg, France. It was mailed by sea post from the S. S. Washington on September 11, 1921. The message reads: "Have a vacation job on "S.S. Washington" as librarian. Good, pleasant job. Have arranged library of 2,000 books alphabetically." It is signed C. Begemann. It appears to be sent by a student or former student to a teacher at Dickinson High School in Jersey City, NJ. The S.S. Washington mentioned in the postcard is actually the S.S. George Washington which was a German built ship seized by the U.S. during World War I. According to a Wikipedia article the ship was reconditioned for passenger service in 1920. Libraries seem to be pretty standard on passenger/cruise ships. My wife and I took a cruise on the ship Pride of America in Hawaii recently and it had a great library (see below). I think being librarian for that ship's library would also be a "good pleasant job".

Library War Service Map Poster, 1918

I'm working on an exhibit of my ALA WWI Library War Service memorabilia in one of Wisconsin's public libraries for April. I've exhibited this collection on one previous occasion. I've added a very nice item for the upcoming exhibit. It is a poster of a map of the United States (see above) which documents the extent of ALA's Library War Service. It proclaims, "Every Dot on the Map Means a Special War Library for Our Fighting Men". A larger square dot indicates camps with libraries, and a smaller round dot indicates libraries in other buildings. It includes an impressive list of statistics for the Library War Service. They include: 41 camp library buildings in operation; 143 hospitals and Red Cross houses supplied; 243 librarians maintained in the Service; 315 small military camps and posts supplied with books; 600,000 books purchased; 1,030,458 books shipped overseas; and 5,000,000 gift magazines distributed. One of the purposes of the poster is to promote the United War Work Campaign during the week of November 11, 1918 in which ALA actively participated. The poster is 20" x 25" and was probably distributed widely to libraries among other entities. The paper which it is printed on is not the best, and I feel fortunate to have a surviving copy. It is the only one I've seen.

Birds in the Boston Athenaeum, 1900

It's not often you find a letter that begins, "I was just chasing & trying to catch three sparrows that flew into the Reading Room ...." The letter was written on November 11, 1900 by a Harvard student working in the Boston Athenaeum. The student was Edwin DeTurck Bechtel (1880-1957) who later became an attorney and an authority on roses. The letter is a personal letter written on Boston Athenaeum letterhead to Bechtel's family in South Evansville, PA. The first paragraph of Bechtel's letter continues, "I overheated myself, but did not get the birds, and they are now sitting on a molding near the ceiling poking fun at me." A nice addition to my postal librariana collection.

UC Berkeley Library Celebration

The Doe Library of the University of California Berkeley Library is celebrating its centennial with a variety of activities tomorrow (March 21). I thought I would pay tribute to this event by featuring a couple of vintage envelopes from my postal librariana collection.  When the first envelope above was mailed by the Berkeley Library on October 9, 1888, the library had been in operation for 19 years. It's initial collection consisted of 1,036 books which were donated by the College of California. The envelope is addressed to C. R. (Charles Russell) Orcutt, a famous California horticulturist. The second envelope above was mailed by the Bancroft Library on October 29, 1891. The Bancroft Library was the personal library of Hubert Howe Bancroft which focused on the history of California and the West. The Bancroft Library which included 60,000 bound volumes and 10,000 manuscript items became part of the UC Berkeley Library in 1905. There is a nice chronology of the UC Berkeley Library's history on its website. Happy birthday Doe Library!