Libraries - Traditions and Innovations: Papers from the Library History Seminar XIII 9783110450842, 9783110448337

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Libraries: Traditions and Innovations

Libraries: Traditions and Innovations Papers from the Library History Seminar XIII Edited by Melanie A. Kimball and Katherine M. Wisser

ISBN 978-3-11-044833-7 eISBN (eBook) 978-3-11-045084-2 eISBN (ePUB) 978-3-11-044856-6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: Letter by Philipp Jaffé to his parents, with illustration, 1855 Typesetting: Michael Peschke, Berlin Printing: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Acknowledgements The editors would like to thank Michéle V. Cloonan, Co-Chair of Library Seminar XIII, for having the idea for this volume. Without her there would be no book. Many thanks to the other members of the Program Committee for Library History Seminar XIII, who worked with us to review submissions and bring together a successful conference program: Benjamin Abrahamse, Thomas Bolze, Tom Glynn, and Hope Mayo. We are deeply grateful to the peer reviewers for this volume, who gave their time and expertise reading potential manuscripts and providing much-needed feedback. Finally, thanks to our Editor, Claudia Heyer, for her infinite patience throughout this process.

DOI 10.1515/9783110450842-201

Table of Contents Acknowledgements 

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Melanie A. Kimball and Katherine M. Wisser, Editors Introduction   1 Don Hamerly The Córdovan Library of Caliph al-Hakam II 

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Jordan S. Sly “Improve the Moment” Mechanics’ Institutes and the Culture of Improvement in the Nineteenth-Century   16 Marija Dalbello Ellis Island Library “The Tower of Babel” at America’s Gate 

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Jonathan Cope Libraries, Knowledge, and the Common Good The Cultural Politics of Labor Republicanism in Progressive-Era Wheeling, West Virginia   56 Brenda Mitchell-Powell The 1939 Alexandria, Virginia, Public Library Sit-in Demonstration  Mary Mahoney The Library as Medicine Cabinet Inventing Bibliotherapy in the Interwar Period 

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Margaret A. (Megan) Browndorf World War II and the Building of the Ukrainian Library  Alistair Black Libraries of Light Public Library Design in Britain in the Long 1960s  Biographies 

 153

 124

 108

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Melanie A. Kimball and Katherine M. Wisser

Introduction

Libraries, while deeply steeped in tradition, are sites of innovation and disruption. The papers in this collection were originally presented at the Library History Seminar XIII, which had as its theme “Libraries: Traditions and Innovations.” The conference took place in Boston, Massachusetts, July 31–August 2, 2015, an apt setting to explore traditions and innovations in libraries as the Boston area is home to many important library innovations in the United States, including the first university library and the first large, free municipal library. New information institutions continue to be created there, of which the Digital Public Library of America and the Digital Commonwealth of online heritage materials are two recent examples. Holding the conference in this context provided an environment that illustrates in concrete and intangible ways that libraries are sites of human commotion. The Library History Seminar, held every five years, is one of the regular activities of the Library History Round Table (LHRT) of the American Library Association. The mission of the Round Table is “to encourage research and publication on library history and promote awareness and discussion of historical issues in librarianship.” As part of that mission, LHRT sends out a call for venues for the conference. The process is competitive, with the winning venue defining the theme, time, and place for the conference. The 2015 conference drew international presentations and attendance. Following the conference, presenters were invited to submit papers for a blind peer-review process which resulted in the selection of chapters in this volume. This collection delves into the enduring and evolving aspects of libraries and librarianship. Traditionally, libraries have made their collections available to defined audiences, but today it is increasingly difficult to define and delineate user communities. At the same time, so-called “disruptive technologies” in publishing are resulting in new approaches to the collection and dissemination of information. The conference theme of traditions and innovations is reflected in each chapter. The authors study very different aspects of libraries over time and in different spaces, but each demonstrates how libraries are sites that reflect larger issues of their respective contexts. The themes that shape this collection of papers focus on the ways in which libraries contributed to reinforcing tradition and commanding innovation. The opening chapter, by Don Hamerly, explores the tenth century library of Caliph al-Hakam II in Córdoba, Spain, and how its presence helped to make Córdoba, the largest European city at the time, a center of intellectual and artistic enlightenment. Developed under the influence of the Caliph, the school at the Córdovan Library became a center for book production and trade, a model for schools of learning, and a magnet for learned men from other regions of Europe. These innovations were inclusive of not only Muslim scholars, but Jews and Christians as well. DOI 10.1515/9783110450842-001

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 Melanie A. Kimball and Katherine M. Wisser

The second contribution in this collection moves to the mid-nineteenth century, when in Britain and the Northeastern United States, mechanics institutes thrived. These are the sites of Jordan S. Sly’s study of institute libraries and their evolution from an initial goal of education, to one of moral improvement. These library spaces functioned as purveyors of the political ideologies of their proprietors, who gradually emphasized middle-class values over the educational goals of the early mechanics’ libraries. The role that libraries and librarians played in engaging with the influx of immigrants to the United States in the early twentieth century is the subject of the third chapter. Marija Dalbello examines how librarians from the American Library Association and the New York Public Library worked with the immigrants who were processed through Ellis Island. Issues of literacy and assimilation are tested within the context of a library that is often overlooked as a space for defining and refining the notion of what America was. The twentieth century continues to be a century of disruption for the library environment. Organized labor mobilized to defeat a bond levy in Wheeling, West Virginia in 1904 that would have secured money for the construction of a library using funds from Andrew Carnegie’s foundation. Jonathan Cope explores the complex motives that caused working-class citizens to push back against a measure that appears on its surface to be a common good. For many the Civil Rights movement of 1950s and 1960s in America is symbolized by Rosa Parks’ quiet protest as she refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. Brenda Mitchell-Powell uncovers an earlier deliberate and planned protest that tests our notion of the definition of the Civil Rights movement through a sit in at the public library in Alexandria, Virginia in the late 1930s. This lesser-known act of protest provides evidence not only of the early and enduring perception in American library history that libraries, those intellectual centers of cities paid for by all of the citizens of a municipality, must serve all of the citizens, but also that the library place is seen as an acceptable, even desirable, site for establishing and fighting for the fundamental rights of equal access. While Mitchell-Powell looks at the demand for traditional services by patrons, Mary Mahoney studies the innovation of practice by looking at the bibliotherapy movement in American libraries. Bibliotherapy was a new service that had its origins in the decades following World War I as executed by the Library War Service established by the American Library Association and the Library of Congress. Bibliotherapists considered what they did to be a science, and they practiced in hospitals, not libraries, where they worked with patients to choose appropriate reading to satisfy individual needs. This movement helps to clarify the role that resituating library work in new contexts engaged traditional questions of selection and value. The devastation wrought by World War II left libraries through Europe reeling. Megan Browndorf looks at the case of libraries in the Ukraine that were decimated following years of German occupation. She explores the impact of the Sovietization

Introduction 

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of Eastern Ukraine used to rebuild destroyed libraries as well as adding new structures. The new libraries gave an opportunity for reform and innovation that benefitted Soviet institutions, the repercussions of which can still be seen today. Whereas Browndorf examines the social and cultural construction of libraries in a post-war context, Alistair Black investigates how librarians and architects planned new library spaces. During the 1960s in Britain as the country recovered from World War II, a deliberate effort was made to modernize and construct a better society. As a direct counter to Victorian notions of libraries as fortresses, new library buildings were constructed, intended as social spaces where users could engage their intellectual curiosity with a range of materials and with one another. This architectural movement has, in hindsight, been viewed as dull, boxy constructions of concrete and steel; Black provides a different lens to consider these buildings. He proposes that they are “libraries of light” that “ushered in an imaginative change” in the way library spaces were used.

Conclusion From tenth century Moorish Spain to 1960s Great Britain, this volume explores the continuous tension between tradition and innovation in libraries in terms of collections, services, and space. While most library patrons do not consider libraries as “places of disruption,” this collection of articles illustrates that libraries are places of turmoil, where real social and cultural controversies are explored and resolved, where invention takes place, and where identities are contested and defined. As S. R. Ranganthan states in his fifth law of library science, libraries are growing organisms. The chapters in this book bear witness to that reality regardless of the time, place, or audience it serves.

Don Hamerly

The Córdovan Library of Caliph al-Hakam II In studying Spain’s rich history an interested scholar might overlook the slim representation of al-Hakam II al-Mustansir’s brief caliphate were it not for the extraordinary library he amassed in Córdoba, typically the only reason that al-Hakam II is mentioned in histories of the period. One exception is Safran’s exploration of the Spanish caliphates’ claims to legitimate caliphal rule, which mentions al-Hakam’s library in a single sentence.1 Does the library at Córdoba signify al-Hakam II as a mere “bibliophiliac querk [sic]” in a long, stable dynasty of Muslim rule?2 Or were his sixteen years as caliph more than just a faint blip in the nearly eight hundred years of Islamic acculturation of southern Spain, or, more properly, al-Andalus? A deliberate look suggests that al-Hakam II had more than a mere personal interest in books, that under his stewardship the Caliphate of Córdoba shone brighter than ever before or after, and that his emphasis on books and education expanded a model of relatively peaceful intercultural cooperation and steered Western Europe toward the Renaissance and the invention of modern ideals of general and higher education. The early fifth century in southern Spain brought Roman decline and invasions by Gothic tribes displaced in the north, first the Vandals in 409 then the Visigoths in 414. The Vandals crossed into Africa in 429 to establish a regional power there for a hundred years.3 According to Makki – although disputed by some scholars – later Arabs in North Africa referred to the place from which the raiders came by a distorted version of the raiders’ tribal name, Andalus.4 Gothic rule in al-Andalus ended in 711 when Tariq ibn Ziyad invaded with a small Berber force and rousted the Gothic king Roderic. Forty plus years of tribal squabbling followed, but in 756 the young Umayyad prince Abd al-Rahman, fleeing his Damascus home after the Abbisid overthrow of his ruling family, eventually found his way to Córdoba and began transforming it into a new Damascus and laying “the foundations of the greatness of the Moorish Empire in Spain.”5 The defeat of Charlemagne at Roncesvalles in 778 stabilized al-Rahman’s rule – al-Rahman’s only defeat was the loss of Narbonne, north of the Pyrenees, to Pepin, Charlem1 Janina M. Safran. Defining Boundaries in Al-Andalus: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Islamic Iberia (New York: Cornell University Press, 2013). 2 David Wasserstein. “The Library of al-Hakam II al-Mustansir and the Culture of Islamic Spain” Manuscripts of the Middle East 5 (1990–1991), 103. 3 Rafael Altamira. A History of Spain: From the Beginnings to the Present Day. Translated by Muna Lee (New York: D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc., 1949). Harold Livermore, A History of Spain (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1958). Pierre Vilar, Spain: A Brief History. Translated by Brain Tate (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1967). 4 Mahmoud Makki, “The Political History of al-Andalus” in The Legacy of Muslim Spain, ed. By Salma Khadra Jayyusi (Leiden, The Netherlands: E.J. Brill, 1992), 3–87. 5 Ulick Ralph Burke, A History of Spain: From the Earliest Times to the Death of Ferdinand the Catholic (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1900), 131. DOI 10.1515/9783110450842-002



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agne’s father, in 761 – and enabled him to continue the restoration of Córdoba begun by earlier Umayyad governors. Construction on Córdoba’s Great Mosque began in 785 and continued throughout successive reigns of his Umayyad heirs. By the time of Abd al-Rahman II (822–852) al-Andalus had evolved into the Eastern-style cultural center that the displaced Umayyads hoped would rival their Syrian home. Burke, in describing “the wonderful aptitude of the Cordovans for science and philosophy, of their love of books, and their care for education” in Rahman’s day, shares the following note: The Caliphs maintained in all the great towns of Egypt, Syria, Arabia, North Africa, and even far-away Persia, Residents [sic] whose duty it was to transmit to Cordova copies of all important works either of literature or of science that were to be procured in the country where they resided, as well as to inform the Spanish Moslem Government of any interesting discoveries, or scientific or industrial progress. Viardot, Essaies, pp. 100, 101 ; Gayangos, i., 139–167.6

After Rahman’s death in 852 Córdoba’s corona waned under the ignoble rules of the intolerant Muhammad I (852–886) and his sons al-Mundhir (886–888) and Abdullah (888–912). Islamic culture in al-Andalus ascended during the fifty-year reign of Abd al-Rahman III (912–961), from whom other European royals, including Byzantine emperor Constantine and Otto, king of the Slavs and Germans, courted favor. Declaring himself Caliph in 929, Abd al-Rahman III established the Caliphate of Córdoba, the brief delineation of the golden age of Andalusi Islamic culture that reached its zenith under his son and heir, al-Hakam II, then unraveled after the turn of the eleventh century. Among the constellation of attributes that defined the height of Córdovan society, literacy shone the brightest. Nineteenth-century scholar Reinhart Dozy wrote that during this time “nearly everyone could read and write . . . whilst in Christian Europe only the rudiments of learning were known, and that by the few, mostly clergy.”7 Burke described it as “a time when Christian Europe was steeped in ignorance and barbarism, in superstition and prejudice,” while every branch of science was studied under the favour and protection of the Ommeyad Caliphs. Medicine, surgery, botany, chemistry, poetry, the arts, philosophy, literature, all flourished at the court and city of Cordova. Agriculture was cultivated with a perfection, both theoretical and practical, which is apparent from the works of contemporary Arab writers.8

Burke noted particularly the work of Abu Zakariah al Awán (Ibn al-Awwam), a twelfth century Sevillian agriculturalist whose agronomical opus Kitāb al-filāḥa includes

6 Burke, 150. 7 Philip K. Hitti, History of the Arabs: From the Earliest Times to the Present (London: Macmillan & Co., 1964), 531. 8 Burke, 170–171.

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six hundred ninety citations from “earlier Sevillian agronomical writers.”9 While no evidence links al-Awwam’s work directly to tenth-century Córdoba, Seville’s regional proximity to Córdoba, with its city gardens, vast agricultural production outside the city walls, and the wonders of az-Zahra, al-Rahman’s suburban palace, suggests one. The city of Córdoba, on the northern bank of the Guadalquivir River in south-central Spain, is perfectly situated for use as a palatine city. A bridge from Córdoba’s days as the capital of Roman Baetica marks the upper limit of navigation on the river, which flows toward the Atlantic to just north of the port city of Cadiz. When the sixth governor representing the Umayyads in Damascus made his seat there in 719, he began restoration of the bridge, built city walls, and installed water mills. The city quickly outgrew the walls and spread, forming suburbs outside the walls and south of the river.10 Córdoba remained an important center of commerce, lying along the major road from Saragossa in the north through Toledo in the center to Seville and Cadiz in the south.11 Abd al-Rahman II, when he was not taming border conflicts with Christians in the north, fostered such a culture of Islamic arts that critics claimed the Córdovans “aped the fashions of Baghdad,” which had become the center of Islamic rule in the East.12 To complete his creation of a Baghdad of the West, he lured the poet Ziryab to take up residence there. Ziryab captured the imagination of the Córdovans, influencing not only what and how people read, but also their fashion in clothes and their hairstyles. Under Abd al-Rahman II architecture advanced. Expansion of the Great Mosque included the engineering of the famed double arches. During the ascension of the Caliphate, streams of Sudanese gold supplied stock for dinars, which were minted there, and provided for caliphate luxuries, continuation of the great building projects, and patronage of the arts.13 The Caliphate “called on men of letters, wits, musicians, poets, scientists, and lawyers from the East, and offered them places at court coupled with fat stipends.”14 Perhaps the earliest conveyance of Arabic sciences northward across the Alps occurred in 953 when John of Gorze, on a diplomatic mission to Córdoba from Otto the Great, fell in with the caliph’s physician and counselor Hasdai Ibn Shaprut, studied there three years, then left for his return trip with “a horseload” of Arabic books.15

9 Thomas F. Glick, Steven J. Livesey, and Faith Wallis, Medieval Science, Technology and Medicine: An Encyclopedia. (New York: Routledge, 2005), 13. 10 Maurice Lombard, The Golden Age of Islam, translated by Joan Spencer (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing, 1975), 140–145. 11 Lombard, 72. 12 Lombard, 81. 13 Lombard, 61. 14 Lombard, 81. 15 S.K. Padover, “Muslim Libraries” in Medieval Library, ed. By James Westfall Thompson (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1939), 363.



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Under Abd al-Rahman III Córdoba likely had the largest fleet in the world and sat on a bank of twenty million gold pieces.16 According to Ibn Said, the thirteenth-century historian, the Córdovans were the cleanest people on earth with respect to their person, dress, beds, and interior of their houses. They enjoyed well-paved and lighted streets, tiled roofs, and running water via aqueducts throughout a city that comprised an area twenty-four by six miles and held at its most populous a quarter of a million inhabitants or more. 17 Córdoba boasted 1600 mosques; 900 public baths; 213,077 homes for ordinary people; 60,300 mansions for notables; and 80,455 shops. Water wheels and water mills in the Guadalquivir irrigated fields cultivated with crops from the east, such as oranges, watermelons, and dates (119). But above all, Córdoba was an intellectual center, and no more so than under al-Hakam II, son and heir to Abd al-Rahman III. When al-Hakam II assumed the title of caliph in 961, he was forty-six years old. As prince and heir, he had throughout many years enjoyed the best teachers and access to the royal library begun by Muhammad I a hundred years before.18 He began to collect books before his teens and patronized the copying and composition of books in his twenties.19 Once he undertook stewardship of the Caliphate, al-Hakam’s love of books became the cultural fascination of all al-Andalus. During his reign al-Andalus had seventy libraries. Public libraries and private collections sprang up all over as those seeking the caliph’s favor sought to emulate his patronage of learning.20 According to Ibn Said, Córdoba held more books than any other city in al-Andalus, and its inhabitants were the most enthusiastic in caring for their libraries; such collections were regarded as symbols of status and social leadership. Men who had no knowledge whatsoever would make it their business to have a library in their homes; they would be selective in their acquisitions, so that they might boast of possessing unica, or copies in the handwriting of a particular calligrapher.21

In addition to the many libraries and collections, al-Hakam II provided for twenty-seven free schools for the poor.22 Three were in the neighborhood of the Great Mosque, and twenty-four were in the suburbs. He also provided academies for the rich and nourished the University of Córdoba by appointing his brother Mundhir general supervisor of learning and securing renowned professors from Baghdad. Under Mundhir the university flourished, attracting Christians, Jewish, and Muslim 16 Robert Hillenbrand, “’The Ornament of the World’: Medieval Cordoba as a Cultural Centre” in The Legacy of Muslim Spain, ed. by Salma Khadra Jayyusi (Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1992), 117. 17 Hillenbrand, 118–119. 18 Fred Lerner, The Story of Libraries: From the Invention of Writing to the Computer Age (New York: Continuum, 2002). 19 Wasserstein, 101. 20 Lerner, 71. 21 Hillenbrand, 120. 22 S.M. Imamuddin, Political History of Muslim Spain (Dacca, Pakistan: Najmah Sons, 1969).

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students from Spain and other parts of Europe, Africa and Asia, thereby helping to enlighten regions on three continents as those educated at Córdoba returned home learned, and likely full of stories of the wonders of the caliphal city. In Imamuddin’s estimation, Córdoba was “the same to Europe as the head to the body and what Europeans learnt was mostly from Córdoba. Hakam raised the level of civilization in Spain to such a height that Córdoba served as a beacon in the darkness which then prevailed in Europe.”23 Of all al-Hakam’s accomplishments, none compares with his amassing the great collection that was his own caliphal library. Scattering throughout the eastern cities of Alexandria, Baghdad, and Damascus, his agents bought, copied, or otherwise acquired thousands of manuscripts. At home copyists, illuminators, bookbinders, fact checkers, and librarians – over five hundred in all – aided him in swelling the collection to over 400,000 volumes.24 The catalog alone filled forty-four books of twenty pages each, more books than could be found in many northern European libraries at the time. The Córdovan Library of al-Hakam II likely housed as many books “as all Christian Europe combined, shelving among its treasures long-lost Western wisdom and exotic new ideas from the East. Where Europe’s scribes had been reduced to copying and recopying the few classical texts that survived barbarian pillage, Islam’s scholars now introduced Europeans to Hindu-Arabic numerals, higher mathematics, new medical techniques, and fresh approaches to philosophy.”25 Not a mere collector of books, Al-Hakam II was a renowned scholar reputed to have known the contents of all the books in his collection: “Thus he increased his learning considerably and surpassed the learned men of his time in the knowledge of history, biography and genealogy. He was a historian of approved merit and an impartial critic. His historical information was so accurate and his judgment so profound that his opinions were hardly ever questioned by the great scholars of the Muslim world.”26 He was known to have made copious notes in the flyleaves of his books, which included summaries in Arabic of non-Islamic religious texts, histories of Islamic Spain, poetry, and Greek scientific writings in Arabic.27 The presence of his marginal notes in books from the caliphal collection increased their value to later scholars.28 The only surviving manuscript of Hakam’s library, dated 970, is a copy of a work on religious law discovered in a mosque library in Fez (Morocco) by LeviProvençal in 1934 with a note saying it was copied for Hakam II.29

23 Imamuddin, 177. 24 Lerner, 71. 25 Chris Lowney, A Vanished World: Medieval Spain’s Golden Age of Enlightenment (New York: Free Press, 2005), 5. 26 Imamuddin, 183. 27 Imamuddin, 182. Wasserstein, 99–101. 28 Lerner, 71. 29 Imamuddin, 182. Wasserstein, 99.



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Of the physical library itself history reveals just comments from librarians who had worked there. At one time the chief librarian was a eunuch named Tālid: “The bookcases were made of polished and perfumed wood. Golden inscriptions indicated the contents of the shelves and several rooms in the palace were set apart for the work of copying, illuminating, gilding, and binding books for which the most skillful persons of both sexes were employed.”30 And from the eunuch Bakiya, at some time in charge of the library, via Ibn Hazm, came this note, that like the Great Mosque, the library was constantly outgrowing its accommodations. On one occasion it took five days to move the poetry collection alone from one place to another, likely within the Alcázar, or palace, of al-Hakam II.31 The result of al-Hakam’s bibliomania was that Córdoba became a great book market “where the literary productions of every country were available for sale.”32 Copy shops, which often employed women, and bookshops enjoyed more business than jewelry traders and silk shops. Such patronage attracted “large numbers of learned men, including physicians, philosophers, historians, geographers, astronomers and mathematicians to live in Cordova.”33 One advantage the Andalusis had in the book trades was an abundance of cheap flax-based paper. Rather than the parchment or papyrus of the Romans, or the vellum of northern Europe, the Spanish Muslims produced their books in paper, which may explain the loss of so many of them. However, their use of cheap paper allowed a higher rate of production of books than other media and likely contributed to the inarguable disparity between the book trades of al-Andalus and the rest of Europe. When al-Hakam II was taxing the shelves of the Alcázar with his 400,000 mujallad, or volumes, the “major” library at St. Gall in Switzerland could list only six hundred works.34 The fact that the Islamic schools employed women as copyists, which allowed for a greater production of materials, contributed to the spread of literacy in al-Andalus, as did the lack of political assemblies and theatres in the Muslim culture, making books almost the sole means of acquiring knowledge.35 Under al-Hakam II, no town in al-Andalus was without its schools, and all the principal cities – Seville, Malaga, Saragossa, and Jaen – had institutes of higher learning modeled after the university in Córdoba, and all would later distinguish themselves.36 After Al-Hakam II succumbed to a stroke on October 1, 976, the fate of the Caliphate fell to his young son Hisham II, who ruled in name only. Muhammad ibn Abi Aamir, known as al-Mansur, or Almanzor, hajib to Hisham II, positioned himself as

30 Imamuddin, 179. 31 Imamuddin, 182. 32 Imamuddin, 182. 33 Ibid. 34 Hillenbrand, 121. 35 Hillenbrand, 121. Hitti, 563. 36 Imamuddin, 176–177.

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a virtual dictator, establishing an administration of religious and intellectual intolerance. Al-Mansur wooed the clergy by waging war against the Christians in the north and burning the “heretical” scientific and philosophical books in the royal library.37 All the libraries, public and private, including the great caliphal library of Córdoba, suffered in civil conflicts and wars with Christians in the north. The Caliphate did not survive al-Mansur’s harsh rule, falling victim to factionalism and internal strife through his rule and the brief rules of his incapable sons Abdul Malik and Abdur Rahman in succession. After Hisham’s death in 1013 the caliphate disintegrated into a number of independent fractious principalities. As for the books, one Arab historian noted, “Some were taken to Seville, some to Granada, some to Almeira and to other provincial cities. I myself met with many in this city (Toledo) that were saved from ruin.”38 The dispersal of the great caliphal library under al-Mansur indicates to some degree its importance, as many of the books there challenged orthodox views. One can imagine the efforts by scholars and wealthy nobles to salvage what they could from al-Mansur’s fires in an effort to preserve the vast store of knowledge contained therein, the access to which had been not a luxury but a common right. The world-changing effects of the library had already begun before al-Mansur’s twentysix-year reign (until his death in 1002) brought the decline of the caliphate in al-Andalus, its dissolution into warring petty kingdoms, and the shift of power to Christian kingdoms. The rise of scientific activity in tenth-century al-Andalus – that is, the revival of classical Greek texts and the origination of new ideas in astronomy, medicine, and logic – resulted from the lack of orthodox rigidity that prevailed in the Christian north. Muslim tolerance of Christians and Jews living in al-Andalus, combined with an explosive rate of conversion to Islam among the inhabitants fascinated by Arab culture and motivated by economic incentives, created the “necessary demographic weight” required for a vast division of labor, highly specialized individuals within the learned class, and the institutionalization of the educational system. The rapid movement of ideas between cultures is evident in the “heavily Arabicized Latin scientific miscellany” of the monastery of Ripoll (in the eastern Pyrenees) dating to the mid-tenth century. Among them is a treatise on the quadrant translated into Latin from a contemporaneous Arabic manuscript based on older non-Arabic source, and a manuscript of Boethius on arithmetic, with Arabic marginalia. Through this active center of learning in the 960s passed the young Gerbert of Aurillac, later Pope Sylvester II, on his way to study in Catalonia.39 Fascinated with the stories of Córdoba that he had heard from his supervisor Atto, Bishop of Vic, perhaps young Gerbert made his way there, as well. 37 Lerner, 71. 38 Padover, 362. 39 Thomas F. Glick, Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), 298.



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By the eleventh century al-Andalus formed the nexus linking the ancient and modern worlds of letters. Their schools and academies “were the shrines at which the barbarized nations of the West rekindled the torch of science and philosophy.”40 Knut (Canute) the Danish king, after conquering England in the early part of the century, imported Lotharingian and Flemish churchmen to replace the Anglo-Saxon monks, whom he did not trust. Among them were Robert de Losinga of Hereford, a center of Arabic studies, particularly astrology, who served the Danish king, as did Guibert de Nogent, a French abbot who penned a tribute to the value of Arabic astronomy. Constantinus Africanus, the Christian-born Carthaginian and Muslim subject, translated at Monte Cassino Arabic works of science that deeply influenced study in southern Italy. Toledo, recovered by Christians in 1085, became the center for scientific learning, with a wealth of books, many likely from Córdoba, and Mozarab (Arabicized Christians) and Jewish scholars in schools of translation synthesizing Arabs texts into regional vernacular and then into Latin.41 Glick and others argue the continuity of cultural diffusion through translator schools, first in al-Andalus prior to the caliphate in the tenth century, mostly for translating ancient Greek texts to Arabic, then in Córdoba under al-Rahman III and al-Hakam II for translating the new Andalusi science and culture for transmission to Christian Europe.42 After the dispersal of the Córdovan Library under al-Mansur, many of the books went to Toledo, where in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the schools of translation continued. Christian Toledo in the twelfth century was reminiscent of al-Andalus in its golden age, as it was “crawling with every conceivable ethnic and religious permutation.”43 New arrivals to the city found no shortage of language instructors to help them master the “alien Arabic texts.” Archbishop Raymond of Toledo provided the final ingredient in the “cultural explosion” when he sponsored retranslations into Latin of Arabic translations of Greek classics by Aristotle, Galen, and others.44 Twelfth-century translators in Toledo were mostly English. Among them were Adelard of Bath, Roger of Hereford, Daniel of Morley, Alfred of Sareshal, Alexander Nequam, and Walcher of Malvern. The Slav Hermann the Dalmatian settled in Spain’s northeast to complete the first translation of the Quran into a European language.45 The Italians Plato of Tivoli and Gerard of Cremona also worked in Toledo.46 Gerard of Cremona (1114–1187) arrived in Toledo “destined to unlock a treasure trove of Greco-Arabic medical knowledge for fellow Europeans.”47 Of all the scholars who translated in the schools at Toledo, none was more prolific than Gerard, whose 40 Andrew Crichton, History of Arabia and its People (London: T. Nelson and Sons, 1852), 436. 41 Padover, 364. 42 Glick (1979). 43 Lowney, 149. 44 Lowney, 150. 45 Lowney, 149. 46 Padover, 365. 47 Lowney, 149.

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translated works number greater than seventy. Gerard’s colleagues said of their mentor’s love of books that he worked like a “wise man who, wandering through a green field, links up a crown of flowers, made from not just any, but from the prettiest.” Gerard found medicine “prettiest.” He translated Ibn Sina’s (Avicenna’s) Canon of Medicine, the most famous teaching text in medical history in the first centuries of the European universities. The Canon, which Ibn Sina based on Galen, was reproduced in thirty editions over five centuries. Gerard also translated Abu-l-Qasim’s (aka Abulcasis, aka Al-Zahrawi, 936–1013) The Recourse of Him Who Cannot Compose (a Medical Treatise on His Own), a much more hands-on guide to surgery than Avicenna’s text.48 Along with Abu-l-Qasim, the renowned Jewish scholar Maimonides (1135–1204) and the Islamic scholar Ibn Rushd (Averroes, 1126–1198) were children of Córdoba, all born in or near the caliphal city. Maimonides and Ibn Rushd represent in their respective religious faiths and to Christianity the struggle to reconcile faith and reason, theology and philosophy, modernism and orthodoxy, the struggle that would give rise to the modern university model and ultimately the Renaissance. Ibn Rushd served as assistant to Ibn Tufayl (1105–1185), personal physician to Caliph Abu Yaqub Yusuf, the Almohad ruler of al-Andalus from 1163–1184, and later succeeded him.49 Inspired by Ibn Tufayl’s allegorical tale Hayy Ibn Yaqzan criticizing the outward posturing of pious Islamics over the inward experience of religious faith, Ibn Rushd developed the idea into his Harmony of Religion and Philosophy, which expounds the importance of human reason in light of faith. He advocated for women and generally criticized dynastic rule, which put him at odds with Islamic orthodoxy but inspired his Christian admirers, including Thomas Aquinas, Siger of Brabant, Boethius of Sweden, and Goswin of La Chapelle – all scholars in the 13th century at the University of Paris (founded ca. 1150), one of Europe’s first universities. They referred to Ibn Rushd as “the Commentator” because of his translations of and commentaries on Aristotle, whom they referred to as “the Philosopher.”50 Ibn Rushd’s effect cannot be overstated. His efforts prompted the West’s rediscovery of Aristotelian logic and directed modern Western thought, liberating scientific reasoning from theological dogmatism.51 By the middle of the thirteenth century most valuable material in Islamic libraries had gone to European scholarship by way of translation. The passing back to the West of its lost intellectual heritage and of the new Arabic mathematics, sciences, and poetics diminished with the expulsion of the Muslims from Spain in 1492 and the subsequent holocaust of Arab books. The few that were saved went to Fez and Tunis; in Tunis in 1536 Charles V burned all remaining Arab books. In describing the demise of the Arabic flowering of learned culture in Spain, Padover writes that 48 Lowney, 150. 49 Lowney, 163. 50 Lowney, 171. 51 Wajih Ibrahim Saadeh, Arab Enlightenment and European Renaissance (Jerusalem: The Arab Study Society, 1985), 24.



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when Philip II founded the Escorial [1563], no Arabic manuscripts could be found in the kingdom. Fortunately, the capture of a Moroccan galley in which a considerable number of Arabic books and manuscripts was found relieved the royal librarian’s embarrassment. But in June, 1674, fire broke out in the Escorial and destroyed 8,000 Arabic books. A century later, when Michael Casiri began to catalogue the Arabic collection in the Escorial, he found only 1,824 manuscripts – forlorn survivors, perhaps, of the once great libraries of Cordova.52

With the Reconquista and the dissolution of Islamic influence in Spain, the glory of Córdoba suppressed by Christian anti-Muslim fervor, the tangible remains of the great library ultimately lay in the translated works that like-minded scholars of science secured for their own intellectual communities. While we may long to thumb the mujallad of the great Córdovan library, we must settle for no less significant a result of al-Hakam’s collection, the state-sponsored institution of higher learning. In outlining “fictions” derived from the tendency of early Western institutions to legitimize themselves by asserting an origin in antiquity, Walter Rüegg writes that “the organizational form of the university cannot be traced to classical antiquity, nor was it influenced by Byzantium. It seems more plausible to derive the organizational pattern of the medieval university from the Islamic schools of learning. British Islamic scholars give an affirmative answer to the question: ‘Did the Arabs invent the university?’”53 George Makdisi would argue the point. In his estimation Western universities like those in Paris and Bologna are products of Western Christendom, but they are rooted in the scholastic guilds of early Eastern Islam. The defining elements of the institute of higher learning, a social form of organization (the guild) and a professional license to teach (the doctorate), were evident in al-Andalus and Christian West, but no direct evidence links them. However, Makdisi describes three stages of development that link Arab institutions in the East with the rise of the university in the Christian West: the translation of foreign books; guilds of higher learning; and a scholastic “method of disputation” for teaching and learning.54 These elements are likewise evident in the rise and demise of the Caliphate of Córdoba. As a natural scholar, and guided by a sense of intellectual democracy, al-Hakam II enjoyed forty-six years of observation and freedom from obligation under his father’s fifty-year reign, enjoying the stability and military dominance that his father established. Once in power al-Hakam II wielded that dominance well himself while using the caliphal library to establish a cultural phenomenon, cementing Córdoba as a rival Islamic power to Baghdad, and by creating an open and openly tolerant state seeded the Jewish Golden Age in Spain. He was able to steward an intellectual center for all the world, gathering foreign manuscripts for translation and reproduction, creating 52 Padover, 368. 53 Walter Ruegg and H. de Ridder-Symoens, A History of the University in Europe Vol. 1: A History of the University in Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 7–8. 54 George Makdisi, “Universities: Past and Present” in Culture and Memory in Medieval Islam: Essays in Honor of Wilfred Madelung, ed. by Farhad Daftary and Josef W. Meri (London: I. B. Taurus, 2003), 47.

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schools for every stratum of Córdovan society, and paying the best scholars of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity to teach. Though his reign was brief, his administration of a peaceful, learned golden age of Arab literature contributed literally volumes to help reopen the West to unfettered reason and thought in the middle ages and partly enabled the rebirth of Europe and the advance of the modern age. Now, more than 1,000 years after al-Hakam’s caliphate, instability and intercultural conflict throughout predominately Islamic regions of the Middle East and North Africa, especially the rise of ISIS and the threat of a new “caliphate,” sustain xenophobic and religious intolerance and threaten repositories of the few fragile relics from the golden age of Arabic scientific and intellectual culture in the Middle East, Africa, and Spain. The importance of al-Hakam II al-Mustansir’s library to intercultural exchange and educational resumption in medieval Europe is a reminder that Muslims, Jews, and Christians, in turn, instrumentally preserved and refurbished each other’s artistic and scientific contributions and through tolerance and cultural reflection gave rise to the university.

References Altamira, Rafael. A History of Spain: From the Beginnings to the Present Day. Translated by Muna Lee. New York: D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc., 1949. Burke, Ulick Ralph. A History of Spain: From the Earliest Times to the Death of Ferdinand the Catholic. New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1900. Crichton, Andrew. History of Arabia and its People. London: T. Nelson and Sons, 1852. Glick, Thomas F. Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979. Glick, Thomas F., Steven J. Livesey, and Faith Wallis. Medieval Science, Technology, and Medicine: An Encyclopedia. New York: Routledge, 2005 Hillenbrand, Robert. “‘The Ornament of the World’: Medieval Cordoba as a Cultural Centre.” In The Legacy of Muslim Spain, edited by Salma Khadra Jayyusi, 112–135. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1992. Hitti, Philip K. History of the Arabs: From the Earliest Times to the Present. London: Macmillan & Co., 1964. Imamuddin, S. M. Political History of Muslim Spain. Dacca, Pakistan: Najmah Sons, 1969. Lerner, Fred. The Story of Libraries: From the Invention of Writing to the Computer Age. New York: Continuum, 2002. Livermore, Harold. A History of Spain. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1958. Lombard, Maurice. The Golden Age of Islam. Translated by Joan Spencer. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing, 1975. Lowney, Chris. A Vanished World: Medieval Spain’s Golden Age of Enlightenment. New York: Free Press, 2005. Makdisi, George. “Universities: Past and Present.” In Culture and Memory in Medieval Islam: Essays in Honor of Wilfred Madelung, edited by Farhad Daftary and Josef W. Meri, 43–63. London: I. B. Taurus, 2003.



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Makki, Mahmoud. “The Political History of al-Andalus.” In The Legacy of Muslim Spain, edited by Salma Khadra Jayyusi, 3–87. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1992. Padover, S. K. “Muslim Libraries.” In The Medieval Library, edited by James Westfall Thompson, 347–368. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1939. Rüegg, Walter, and H. de Ridder-Symoens. A History of the University in Europe Vol. I. A History of the University in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Saadeh, Wajih Ibrahim. Arab Enlightenment and European Renaissance. Jerusalem: The Arab Study Society, 1985. Safran, Janina M. Defining Boundaries in Al-Andalus : Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Islamic Iberia. Ithaca N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2013. Vilar, Pierre. Spain: A Brief History. Translated by Brian Tate. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1967. Wasserstein, David. “The Library of al-Hakam II al-Mustansir and the Culture of Islamic Spain.” Manuscripts of the Middle East 5 (1990–1991): 99–105.

Jordan S. Sly

“Improve the Moment” Mechanics’ Institutes and the Culture of Improvement in the Nineteenth-Century In their nascent forms, mechanics’ institutes were commissioned libraries often supported by factory owners and other persons with an interest in the scientific education of mechanics. In his description of the Victorian cityscape, Asa Briggs meaningfully describes mechanics’ institutes as “products of the age of improvement” and that they “stood for the diffusion of knowledge among all classes, particurarly among the skilled artisans.”1 Mechanics were the skilled or semi-skilled tradesmen and artisan workers of the early industrial era. 2 With further development in manufacturing came a shift in the composition of the workforce from the skilled artisan to the general laborer. In the context of the mechanics’ institute movement, this shift had two related and important consequences. Firstly, as the sociologist Julia Wrigley argued, the general development and scientific education of mechanics was no longer the primary focus of the institutes but instead a focus on narrow and work-defined skills.3 Secondly, this shift refocused institute goals more holistically towards the proselytizing of moral and spiritual —not science-education focused— improvement as defined by the nineteenth-century liberal philosophy of Self-Help. Within the shared historiographies of the adult education movements and the social history of industrialization, mechanics’ institutes are discussed as being both educational improvement centers and as temperance alternatives to competing venues such as pubs, taverns or saloons, thus centralizing a linkage to both intel-

1 Asa Briggs, Victorian Cities, (University of California Press: Berkeley, 1963): 47. 2 For more on the development of the mechanics’ institute movement see, Ian Inkster’s edited collection, The Steam Intellect Societies: Essays on Culture, Education and Industry, c. 1820–1914, ((Derby: University of Nottingham Press, 1985), particularly Toshio Kusamitsu’s “Mechanics’ Institutes and Working Class Culture: Exhibition Movements, 1830–1840,” 33–43, G.W. Roderick and M.D. Stephens’ “Mechanics’’ Institutes and the State,” 60–72 and “Steam Intellect Created: The Educational Roles of the Mechanics’ Institutes,”20–32; Inez Cohen’s chapter “The Mechanics’ Institute Library” in America’s Membership Libraries, ed. Richard Wendorf (New Castle: Oak Knoll Press, 2007), 263–299; and Stephen Rice’s “Head and Hand: The Mechanics Institute Movement and the Conception of Class Authority,” in Minding the Machine: Languages of Class in Early Industrial America, (Berkley: University of California Press, 2004), 42–69. For a detailed analysis of the nuances of working-class life and the availability of intellectual spaces see Jonathan Rose’s classic monograph, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001). 3 Julia Wrigley. “The Division Between Mental and Manual Labor: Artisan Education in Science in Nineteenth-Century Britain.” The American Journal of Sociology Vol. 88 (1982): S31–51. DOI 10.1515/9783110450842-003



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lectual and moral improvement.4 While the establishment and use of mechanics’ institutes was primarily a nineteenth-century and —within the context of this paper— industrial phenomenon, there are useful antecedents in the eighteenth century as it pertains to the philosophies, development, and constitutions of the institutes examined. As the needs of the owners and the values of the middle-class changed, however, the missions of mechanics’ institutes adapted to address these demands and it is this philosophical plasticity that this paper addresses. This paper illustrates five examples that support and highlight the progression from an original focus on adult education to that of liberal moralizing improvement: the founding and evolving documentation from the New Haven Mechanics’ Institute, analysis of the journalistic discussion of the New Haven Mechanics’ Institute found in contemporaneous articles in the Connecticut Journal, speeches given at the establishment of two additional mechanics’ institutes, and the public program for a series of “penny readings” from a mechanics’ institute in Clerkenwell, London. These show the mechanics’ institute as both evolving experiments and as useful tools of the improvement culture. These examples do not, however, provide the scope needed to fully understand the total development of the mechanics’ institutes, but they do shed some light on the idea of the mechanic institute as a unique and interesting model for studying the social history of the industrial worker, the development of adult education, and the nature of liberal thought in the nineteenth and twentieth-centuries. As the nature of manufacturing changed from cottage industry and small-scale production to one of increased mechanization, factory owners and industrial scientists like George Birkbeck (1776–1841) recognized that there was a need for an educated workforce. Because of the complexity of the machinery and the science involved in production, workers who knew the physics of the machines and the chemistry behind the engines that moved them were valued. In 1821, Birkbeck instituted a series of free public lectures on the mechanical arts in Glasgow. These lectures were intended to pique the interest of Glasgow workers in the sciences and to increase their understanding of the machines and devices they used in their work and thus serve as a beginning point for the study of mechanics’ institutes.5 Before Birkbeck, mutual benefit societies allowed artisans and others to gather and further their education in their trade. Originally founded in the late-eighteenth 4 For deeper analysis of role of the saloon as a critical working-class societal institution within the American context, see Jon Kingsdale, “The ‘Poor Man’s Club:’ Social Functions of the Urban Working-Class Saloon,” American Quarterly 25 (1973): 472–489. Kingsdale discusses the idea that saloons functioned as a central location for communities, typically served food at a reduced price, and often provided social safety nets such as kitchen space and community-pooled funds for workers and workers’ families. These benefits in addition to the obvious escapism of alcohol made such establishments a strong competitor for the time of the working-class man in an era of paternalistic improvement culture. 5 Julia Wrigley, “The Division Between Mental and Manual Labor: Artisan Education in Science in Nineteenth-Century Britain.”

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century, the New Haven Young Men’s Institute has gone through many changes including an important stint as the New Haven Mechanics’ Institute. According to founding documentation from the early formation in 1793, the institute was primarily concerned with “...the establishment of a public library in the city of New Haven.”6 Scholars of the American public library movement will note that this social library worked in the fashion that Haynes McMullen terms a “strict” social library in that the collection was donated or purchased by and exclusively for the use of the subscribers and therefore the use of the term ‘public’ must be taken with that understanding.7 These subscribers, then existed under one corporate body known as the “Mechanic Library Society.” In this early society example, it is important to reiterate the above point about the nature of the mechanics, that these workers were not laborers but instead natural philosophers, artisans, and hobby scientists. Class was a consistent dividing line in these early libraries as illustrated by the often prohibitive subscription fees.8 It is not until the early nineteenth-century that the Young Men’s Institute underwent important structural changes to its mission as evidenced by internal policy documentation and outward facing branding. One example of this mission illustrated through branding is the design of the institutes’ bookplates from the years 1794 – 1815. These bookplates exemplify the focus of the library by highlighting specific values that adhere to the era from which they represent. The institute’s founding bookplate, for example (Figure 1), —with the likely apocryphal date of 1794— preserves the original and artisanal focus of the library.9 This plate shows two craftsmen (blacksmiths) at an anvil with the motto “improve the moment” printed above them. Through the improvement language and the iconography of the tradesmen, the 1794 bookplate serves as the starting point of the institute’s mission. As the institute’s members changed and the prohibitive nature of the subscription library became more enmeshed in the mission, the bookplate changed to illustrate these values. The c.1804 bookplate, (Figure 2) paints a dramatically different picture than the 1794 plate. In this image the artisans have been replaced with cherubic figures holding aloft a scroll that enumerates the humanist disciplines of “Theology/History/Biography/Voyages & Travels/ and Classical.” The figures are flying above a pile of open books, unfurled scrolls, a globe and an open atlas with a compass sitting on top of its pages; a romantic and bucolic scene to be sure and one reminiscent of other examples of neo-classical extravagance and lofty educational goals. To further illustrate this idea that 6 “The Constitution and Bye-Laws of the Mechanic Library Society of New Haven, with a Catalogue of Books and List of the Proprietors.” New Haven: Abel Morse, 1793. 7 Haynes McMullen, American Libraries Before 1876, (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2000), 63. 8 Joan Edmundson, “Mechanics’ Institutes and Public Libraries,” in Penny Rate: Aspects of British Public Library History, 1850–1950, ed. W.A. Munford (London: The Library Association, 1951), 132–133. 9 This date is questionable because it antedates the Birkbeck institutes in Scotland and England. The source of this information is the archival entry for the bookplate which reads, “plate used by first library in New Haven —approx..—1794.”





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Figure 1: New Haven Mechanic Library Original Bookplate C. 1794. Photo credit, Jordan Sly, taken with permission at the New Haven Young Men’s Institute, 2011.

mechanics’ institutes demonstrate the attitudes surrounding shifts in labor from craftsmen to worker, around 1815 the Mechanic Library readopted a logo and bookplate with the important slogan, “improve the moment.” In some respects, this bookplate represents a combination of the 1792 and the 1804 bookplates. In this iteration, it is the cherubic figures that are shown practicing an artisan’s trade (Figure 3). Above the improvement motto there is a stack of books with a ring of light around it to illustrate the importance of enlightenment through reading and education. These three bookplates illustrate a clear progression that each represents a stage of the evolution of the institute’s mission from a tradition of craftsman and labor focused education with little adornment to Baroque neo-classical loftiness to what is essentially a combination of the three. Through these bookplates, we are thus able to read the shifting representation of labor to about c. 1815 and perhaps the shift from scientific education to moral or enlightened improvement as the primary focus of the institution. One of the first major changes of the New Haven institute came in 1826 when a group of eight young artisans decided to improve upon the original society and created the Apprentices Library Association. This society, like its predecessor, had the aim of “intellectual improvement of its members.”10 Perhaps due to the changing need in the community, in 1828 the institution’s name was once again changed to the Mechanics’ Institute, and the philosophy of the institute more explicitly mapped out the goals behind the mechanics’ institute movement at large. William Borden, the librarian of 10 William Borden, An Historical Sketch of the New Haven Young Men’s Institute. Librarian of the Young Men’s Institute, (New Haven: New Haven Young Men’s Institute, 1904).

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Figure 2: Bookplate: Social Library c. 1804 (Young Men’s Institute, Mechanic Library). Photo credit, Jordan Sly, taken with permission at the New Haven Young Men’s Institute, 2011.

the institute in 1904, wrote a short history of the institute wherein he explained that the principal mission of the library was education for those whom formal schooling had failed or overlooked. Borden’s history explains that the goal was to allow the “young working man” to learn what “interested him most” and not “what he ought to know.11 The library’s stated mission was therefore perhaps best represented in the iconography of the early nineteenth-century romantic bookplate from 1804. The institute attempted to teach young workers in the forms of lecture, individual study, and classroom instruction. According to Borden, the classrooms were developed based on the traditional classroom model, and therefore he believed they were not as effective with older workers who felt out of place in the classroom.12 A Centennial Committee established in 1926 to trace the history of the institute understood the mission in much the same way. It was the findings of the committee that “self-improvement, not 11 William Borden, An Historical Sketch of the New Haven Young Men’s Institute. Librarian of the Young Men’s Institute. 12 Ibid.





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Figure 3: Bookplate from the Mechanic Library, New Haven c.1815 (Young Men’s Institute). Photo credit, Jordan Sly, taken with permission at the New Haven Young Men’s Institute, 2011.

instruction from an outside source, was the motive power of the institute.”13 While it was the goal of the institute to help young mechanics improve their education, the fraught class tensions of the nineteenth-century imbued the contemporaneous writing about this educational goal both a sense of skepticism and with a distinct call for paternalistic moral improvement in addition to their trade education. Journalistic and editorial discussions of Mechanics’ institutes illustrate the general unease felt by the middle and upper classes about the working-class of the period. While the general sentiment of much of this journalism is approving of the education of young working-class men, there is a palpable unease regarding the form and content of the education. Both proponents and opponents of the institutions cited moralizing and temperance arguments to praise or disparage their purpose. A September 1832 editorial in the Connecticut Journal illustrates this sentiment by insisting that there are: ...so many institutions established for the purpose of diffusing the benefits of education among the younger portion of the community, especially mechanics and the laboring classes...,” The article continues: “...It is a matter of astonishment, that when so many facilities are afforded to

13 Centennial Committee. Young Men’s Institute, 1826–1926, (New Haven, N.P., 1926).

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young men for acquiring useful knowledge, they should all be slighted or treated with indifference ... In general, the value and worth of them are not appreciated.14

The institute is described as a noble but ignored gift for the working-class to aid in their educational and moral improvement. Additionally, the author makes note that, “to gain knowledge requires active effort; the passive instruction imparted by lectures makes but little impression, compared with that made by patient, preserving study.”15 The author of the editorial continues, “but so long as the semblance of knowledge can be maintained by attending lectures, and while they serve as a cloak for ignorance, it will be difficult to persuade our young men that it is by study alone that substantial information can be acquired.”16 Through this diatribe, the author has clearly indicated his belief that despite lectures and classes, the working youth will never have the discipline for true learning without contemplative and assiduous study; a luxury not generally afforded to those working in mills and factories. This article highlights a current of journalism covering mechanics’ institutes at this time. Articles such as this from the Connecticut Journal illustrates a pervasive dual message of condescension and support for the moral cause of self-improvement. This message of improvement can be read in George Barrell Emerson’s address given at the opening of the Boston Mechanics’ Institution in February 1827. Emerson, a prominent educator, delivered a speech which, like the 1832 Connecticut Journal editorial, draws upon the imagery of man being lifted out of poverty through education. Emerson discusses the natural ability of humanity to learn about his environment and to “throw upon the business and labors of common life the light of reason and philosophy.”17 The use of Enlightenment language is reminiscent of the images on the bookplates used in the New Haven Young Men’s Institute and also the original mission as described by Birkbeck. Emerson reinforces his linkage that “Science and art are of a kindred nature...but they have been separated by the ignorance and necessities of men, and have both deeply suffered from the separation.”18 This suffering is implied in Emerson’s plea that in the centuries before, artisans were skilled craftsmen associated with art and culture. And that in juxtaposition, it is the recent relegating of working people to the factory floor that is a fault for the current social ills, deficient education, and stigma surrounding the working-class. Throughout his speech, George Emerson evokes the nineteenth-century liberal philosophy of Self-Help as defined by Samuel Smiles, whose titular work can be read as something a manual for nineteenth-century middle-class values. In Smiles’ 14 “Young Mechanic’s Institute,” Connecticut Journal, September 1932. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 George Emerson, “An Address Delivered at the Opening of the Boston Mechanics’ Institution, February 7, 1827,” (Boston: Hilliard, Gray, Little, and Wilkins, 1827), 3. 18 Ibid.



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1859 introduction to Self-Help he describes the origin of his work as evolving out of a lecture given to “two or three young men of the humblest rank resolved to meet in the winter evenings, for the purpose of improving themselves by exchanging knowledge with each other.”19 Smiles’ work follows on from other improvement literature of roughly the same period such as Timothy Claxton’s Hints for Mechanics which, like the above mentioned origins of Self-Help revolve around mechanics’ institutes and adult education.20 For Smiles, help from society was seen as “enfeebling in its effects,” that is that true moral improvement could come only from the self-dedicated work of the individual.21 The nineteenth-century’s awakening to the moral issues surrounding poverty provide a window into the nature of compassion, improvement, and punishment. James Vernon puts the identification of charity in the context of two separate spheres. In one sphere there is the humanitarian compassion felt for destitute women, children, and colonial populations, but in the other sphere there is little compassion for men in the same situation as they are seen as able to work but are unwilling.22 Smiles’ work and the missions of the mechanics’ institutes therefore fall in between the draconian New Poor Law of 1834 which instituted severe forms of moral improvement such as the dreaded work house and the “enfeebling” aspects of outright charity. Explicitly foremost in Smiles’ Self-Help is the notion of moral improvement which directly connects the personal with national improvement. Smiles explains that “the greatest slave is not he who is ruled by a despot…but he who is the thrall of his own moral ignorance, selfishness, and vice.”23 Within this context, Emerson correlated the use of the institutes with a reduction in the pursuit of vice. Emerson states that, “temptations assail him [the mechanic] in vein. He is armed by high and pure thoughts. He takes a wider view of his relations with the beings about and above him...he glories in the consciousness and the hope of immortality.”24 This is an unsubtle and direct appeal to the audience that the establishment of the institute will solve the problem of intemperance and vice by giving the workers a more civilized avenue of pursuit. Importantly, Emerson also makes an appeal to employers who, by this time were becoming somewhat leery of the influence of education on their workers due to the resulting desire for better conditions. He notes that there is no need for concern as a person with better education will be better at their job. He concludes by asking, “let a mechanic understand the nature of the material he employs, enable him to predict the effect which heat and air and moisture will have upon it, show him how to counteract that effect; will he, in consequence of this knowledge, produce a less durable 19 Samuel Smiles, Self-Help, (London: John Murray, 1859), iii. 20 Kenneth Fielden, “Samuel Smiles and Self-Help,” Victorian Studies 12 (1968): 158–161. 21 Samuel Smiles, Self-Help, 1. 22 James Vernon, Hunger: A Modern History, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007): 17–40. 23 Samuel Smiles, Self-Help, 18. 24 Ibid.

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work?”25 For all of Emerson’s praise of the industrious working population, however, there is a distinct nod to the middle-class sense of unease that resounds throughout much of the speech as he says, “it is not our object to make deep philosophers,”26 making it clear that the larger mission was the improvement of the state of the working-class, but not to bring them on par with their societal betters. Similarly, at the opening of the New York Mechanic Institution in New York City this heavy-handed approach to public enlightenment was made far more explicit with the foundational speech by Thomas Mercein. In his speech, there is both an appeal to the mechanics themselves to use the institution for their own benefit as well as an appeal to the city government and the upper-class citizens of the city to illustrate that the institution will pull the lower ranks out the depths of implied depravity. The opening of the address begins with Mercein’s use of the common civic improvement rhetoric used for many of the mechanics’ institutes. The institution was devoted, he says, to the future generations who will seek the “deep fountains of knowledge” found within the walls of the institution. The main purpose of the institution was to help pull “genius from obscurity, expand the human intellect, increase the duration of civil liberty and multiply the blessings of social life.”27 Mercein’s speech comes to a point, however, where the religious rhetoric displaces the educational benefit: ...at this moment witnessing, this, our labor of love, and raising their highest hallelujahs to that God, who put it into the hearts of their former Brethren to raise a building, devoted to the education and instruction of the helpless and the destitute...28

By employing images of the downtrodden, Mercein is making it known —for the benefit of the audience— that the institute will support the community and improve the working-class population with education. It is not, however, the mechanics’ institute movement’s scientific education that Mercein believes will help those on the lower strata of the social sphere. In order to become “useful” in society, Mercein explains, the mechanics and the mechanics’ children must find “information... that will snatch them from the vortex of vice and dissipation, to which ignorance, and the absence of religious education were leading them...that they imbibe those principles and receive that bias, that will make them useful in their day and generation.”29 The founding speeches at these mechanics’ institutes clearly illustrate both the moral and class panic directed at the working and poor classes as well as a direct example of Self-Help’s influence and use in society. 25 George Emerson, “An Address Delivered at the Opening of the Boston Mechanics’ Institution, February 7, 1827.” 26 Ibid 27 Thomas R. Mercein, “Remarks on Laying the Corner Stone of the Mechanic Institution; June 13, 1821,” (New York: William A. Mercein, 1822), 23. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid.



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While the founding of many institutes was based at least partly on the society’s focus on Self-Help, the actual education provided within the institutes may not have always supported their ideals fully.30 American Transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson lectured, often in mechanics’ institutes, about the need to find help from within; as opposed to the nature of charity found with Self-Help. In his address to the New Haven Young Men’s Institute, he told the crowd of mechanics, trades people, merchants, and other onlookers about the need to find happiness, faith, and intellectual satisfaction within their own minds, not to rely on others to dictate their needs to them.31 The speech delivered went against much of the Self-Help literature housed within the collection of the institute. As the library found that increasing numbers of patrons wanted to read fiction and newspapers, the amount of sensationalized rags-to-riches novels in the collection increased. These works, by authors like Horatio Alger, T.S. Arthur and Oliver Optic told moralistic stories that highlighted much of what was preached in Smilesesque Self-Help literature. The overt morals of temperance and servitude in these stories seem, to modern readers, explicit in their goal of reforming the working-class populations. Lectures on Self-Reliance, however, taught the attendees not to adhere to the societal constructs but to break free and develop their own success. With the increasing obsession with imposed improvement, mechanics’ institutes began to lose their focus in both Britain and in America in the mid-nineteenth century. While some institutes insisted on education as a paramount feature of the lectures, other institutes simply wanted bodies in the seats and held lectures on popular topics, often including song and humor to convince people to sit through moralizing lectures. Because mechanics’ institutes were competing with pubs and music halls, many institutes held programs that brought some element of the music hall to the institute. Penny readings were one hybrid form aimed at the working-class. These readings were an attempt at getting the men out of the pubs, and into more cultural and wholesome events. There typically was, however, music involved as a way to get people in the door, and to keep them in their seats. One flyer promoting a Penny Reading at the Working Men’s Institute, Clerkenwell, London (1866) offers a number of music hall and vaudeville type entertainments with poetry and improvement lectures sandwiched within. The arrangement of the entertainment is interesting in that it places the literature readings amongst songs, and forces the audience to stay through the intermission in order to see the piano playing and the comedic, ventriloquist act.32 This heavy-handedness illustrates the middle-class efforts to give the 30 For more on Self-Help and nineteenth-century liberal philanthropism see James Vernon, Hunger: A Modern History, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007). 31 As illustrated in the review of Emerson’s lecture at the mechanics’ institute in New Haven: “Mr. Emerson’s Lecture,” Daily Register, New Haven, November 22, 1856 32 Victor Neuburg, Popular Literature: A History and Guide, (London: The Woburn Press, 1977), 242– 247.

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working-class a wholesome evening in the institute, as opposed to the bawdy music halls or pubs.33 This flyer also illustrates the shift in purpose in the institutes as the century wore on. By 1866, when the Clerkenwell performance was scheduled, there was far more of an emphasis on moral and intellectual betterment and particularly on temperance as opposed to the previous focus on scientific education. As the program from the Clerkenwell Penny Reading illustrated, Self-Help philosophy was embedded among popular entertainment in order to draw a working-class audience. Similarly, lectures on self-reliance philosophy can be seen in the programs of the Young Men’s Institute in New Haven, Connecticut. While these philosophies are different in practice, there is an important similarity in the tactics used by British and American institute proprietors. By 1856 there is a noticeable shift in the focus of the Young Men’s institutes’ lectures. Printed in the New Haven Journal and Courier, an 18 November 1856 program advertised lectures by Ralph Waldo Emerson and others, but only a brief passing mention that “A short course of popular scientific lectures may also be provided during the winter.” It is clear in this flippant statement that the educational and scientific goals of the institute’s founding were no longer the mission. Instead, the lectures and events focused on the improvement of the mind and soul.34 This is not to imply that the lectures were without educational value, but the events at this late stage in the development of the institute show an increased emphasis on the improvement values and of the middle-class and no longer specifically supported the unique needs of the skilled early industrial worker. Mechanics’ institutes existed in between two distinct eras of western industrial history. In the early formation of the industrial centers of Britain and the U.S., there was an idea that skill would outlast the machine, and that artisans would remain a necessary member of the skilled workforce. Mechanics’ institutes were a key factor in this short period of industrial education, but became less relevant both as a result of the loss of their original focus and the availability of public and regional libraries. As the institutes shifted from education to moral improvement, the lectures changed from those of the “mechanical arts” to those of the related, but differing models of both the liberal Self-Help and the individualistic Self-Reliance. In the early nineteenth-century, there was an emphasis on trying to provide workers with a foundational level of scientific education, but as the century wore on, this sentiment faded and the main commodity in the factory was not the skilled workman, but instead the inexpensive and plentiful labor found in undereducated men, women, and children.

33 Ibid, 242 34 “Institute Lectures,” Journal and Courier, New Haven, November 18, 1856.



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References Primary Sources Borden, William, An Historical Sketch of the New Haven Young Men’s Institute. Librarian of the Young Men’s Institute. New Haven: New Haven Young Men’s Institute, 1904. Centennial Committee. Young Men’s Institute, 1826–1926. New Haven, N.P., 1926. Connecticut Journal. “Young Mechanic’s Institute. September 1932. “The Constitution and Bye-Laws of the Mechanic Library Society of New Haven, with a Catalogue of Books and List of the Proprietors.” New Haven: Abel Morse, 1793. Daily Register. “Mr. Emerson’s Lecture. New Haven, November 22, 1856 Emerson, George. An Address Delivered at the Opening of the Boston Mechanics’ Institution, February 7, 1827. Boston: Hilliard, Gray, Little, and Wilkins, 1827. Journal and Courier. “Institute Lectures. New Haven, November 18, 1856. Mercein, Thomas R., Remarks on Laying the Corner Stone of the Mechanic Institution; June 13, 1821. New York: William A. Mercein, 1822. Smiles, Samuel. Self-Help. John Murray: London, 1859. Accessed July 17, 2016, https://archive.org/ details/selfhelpwithill00smilgoog

Secondary Sources Briggs, Asa. Victorian Cities. University of California Press: Berkeley, 1963. Edmundson, Joan. “Mechanics’ Institutes and Public Libraries,” in Penny Rate: Aspects of British Public Library History, 1850–1950, edited by W.A. Munford, 132–133. London: The Library Association, 1951. Fielden, Kenneth. “Samuel Smiles and Self-Help.” Victorian Studies 12 (1968): 155–176. McMullen, Haynes. American Libraries Before 1876. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2000. Neuburg, Victor. Popular Literature: A History and Guide. London: The Woburn Press, 1977. Vernon, James. Hunger: A Modern History. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 2007. Wrigley, Julia. “The Division Between Mental and Manual Labor: Artisan Education in Science in Nineteenth-Century Britain.” The American Journal of Sociology 88 (1982): S31–51.

Marija Dalbello

Ellis Island Library “The Tower of Babel” at America’s Gate The immigrants arriving at the Port of New York in the first two decades of the twentieth century encountered the material cultures of reading and writing in many forms. Among them, the “reading of immigrants” by immigration officials entailed record keeping as they were being processed – engaging the ideologies of the state, eugenics, and assessments of their potential for citizenship. Within those general concerns around literacy and citizenship in this historical moment, this essay focuses on the library-type activities documented at Ellis Island (The Ellis Island Library is a construct encompassing a range of library services at Ellis Island and fluid spaces and sites of reading.). The presence of books and libraries and the existence of an organized library program at Ellis Island in the first two decades of the twentieth century was reconstructed through sparse and episodic evidence in the following sources: (1) the Historic American Building Survey (HABS) of Ellis Island, (2) the administrative records of the New York Public Library (NYPL) (the NYPL Bulletins and annotated photographic scrapbooks), (3) the American Library Association (ALA) reports.1 The visual records of places and library activities complement the administrative records and reports. They reveal the institutional imperatives and descriptions of the library service to immigrants on Ellis Island in the broader context of NYPL activities—at the nexus of government, institutions, and individuals.

1 The dates for the resources examined are: digitized HABS surveys, 1933–2015 (available from the Library of Congress at: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/hh/cataloging.html; accessed January 6, 2016); NYPL annual reports, statistics (circulation) and news in the Bulletin of the New York Public Library, Vol. 1–32 (1897–1928) and Bulletin of the American Library Association, Vol. 1–16 (1907–1922) (available from Hathi Trust at: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007916328 and https://catalog. hathitrust.org/Record/000551654/Home respectively; accessed January 6, 2016). The annotated photographic scrapbooks by Commissioner William Williams and Albums with photographs by Percy Loomis Sperr were also examined. The latter are available through the New York Public Digital Collections at: http://digitalcollections.nypl.org; accessed January 6, 2016) and are integral to NYPL Record Group 10, visual records documenting the history of NYPL buildings, programs, and staff from 1875 to date. DOI 10.1515/9783110450842-004



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Immigration and Literacy Throughout the Progressive era, the American public debated the levels of literacy and illiteracy of the immigrants arriving at the Port of New York at Ellis Island.2 Based on the report data by the United States Commissioner General of Immigration Frank P. Sargent, “about 28 percent of the total number [of arrivals in 1906] were illiterate [while] only 6.2 percent of the total white population of the United States and only 4.6 per cent of the native-born whites in 1900 were illiterate.”3 While unevenly distributed in terms of gender, class and country of origin, the literacy figures for the landing immigrants demonstrate that the perception of rampant illiteracy among the immigrants was unfounded because this official data from 1906 shows that nearly seventy percent of them were literate. The illiteracy charges targeted immigrants from rural backgrounds and Southern Europe, who often could not read or write.4 The stakes were high for literacy as a test of citizenship potential. Immigrants, entering the world of literacy that supported the functioning of a rational modern state, were submitted to inspection and copious record keeping by an extensive clerical and civil service system. The administrative practices and the efficiency movement developed in the U.S. in the period between 1890 and 1920 – characterized by social reform and social activism as well as the ideology of modernization – were particularly visible in librarianship and the development of services for an expanding population.5 Immigrants became an object of information management and deployment of new methods of data processing in the sites of migration.6 The spaces, places, and cases encompassing an array of reading and writing practices and contact zones in which the immigrants participated in literacy show them as subjects and objects of interactions and practices in the sites of literacy. The immigrants’ passage through Ellis Island was a particularly rigorous system of filtering from four to six thousand people being processed daily, of which only a small number (assessed at twenty percent) were detained for 2 In the boom years of 1905–1907 and 1913–1914 more than a million immigrated the United States each year. It is estimated that 12 million people immigrated through Ellis Island during the era of mass migration, until the quotas by nationality were introduced through the Immigrant Quota Act of 1921 and the National Origins Act of 1924 and immigration thereby being “limited to a total of 355,000 immigrants per year” (quotas excluded children and wives of naturalized citizens). Based on national quotas, the immigration from eastern and southern Europe was restricted and “only 43 percent immigrant slots were allotted to those regions” (Cannato 2010, 332–333). 3 Gilbert Grosvenor. “Some of Our Immigrants,” National Geographic Magazine 18, no. 5 (1907): 329. 4 Literacy figures for populations from Southern Europe and the Habsburg areas were low, attributing 70–90 percent illiteracy to some rural populations from these regions, according to Carlo Cipolla (1969). 5 Eric Novotny, “Library Services to Immigrants: The Debate in the Library Literature, 1900–1920, and a Chicago Case Study,” Reference & User Services Quarterly 42, no. 4 (2003): 342–352. 6 Marija Dalbello, “Reading Immigrants: Immigration as Site and Process of Reading and Writing,” in Reading and Writing from Below: Exploring the Margins of Modernity, ed. Ann-Catrine Edlund, T. G. Ashplant and Anna Kuismin. (Umeå: Umeå University, 2016).

(right) “Perspective View from Northeast, Ellis Island, Contagious Disease Hospital Office Building” HABS NY-6086-M-1 (Photographer: James W. Rosenthal, 2009) – Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

(left) “Cover Sheet: Ellis Island, Contagious Disease Hospital Office Building” survey drawings (1908) HABS NY-6086-M (Sheet 1 of 9) http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/hhh.ny2080/sheet.00001a

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Figure 1: Survey drawings and photographs depicting the location of a “doctor’s library” in the Contagious Disease Hospital Office Building. From: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

(right) “Perspective View of Library from North - Ellis Island, Contagious Disease Hospital Staff House” HABS NY-6086-R-14 (Photographer: James W. Rosenthal, October 2010)

(left) “Ellis Island, Contagious Disease Hospital Office Building” survey drawings (1908) HABS NY-6086-M (Sheet 3 of 9) http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/hhh.ny2080/sheet.00003a

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 Marija Dalbello

observation or deportation at Ellis Island, often for medical reasons.7 In that context, the reconstruction of library places and services for these individuals proceeds from institutional records and professional literature.

Library Work at Ellis Island: Reading the Sources Location of Library Spaces The Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital operated from 1902 through 1930. Several renovations under Federal Commissioner of Immigration for the Port of New York William Williams resulted in expansions on the second and the third island (they are sometimes referred to as Island 2 and Island 3). The processing station was located on Island 1, and the hospital complex on Island 2. According to a HABS drawing, a “doctor’s library” existed in the Contagious Disease Hospital Staff House (constructed in 1908 on Island 3, the hospital staff quarters also housed a doctor’s office; the building was remodeled in 1924 and 1928 for the Nurses’ Quarters) (Figure 1).8 The building maintained its use until its closure in 1951, preceding the closing of Ellis Island as the U.S. Immigration station by the federal government in 1954.9 An explicit reference to the Ellis Island Hospital Library as a service was first found in the New York Public Library annual report of 1909, where it was listed as a Travelling Library. There is no reference to it being part of “a doctor’s library.” This NYPL library service was for the immigrants who would be detained for examination in one of the hospital wards or were waiting for deportation.10 Between 1909 and 1920, the library for detained immigrants at Ellis Island was operated through the NYPL’s Travelling Libraries, a book-lending program developed as an extension of the branch services of the NYPL. The program was associated with 7 Federal Commissioner of Immigration for the Port of New York William Williams estimated the number of deportations to range “from 1% to 3.5% of the arrivals per month” during his tenure (William Williams Papers, Scrapbook 1, folio 65v). 8 HABS NY-6086-M: “Contagious Disease Hospital Office Building” (initial construction 1908; subsequent work 1914) cover sheet at: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/hhh.ny2080/sheet.00001a (according to the LC description, the drawing is based on documentation compiled after 1933) and HABS NY6086-R-14: “Perspective view of library from north - Ellis Island, Contagious Disease Hospital Staff House, New York Harbor, New York, New York County, NY” at: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ ny2375.photos.579729p. 9 HABS NY-6086-M: “The hospital complex at Ellis Island [was] operated by the U.S. Marine Hospital service from 1900 to 1912 and by the U.S. Public Health Service from 1912 to 1951—closed March 1, 1951. The Ellis Island U.S. Immigration Station ceased operation November 12, 1954.” 10 At the time of writing, the NYPL is still maintaining a number of outreach services to immigrants, to individuals in the correctional services, veterans, and people with a disability or without a home (at: http://www.nypl.org/help/community-outreach).



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the Ellis Island hospitals located on Islands 2 and 3 and the Ellis Island Library integral to NYPL’s outreach services and adult programming. The annual reports in the Bulletin of the New York Public Library record the Travelling Library program from 1901.11 The listing of Ellis Island station from 1909 must be due to the NYPL’s efforts to expand its traveling program to educational settings.12 ALA librarian Florence A. Huxley writes in 1920 about the hospital wards, that “the number of patients averaged from 450 to 475 all the time,”13 indicating the number of possible users of these library services and their location. Huxley was described in an ALA newsletter editorial as “an accomplished librarian in the uniform and on the payroll of the YMCA”; 14 she ran the ALA Hospital Library Service at Ellis Island until the 1920s, when the service was discontinued.15 11 Although the NYPL Director John Bigelow does not include references to these services in 1897, the NYPL Bulletin for 1901 includes a section “Travelling Libraries” (420—421). In 1903 there is a reference to “Travelling Libraries” at “100th St., 206 West. Near Broadway (Bloomingdale, Travelling Libraries)” and Blind Library, with the following observation: “on February 21, the New York Free Circulating Library for the Blind was consolidated with the New York Public Library” (NYPL Bulletin 1903, 86, 88). In the circulation statistics for March, in the “travelling” category: “home use volumes 37,635”; none in “hall use readers”; none in “readers in reading rooms” categories; 299 “volumes accessioned” (124). The service existed in prior years for schools and homes but started to be developed more actively in 1903 as noted in the Report of the Director: “The work of the travelling libraries (Table XII) continues to show an increase, the circulation this year being 317,140, against 249,971 the previous year, with 215 stations instead of 202” (372). 12 In co-operation with the Board of Education traveling service initially aimed to introduce library service in schools, books being furnished by the NYPL. The travelling program was tied to school libraries and targeted educational settings that were diversified during the next decade. NYPL Bulletin for 1903 (372) registered 2015 stations in 1902 (see also Table XII, 387—389; cf. also NYPL Bulletin 1901, Table X, 420—421). 13 Florence A. Huxley, “A.L.A. Work on Ellis Island,” The Library Journal (April 15, 1920): 350. 14 James Marten, Children and Youth During the Guilded Age and Progressive Era. (New York and London: New York University, 2014): 87. 15 Due to the changing circumstances of the war effort, ALA eliminated its Hospital Library Service in the early 1920s. Primarily, the service was replaced by the establishment of specialized hospitals and services for veterans of World War I and the newly formed U.S. Veterans’ Bureau (formerly within the purview of the U.S. Public Health Service). The ALA Bulletin 16 (1922) explains the overall context for the service: “The inauguration of a library service in the hospitals under the control and operation of the Public Health Service was begun and continued for many months [in the period from 1919 through 1921, added MD] under the direction of the American Library Association. This organization, as a continuation of its war work, undertook the organization and administration of a hospital library service throughout the system of hospitals operated by the Public Health Service. With the depletion of its funds, which could be devoted to this purpose, the work was purported for a time by the American Red Cross and ultimately was transferred to the Public Health Service as an official activity. This transfer was made possible largely by the interest of the representatives of the American Library Association, through whom there was inserted into an appropriation bill $100,00 for the purchase of books and periodicals for the veterans under treatment in hospital. The library service carried on in our hospitals under the direction of a representative of the American Library Association has given an excellent experience … employed some 30-odd librarians … [and apart from the veterans served,

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Ellis Island Library Service by the New York Public Library Even though the records confirmed the existence of a library service and we can infer a probable space of its operation, the Ellis Island Hospital Library was ephemeral and its history sketchy. In the NYPL “Annual Report of the Director for 1909 [John S. Billings],”16 the Ellis Island library “station” is listed under the (U.S.) “Department of Commerce & Labor: Immigration Service, Ellis Island,” with 182 volumes circulated that year.17 These volumes were not “worn” books – a label that appeared in the listing for stations in correctional services and hospital of the Travelling Library Service. The chief of NYPL Circulation Department Benjamin Adams commented on the extension services in his report, revealing the administrative position of the Ellis Island Hospital Library as one of the programs of the Extension Division (the Travelling Libraries Office).18 In the same report, A.E. Brown (“Miss A.E. Brown”) reflected on the activities, scope, levels of development, trends, achievements, and areas of growth for the Travelling Libraries in 1908 and 1909.19 She notes that “books were sent to 659 travelling library stations, of which 560 were in the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx, and 99 in Richmond,” including the setting up of libraries used by teachers by the Department of Education’s Recreation Department with a circulation of “353,089 volumes; through industrial schools, 297,183; private schools, 144,638; fire department, 22,430; business stations, 143,610; home libraries, 11,391; Young Men’s Christian Association, 4,841; Young Women’s Christian Association, 13,047; Settlements, 23,848; Sunday schools, 8,630; study clubs, 4,504.”20 She observed that Staten Island Office, having completed its second year in 1909, was “more than doubling its record.”21 Among the travelling collections were “forty-two school sets, twenty home libraries, four Sunday school libraries, collections in eleven fire department stations, and nine general libraries” with the field “not yet been covered, and promises much for the future, especially in the direction of study clubs and home libraries.”22 The added MD] government employees, seamen of the Merchant Marine, seamen of the U.S. Coast Guard, immigrants and other classes of patients” (276—281). 16 NYPL Bulletin 14 (2:1910): 67—186. 17 “Table XIV: Statistics of Travelling Libraries. Circulation Department, 1909. Manhattan and Bronx Circulation” (162). 18 The department comprised forty branches but excluded the Travelling Library Office and the Library for the Blind. 19 NYPL Bulletin (1910): 122—125. 20 Ibid., 123. 21 “Books have been sent to 99 stations during the past year [1909, added MD], an increase of 18 stations over the number provided in 1908, and “the circulation through these stations has amounted to 52,564 volumes, an increase of 21,416” (NYPL Bulletin 1910, 123). 22 The distribution system for schools was also described: “Once a week from two or three centres, but at the present time, in each school not near a branch library, a teacher is appointed to distribute books, with the help of a library student who is under the instruction of the library worker. Frequently, a story-hour is given for the children. There are also a number of evening clubs where regular collec-



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travelling libraries had a total circulation for Manhattan and Bronx of nearly 1 million volumes distributed in charitable institutions, industrial, private, boys’, and girls’ schools, churches, prisons, settlement homes, and aid societies.23 The program was just being developed but its institutional contexts were wide-ranging: from neighborhoods to mercantile establishments and factories. The Travelling Office Service was developing radical methods of circulation in 1908–1909 beyond the lending library model, with books distributed “to places not otherwise provided for, and also in response to special requests which could not be filled through a regular library.” The Staten Island Office “completed its second year, more than doubling its record” according to this report. (The contemporary visual records show bookmobiles being part of that service.)24 She concluded that “the field for this work is constantly broadening, and it is hoped that the increasing need will be met with larger means of service.”25 The service also included the immigrant populations and the Ellis Island Library as part of that innovative NYPL program. Based on the comparison of circulation counts for the stations, the Ellis Island Hospital Library was among the smaller but by no means the smallest circulating library. Listed under the U.S. Department of Commerce & Labor, its circulation was comparable to informal and independent educational programs exemplified by the “Bible Study Classes” listed under the names of churches or hospital libraries.26 The correctional system under the NYC Department of Correction included Hart Island station that circulated 644 volumes and Riker’s Island with 1,235 volumes. The popular open air or “roof reading rooms” that were opened in five branches from 1905 in densely populated areas were by far the most active with highest circulation.27 In her report, librarian A.E. Brown emphasized work with discarded books, i.e., those books in “fairly good condition” received by the Travelling Library Office from the branch libraries of the Circulation Department “whence they are sent to places to which it would not be advisable to send the regular books, or from which books could not be returned. According to contemporary practice, the city prisons, hospitals, charitable associations, and other similar institutions were circulating such books because tions of books on civics, hygiene, and manual training are supplied to the boys and young men, and books on domestic science, sewing, etc., to the girls. Many of the best discards are used for general circulation” (NYPL Bulletin 1910, 123). 23 Or, 975,986; Staten Island had a separate total of 52,564; combined total for Staten Island, Bronx and Manhattan was 1,028,550 volumes (NYPL Bulletin 1910, 174). 24 Cf. NYPL, MssArc RG 10 5928 “Library Services in Staten Island” and “Ellis Island” albums. 25 NYPL Bulletin 1910, 125. 26 Grace M. E. Church, Epworth League, Chapter 238, W. 104th St. nr. Columbus Ave. circulated 103 volumes. Under the Department of Health – Hospitals, Dr. Wilson, Superintendent, S.W. corner of 55th St. & 6th Ave. lists 192 volumes circulated, which was more than the Metropolitan Hospital, Blackwell’s Island where 150 volumes were circulated that year. 27 The Seward Park branch (plan), Hamilton Fish Park at South Houston (see photograph), St. Gabriel’s Park, Rivington Street are listed, with 7,483 readers using the Seward Branch during the summer of 1905 (NYPL Bulletin 1910, 103—104, 178).

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“in former years [books were] either lost, or returned in such deplorable condition from the institutions on Blackwell’s, Hart’s, and Riker’s Islands, that it was decided to supply these places entirely with discarded books, or from the ‘Special Collections’.”28 The outreach was justified by the dearth of reading material in the district prisons of New York City. A representative from the Travelling Libraries office noted that they had nothing in the way of reading matter except a few magazines and Bibles but that books had been placed in all with the assurance of the “head keepers that they would be properly cared for and given out to the prisoners.” The report not only lists a wide array of services but also reveals the attention given to books reaching the readers. Further, the discarded books were “sent to telegraph companies for distribution among the messenger boys” as non-returnable items “because for some years efforts were made to circulate the regular books, but naturally few managers were willing to guarantee the return of the books. Now that it is understood that there is no such responsibility they eagerly receive them for exchange among the boys.” The successes of the Travelling Library Office prompted letters of “warm appreciation in which its efforts are held by the readers to whom these books are sent” – referring to an instance when “four hundred books, in four packages”29 sent as reading matter for a vessel of the merchant marine to be passed on among other crews. The NYPL made sure that outreach and services were wide reaching, including the pragmatics of circulating discarded books from the branch libraries as non-returnable items. A growing need for liminal spaces to satisfy the reading appetites of the growing populations of New York City was only matched by their appetite for books in “foreign” languages. In one instance, a discussion of “children’s books in foreign languages” held at the Webster branch in March 1909 was accompanied by an exhibit of these books. The speaker, [A] Bohemian lady, formerly a children’s librarian, was reportedly asked to repeat her address at the New York State meeting in September [for] so keen an interest was awakened by her presentation

28 It is not clear what these “special” collections were but they could be part of the initiative for building reference collections to support the work of teachers and school reference collections (NYPL Bulletin 14 (1910), 116–117). The work with discarded books “in fairly good condition” from the branch libraries was used to support the Travelling Library Office since May 1908, “whence they are sent to places to which it would not be advisable to send the regular books, or from which books could not be returned. As places of this kind may be mentioned the city prisons, hospitals charitable associations, and other similar institutions” (ibid., 124). “The total number of volumes discarded during the year 1909 was approximately 93,000, and of these 17,000 were sent by the Travelling Library Office to such stations as tuberculosis camps, hospitals, workhouses, and prisons, from which books cannot be received in return. The selection of books to be discarded has been directed with a view to decreasing the past accumulation of undesirable editions and worn-out books unfit for circulation, and thus to make room on the shelves for books in general demand. The number of books discarded in 1909 was about one and three-tenths percent, of the circulation for the year, a reduction of one-tenth of one per cent, from the number discarded in 1908.” (ibid., 129). 29 NYPL Bulletin 1910, 125.



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of what exists for children in Bohemian history and literature that three branch librarians consented to give in turn similar accounts of the Hungarian, Russian and Polish, and German books for children. The meetings will be held in districts where these languages predominate. Lists of the books approved will be prepared for inclusion in the list of children’s books recommended for purchase. The number of titles will be small and the books will only be ordered to supply definite needs.30

This discussion of children’s books parallels a general increase in foreign newspapers and books in the NYPL report of 1909–1910: “the large proportion of foreign newspapers has been found necessary to supply the demands of the increasing number of foreign readers using the library.”31 At that time, the NYPL was focusing on its new building.32 In reports for 1910 and 1911 (NYPL Bulletin 1911 and 1912 respectively), the Ellis Island station or volumes circulated do not appear in the statistics for the Travelling Libraries. In the NYPL Bulletin for 1913, Anne Carol Moore (her report focuses on the work with children) makes a reference to the intended use of motion pictures in the work with immigrants on Ellis Island: Representatives from moving picture companies have been looking for authentic pictures of “Robin Hood,” “Pilgrim’s Progress,” and other subjects for similar use. Copies of the English history prints have been much sought after. One inquirer desired them for the immigrants at Ellis Island. Authors and publishers are constant visitors. Many classes of school children have come with their teachers. Governesses have continued to bring children with whom they are reading French or German books.”33

There were no other references to Ellis Island services or the Ellis Island Library in the NYPL Bulletin before 1910 and from 1914 until 1920. When the NYPL Travelling Library program was being expanded in 1909–1910, there were significant changes to the management of the immigrant station itself. In his report for 1911, the Federal Commissioner of Immigration William Williams mentions the renovations of the facilities at Ellis Island (in 1910) that included the reorganizing of the physical processing and administration as well as the moving of the medical facilities to the third island,34 a likely setting for the Ellis Island Hospital Library. The Williams’ papers do not mention collaborating with the NYPL or the Ellis Island Hos30 Discussion focused on Bohemian books (NYPL Bulletin 1910, 111—112). 31 NYPL Bulletin 1910, 131. 32 Director’s report in December 1909 reports that the progress on the “new building” (the central NYPL building at 5th Ave. and 42nd St., which “has continued satisfactorily” (67). 33 Anne Carole Moore report (NYPL Bulletin 1913, 162). 34 “A new stairway has been constructed from the Information Office to the immigrants’ dining-room thereby reducing the distance between these two points to one-fifth of what it formerly was. The saving in time and effort effected will be appreciate when it is remembered that several hundred immigrants’ dining-room thereby reducing the distance between these two points to one-fifth of what it formerly was.” (William Williams Papers, Scrapbook 2, folio 68). (The hospital expansion being en course since 1905 during William Williams’ first term as Commissioner).

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pital Library although that activity may have been part of the documented work of the thirty to forty aid societies that had their premises on Ellis Island at the time. NYPL annual reports reveal that the administrative context for work with immigrant populations on Ellis Island was the NYPL Travelling Libraries Office. While it was a small operation with less than two hundred volumes circulated, the station appears in the reports at the time when the profession was becoming more centrally concerned with offering services for the country’s immigrant populations at the national level.35 The focus on foreign-language reading material in the collection development and in the work with children as well as inclusion of new media in library programing for children and immigrants, point to Ellis Island as a site of library service for immigrants that reflected the state of the art professional practice.

Visual Evidence: The Library through the Lens of a Social Photographer The NYPL Visual Materials collection holds several albums with gelatin silver prints documenting the NYPL extension library services and library buildings. They depict book wagon routes and community stops, library interiors, outdoors library activities, and readers. The prints were assembled in photo albums and annotated, possibly by photographer Percy Loomis Sperr, known as the photographer of New York with a recognizable photographic style.36 Two of Sperr’s albums contain material for the visual reconstruction of the activities of the Ellis Island Hospital Library: Library Services in Staten Island (Album 1, with 64 photographs, six of which of Ellis Island library) (Figure 2) and the Ellis Island (Album 2, with 16 photographs) (Figure 3).37 Just over 20 unique photographs pertain to the Ellis Island Hospital Library. 35 Novotny, 344. 36 Sperr initially made photographs to accompany his literary projects and produced a massive body of work throughout his lifetime (1890–1964). He owned a bookstore at Staten Island “and produced photographs that have a gothic, mystical quality, and his worked [sic] maintained a following throughout the years” (Lundrigan & Navarra 1999, 7). “Of the 54,000 old NYC photos maintained by the New York Public Library some 30,000 are credited to Sperr” (From: Inwood: Through the Lens of Percy Loomis Sperr at: http://myinwood.net/inwood-through-the-lens-of-percy-loomis-sperr; accessed 11 July, 2016). 37 The NYPL Visual Materials-Albums comprise of 232 photographs, which are organized in scrapbook albums including, Staten Island Branch Libraries, Pictorial Review of the Work of the Staten Island, Child Welfare Exhibit Scrapbook, Libraries and Services in Manhattan and the Bronx. The albums are found in the NYPL Visual Materials collection. The numbering of albums (1–13) indicates that there could be more than currently available in the NYPL Digital Library. The albums include some of the following: Libraries and Services in Manhattan and the Bronx (Album 3), Pictorial Review of the Work of the Staten Island Office of Extension Division (Album 4), The Books, Their Readers in the Postgraduate Hospital (Album 6), Staten Island Branch Libraries (Album 13) –from the period between 1918 and 1930. Of those, only seven albums are digitized.

64. “Ellis Island”

61. “Ellis Island book shelves”

Figure 2: Library Services at Staten Island (Album 1) (folios 59—64 with excerpts that pertain to Ellis Island Library) From: New York Public Library Archives – MssArc RG 10 5928. Photographs by Percy Loomis Sperr.

63. “Ellis Island”

60. “Ellis Island Library Building”

Ellis Island Library 

62. “Ellis Island”

59. “A Typical Ellis Island group taken at random: Norwegian, Russian, Yiddish, Armenian, American, Italian, French”

  39

“Patrons of the ‘Tower of Babel,’ a random group “’Building a bridge from Dreamland’” from the most cosmopolitan acre of the earth, each man speaking a different language Norwegian, Russian, Yiddish, Armenian, Italian and French.”

“Lost in the paper of his home language.”

40   Marija Dalbello

“A Corner of the Ellis Island Library.” Ready for the Day’s Rounds with Books. Magazines and Newspapers in Twenty-Eight Languages in Space Hardly Larger than the ‘Five-Foot Shelf’.”

“The ‘Tower of Babel on book cart Wheels’

[Men gathered around book cart in hall.]

 Ellis Island Library   41

“Readers in the Ellis Island Hospital Library.”

“Entrance to corridor leading from the Library to other parts of Ellis Island.”

“Bookshelves in the ‘Library of Babel.”

42   Marija Dalbello

“One of the letter writers in the Ellis Island Hospital Library.”

“The ‘Tower of Babel’ in the corridors of the Third Island. Russian and Yiddish boys acting as assistants to the Librarian.”

“Men around book cart”

 Ellis Island Library   43

“’The Tower of Babel’ and its service truck.” “Immigrant boy inspecting loan Collection from the New York Public Library.”

“Immigrant boy inspecting treasures of New York Public Library Loan Collection, Ellis Island Hospital Library.”

44   Marija Dalbello

 45

Figure 3: Ellis Island (Album 2) From: New York Public Library Archives – MssArc RG 10 5928. Photographs by Percy Loomis Sperr.

Ellis Island Library 

“Immigrant Boy Inspecting Treasures of New York Public Library Loan Collection, Ellis Island Hospital Library.”



Seen through the lens of photographer Percy Loomis Sperr, the library emerges in settings that staged books, library services, and literacy practices in detention wards. The library activities could be situated somewhere in between the six wards (for six different diseases) that we know existed. The “library” was found in the transient and ephemeral in–between spaces of the corridors of the hospital wards, an interstitial place. There is an image with an accompanying inscription, “The Library Bldg” in Album 1 (folio 60), depicting three youths dressed in what would be “Sunday best” white shirt and black long trousers; two of them are sitting on the steps and one standing at the “door” of what appears to be the entrance into one of the corridors connecting the hospital wards, looking into a vaguely outlined scene with the library truck making rounds inside the building.38 Dating the Ellis Island Library photographs is uncertain but they must have been taken before the official closing of the library in the early 1920s but not much earlier, which coincides with the early period of Sperr’s career as a photographer of city life in the New York City boroughs.39 These library scenes were contiguous to the imagery and depictions from the Ellis Island processing station on Island 1 but there is a significant difference in these representations of immigrant literacy: the spaces in the processing station show immigrants as passive, 38 Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. “Ellis Island Library building” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47d9833a-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99. 39 Percy Loomis Sperr’s gelatin silver prints are dated between 1925 and 1945 but most of them are from the 1930s. They survived in various collections including the Mariner’s Museum of Newport News (Virginia), Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New York Public Library. Virginia N. Sherry notes this about him: “Staten Islander Percy Loomis Sperr (1890–1964), who was known as the ‘Official Photographer for the City of New York.’ Beginning in 1924, he combed the five boroughs, ‘capturing scenes of the city’s people, buildings, and neighborhoods,’ the society reports. ‘He created more than 30,000 photographs, and his works comprise an amazingly detailed portrait of the city’ from 1924 through the early 1940s.” http://www.silive.com/eastshore/index.ssf/2011/04/curators_conservator_pore_over.html.

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depicted in the context of examinations conducted by the medical professions and the immigration officials who were engaged in record-keeping, labeling, and matching the immigrants to official schemas.40 By contrast, the library scenes show literacy that is active, individualized, and involved. The photographs from the Ellis Island Hospital Library are interpretive -- by their framing in the albums, by their sequencing, and by the interpretive captions added to images. These are discussed next. The first album titled, Library Services at Staten Island (Album 1) includes a section on the Ellis Island Library (folios 59—64). The six sequenced scenes are captioned as follows: (1) “A Typical Ellis Island Group Taken at Random: Norwegian, Russian, Yiddish, Armenian, American, Italian, French,” (2) “Ellis Island Library Building,” (3) “Ellis Island Book Shelves,” (4) “Ellis Island,” (5) “Ellis Island,” and (6) “Ellis Island.” The photographs depict men gathered around a book cart and a librarian, the library exterior, and shots of the interior with shelves and two readers -- a boy and an adult man. Typically, groups of readers (adult men) in hospital clothes are surrounding a book cart and in one of them a female librarian is part of the scene. Three of these images depict “corridor scenes,” presumably from the rounds made through infectious wards, another is the building itself, and two are set inside the “library” proper, indicated by a book case and a marine landscape that is found on top of the bookshelf. We do not know the names or the situations, but the “typical Ellis Island group” “taken at random” is identified through their linguistic difference as speakers of widely distinct languages. The photographs appear as candid or minimally posed shots—so as to appear “natural” and random. Nevertheless, there is an awareness of being observed as the subjects look into the camera, or being posed—as noted in the composure of the child reader in one scene. It is not clear who added the handwritten commentaries in white ink (possibly Sperr himself). The Ellis Island Hospital Library photographs found in this album are placed amid depictions of Staten Island locations. Its motives focus on the book mobile service41 and contain outdoors scenes that

40 Marija Dalbello, “Reading Immigrants: Immigration as Site and Process of Reading and Writing,” in Reading and Writing from Below: Exploring the Margins of Modernity, ed. Ann-Catrine Edlund, T. G. Ashplant and Anna Kuismin. (Umeå: Umeå University, 2016). 41 The same scrapbook in the part that depicts Staten Island shows a book-mobile parked in various locations, in white ink inscriptions in the album: “At Linoleumville,” “At Annandale Station,” “Near Elfingville Beach.” Others show interiors of libraries and active library users: “St. George,” “A Port Richmond Story Hour,” “Word Searches, Port Richmond,” “Youngest Readers, Port Richmond”) or outdoors scenes such as one labeled, “Selecting Books,” “In Kreischerville Schoolyard” depicting children reading. Others are more narrative: the photograph showing a mother and a child sitting at the library stoop, filling the application for a library card labeled, “At the Library entrance, Port Richmond” and another, labeled, “Application Desk, Port Richmond.” Pictorial Review of the Work of the Staten Island Office of Extension Division, The New York Public Library [Album 4] includes photographs with typewritten captions: “Library books at police headquarters,” “A summer stop along the road” that feature a traveling book case and the bookmobile respectively.



Ellis Island Library 

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are consistent with the reports about the Travelling library programs described in the 1909 NYPL annual report by Miss A.E. Brown.42 The second scrapbook, Album 2: Ellis Island, contains 16 images.43 Some of them were developed from the same set of negatives and depict the same individuals. While some of the photographs had been reused, their captions are different and included typewritten commentaries by someone who assembled the album. The comparison of captions in the two albums shows their connection. The image from Library Services at Staten Island (Album 1) labeled, “A Typical Ellis Island Group Taken at Random: Norwegian, Russian, Yiddish, Armenian, American, Italian, French” became the “Patrons of the ‘Tower of Babel’, a Random Group from the Most Cosmopolitan Acre of the Earth, Each Man Speaking a Different Language – Norwegian, Russian, Yiddish, Armenian, Italian and French” in Album 2: Ellis Island. The embellished captions in Album 2 construct a distinct narrative while focusing on the library’s heteroglossic diversity when introducing the metaphoric Tower of Babel on Island 3 of Ellis Island, also characterized as “a most cosmopolitan acre of the earth.” These faded and over exposed photographs by Sperr depict a range of activities and convey a forlorn mood. Their subjects appear engaged in complex literacy practices: a man writing on a typewriter “Building a Bridge from Dreamland,” a solitary reader “Lost in the Paper of his Home Language,” or “One of Many Letter-writers” immersed in his letter-writing activity behind a writing desk in the hospital library. The men enthusiastically huddling around a book cart, the Tower of Babel on Wheels, seem to be waiting for the daily rounds around the wards for magazines and newspapers in twenty-eight languages. In the library room, we see bookshelves and paintings and three different photographs of a child entranced by the locked portable box with two uniform rows of titles and the inscription “New York Public Library” – a case familiar from other photographs of the NYPL outreach services. The sense of excitement that these displays of books and a mobile collection must have introduced in the routine activities of the wards is palpable, as is a certain sense of boredom. These images depict the habitual and the ordinary activities that convey information about the daily routines in the library premises on Island 3 and the activities and people involved. Reading the images as documents reveals at least four or five interiors within the library populated by letter-writers, creative writers, and readers who were using the library. And yet it is not easy to locate this space exactly. The “Entrance to Corridor Leading from the Library to Other Parts of Ellis Island” makes the building ambiguous and it is not clear whether we are seeing the corridor outside the library or the passage into the library building, even the identity of subjects is unclear (were they only immigrants or included staff and other residents). 42 NYPL Bulletin 1910, 122—125. 43 NYPL Archives Shelf locator: MssArc RG10 5928; description: Album, 8” x 6 1/2”, consisting of covers of embossed paper and manila paper pages, each punch with two holes for binding. Photographs are each approximately 3 14” x 5 1/4” and are glued onto manila pages, which have typed captions. “Percy Sperr” in ink on inside of front cover. Photographer.)

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The “corner” of the library, the “bookshelves” and the “Tower of Babel on Wheels” – a library in transit for stationary readers – ready for the day’s rounds with books and loaded with “Magazines and Newspapers in Twenty-Eight Languages in Space Hardly Larger than the ‘Five-Foot Shelf’” – are evocative and hyperbolic, as well as the idea of “Babel” itself that bears negative connotations of babble, disorder, and mis-reading or mis-hearing, the confusion of sounds, “a scene of noise or confusion.”44 Identifying the Ellis Island Hospital Library with The Tower of Babel emphasized its character of a limbo with its associated tensions. The images offer visual evidence for the existence of an “Ellis Island library corner” operated by the New York Public Library as a circulating collection of books. The pervasive mood does not match the dominant discourse and fears of immigrant illiteracy. In the iconography of literacy, these images signify linguistic abundance, proficiency, and active involvement, if chaotic. Even the images depicting children: the “immigrant boy inspecting treasures of NYPL loan collection” mirrors a photograph of a child shown reading with an open book in the library. The iconography of reading and literacy here is only slightly negative in the potential for confusion that the “library” may have with a proverbial tower of Babel. The reference to magazines and newspapers in twenty-eight languages distributed through the hospital library were confirmed in the NYPL reports focusing on foreign-language materials that list their numbers and type. The images of solitary readers and writers point to gendered literacy – they are all male, only the librarian is female. The “most cosmopolitan acre of the earth” in the corridors of the Island 3 was in clear contrast to the images of immigrants being “inscribed” and processed on the Ellis Island main island (Island 1). Some of those document the work of missionary societies and the distribution of religious publications, as shown in Figure 4, a stereograph in which representatives of the New York Bible Society were distributing volumes to immigrants leaving Ellis Island. At the time of NYPL’s program development, several other agencies were active at Ellis Island. The involvement of the Young Men’s Christian Association (Y.M.C.A.) and the American Red Cross in organizing activities at Ellis Island are widely documented in historical accounts45 and in photographs taken on the island and from contemporary personal accounts. The Ellis Island was used by the U.S. Marine Hospital service from 1900 to 1912 and by the U.S. Public Health Service from 1912 to 1951.46 Historian Claire

44 From the Merriam Webster dictionary online at: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ babel. 45 Ronald H. Bayor, Encountering Ellis Island: How European Immigrants Entered America (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2014); James Marten, Children and Youth During the Guilded Age and Progressive Era (New York and London: New York University, 2014). 46 HABS NY-6086-M.



Ellis Island Library 

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Figure 4: “A Representative of the New York Bible Society Distributing Bibles and Religious Literature to the Emigrants at Ellis Island, New York City” (Underwood & Underwood; stereograph, unmounted, c1911) – From: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ cph.3a38480.

B. Gallagher described the work of religious organizations and the schools on the island from the early 1900s to 1920s in which she observed that, “feeding the mind was as important as feeding the body on Ellis Island, and the Red Cross and American Library Association focused on that goal.”47 She also cursorily mentions the presence of the library services based on evidence of the Sperr albums. The next section focuses on the last period in the work of the library and the ALA.

Voices of the Profession: The ALA Enlarged Program at Ellis Island The population of Ellis Island included staff, detained immigrants in the hospital wards and a shifting contingent of servicemen and merchant marine crewmembers. The Red Cross nurse Flora Graham reported on wartime mobilization for Army service while stationed there in 1918 and waiting to be “convey[ed] … to the ocean steamer en route to our duties in the Great War.”48 She described “an immense hall where the Y.M.C.A. very kindly provides amusements three times each week for soldiers and 47 Claire B. Gallagher, “‘I Was So Glad to be in School Here’: Religious Organizations and the School on Ellis Island in the Early 1900s,” in Children and Youth During the Guilded Age and Progressive Era, Ed. James Marten (New York and London: New York University, 2014): 86. 48 Flora A. Graham, “Ellis Island from Three Points of View,” The American Journal of Nursing 18 (1918): 614.

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sailors; an invitation has also been extended to Army nurses. These amusements consist of motion pictures, lectures, popular and patriotic songs, and are largely attended and very much appreciated. … The screen picture was Tom Sawyer, and it gave us all great pleasure.” She also noted the presence of “aliens entering the United States” and the life in the Ellis Island community and among its “courteous and appreciative staff.” Other contemporary reports described close ties of the Y.M.C.A. and the ALA around overseas wartime library programs. Asa Don Dickinson’s detailed account of the ALA book programs and library work overseas in the “Y” headquarters appeared in 1919 Bulletin of the American Library Association (Papers and Proceedings of the Forty-First Annual Meeting of the American Library Association). He emphasized the complexity of that collaboration: “nobody living understands all the intricacies of the relationship between the A.L.A. and the Y.M.C.A.”49 The activities of the ALA at Ellis Island during the same period were described by Florence A. Huxley in a short piece titled, “A.L.A. Work on Ellis Island,” which appeared in the April 15, 1920 issue of The Library Journal, concerning the ALA Enlarged Program.50 Her personal account from March 1920 was about the time when the library had been moved “from a little room about twelve feet square to a ward at the extreme end of Third Island.”51 The library, its users, the collection, locations, premises, and the ways in which books were circulated were described professionally, precisely, and evaluatively, addressing the users’ experiences: This is a bit remote for some of the patients to reach, but they are cared for in other ways, and the room itself is such a nice one that we are only too grateful to the hospital authorities for moving us. It is about 25 by 55 feet, with windows on three sides, and a magnificent view of the harbor with all its varied shipping, and will be one of the choicest locations imaginable this summer in the hot weather.

Huxley’s text mentions service in the “six wards reserved for contagious cases, chiefly children, for whom we can do little,” and for adults who were getting newspapers and magazines. She also provided information about the nature of books circulated in these wards – the “worn books which are not worth rebinding such as the Grosset & Dunlap reprints” and noted that “everything left in these wards is burned when read.” 49 Asa Don Dickinson, “By Flanders Bridge: The Adventures of an A.L.A. Man Overseas,” Bulletin of the American Library Association (Papers and the Proceedings of the 41st Annual Meeting of the American Library Association) 13, no. 3 (1919): 158. 50 An editorial note identifies the context for her account: “This personal description of one bit of A. L. A. work was requested from Miss Huxley as illustrating one phase of the larger work under Miss Caroline Jones from whom an article descriptive of hospital service in and around New York we hope to present in a later issue. —Ed. L. J.” The Library Journal 46 (1920): 250. Her account was intended as demonstration of “real service done by the A.L.A. in the world war to be found in the testimony of individual experience” was intended to evaluate the ALA Enlarged Program, as noted in the April 15, 1920 issue of The Library Journal 46 (361). 51 Huxley, 350.



Ellis Island Library 

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The NYPL travelling libraries for hospitals, correctional institutions, and other places were often the last point of circulation for non-returnable reading materials.52 The Ellis Island Hospital Library book services was offered for the War Risk men in addition to the immigrants who were detained, “Bolsheviki or others, waiting for deportation,” as well as seamen, both foreign and American. She further mentions the collection of “about 500 books of fiction in the Red Cross housed on the Second Island, and these are read in the room and may be borrowed by patients and employees.” We can infer from these statements that there were several simultaneous categories of circulation and library-type services. Regarding the ethnic composition of the users and the linguistic requirements for the collection, she noted: In an immigrant hospital of this kind, we naturally have many races represented, and to meet their needs we already have books in 23 languages [note discrepancy with Sperr captions in Ellis Island Album that lists twenty-eight languages, added MD], and are still hunting for more. We have a little rubber-tired wagon similar to a tea-wagon but stronger, with two shelves, and with this we make our rounds to the wards, 18 in all, visiting each ward twice a week, so that every bed patient as well as those able to walk about, may have a chance to get a book, and so far as possible a book in his own tongue. For an Arab patient I could find but six books in Arabic. We have been fortunate in having regular weekly donations of Scandinavian newspapers from the American-Scandinavian Foundation, of Spanish and French papers and magazines from the Foreign Language Paper Association.53

This corresponds to earlier inferences about the library services from the annual reports and the image depictions with their descriptive captions documenting NYPL services. Having emphasized the diversity of service, she also pointed to the limitations in the area of procurement of materials in Czech, Slovak, and the South Slavic languages. Framing the importance of foreign titles in the native languages as a bridge for “establishing friendly relations with a non-English-speaking person” she shared in the ideology and the tradition of humanitarian desires established by an earlier generation of reformers for the welfare of immigrants in their Americanization efforts.54 Huxley reported on misunderstandings when patrons would assume that, “when a book is offered that it is just another scheme to get money from him, or else that it is in English which he cannot read.”55 She estimated the size of the collection at about 2,500 to 3,000 volumes, of which 700 or 800 were the foreign titles. The circulation of about 1,300 books of which 600

52 The system of discarding “worn-out or soiled books” rather than rebinding them was presented in an argument about durability of bindings and the library bindery established in 1906–1907 (NYPL Bulletin 14 (1910), 128). 53 Huxley, 350. 54 Dee Garrison, Apostles of Culture: The Public Librarian and American Society, 1876–1920. (New York and London: The Free Press, 1979): 201; Novotny, 349. 55 Huxley, 350–351.

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titles were in foreign languages points to a well-used collection. She described her routine in the immigrant wards: When I make up my wagon to visit the immigrant wards, I always plan to carry at least two books of every language which we have represented in the library collection, and more of the more usual tongues, so as to be prepared for all possible emergencies. This usually fills the top shelf, and on the lower shelf I put in my English books, with plenty of western stories, a few good love stories, one or two histories and biographies, and a few books of travel, with maybe an arithmetic, a book on letter-writing, an elementary chemistry and something on gasoline engines. At first I made the mistake of carrying all fiction, and that is of course still far in the lead in popularity, but the other books are much appreciated, and are often grabbed with some such exclamation as ‘Why I didn’t think you had such books in the library.’ Some of the immigrants read three or four languages, putting me quite to shame with their knowledge of literature. One Icelandic man now in the hospital speaks seven with ease – his English is perfect and without accent. Many of the foreigners are eager borrowers of our ‘beginning-English’ books, and I regret very much that it has not been possible to organize little classes of these and take advantage of their enthusiasm.

These descriptions correspond to the depictions in the photographs by Percy Loomis Sperr. Huxley’s work with seamen (located in the proximity of the stationary library on the Third Island where her own room was located) was primary; for whom, she said, her “interest at present is closest.”56 She highlights the therapeutic values of reading (another focus for the hospital library programs and the ALA Enlarged service) indirectly in this statement: “Dr. Kerr, the chief medical officer of the island has spoken a number of times of the surprise he felt when he found that these ‘hardened old salts’ would read book after book, and he has commended the library very strongly for its therapeutic value in helping to keep the patients in a contended frame of mind.”57 The seamen’s reading preferences were outlined in detail: “always [being] western or sea stories first, and then gradually drifting to books on engines, navigation and the like … we have even had several requests for cook books, which after all is not strange when we consider that every ship must have its cook.”58 Next, Huxley tells a story about “the American lad of nineteen who has been helping us in the library,” a convalescent who volunteered “doing carpentry work and tinkering” and ran the library while she was doing the rounds in the wards. She finally shares an epiphany about her true calling of devoting herself to the services developed through the ALA Enlarged Program to ship libraries.59 Sentiments captured in this personal account 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid. 59 It is not clear when Florence A. Huxley joined the program. In that same year, The Library Journal 46 (1920) carried these announcements: that she “resigned her position with the Rockland Press, Nyack, and returned to the A. L. A. Library War Service, as assistant to Caroline Jones, superintendent of work with public health service hospitals in New York State” (226). Presumably, this was to work at the Ellis Island Hospital Library. Her letter to the editor of ALA Bulletin was published in the issue of



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were reflected in this conclusion: “we simply can’t afford to lose the impetus that we got during the war, and go back to the old easy-going drifting ways of former days.”60 She stayed true to her mission and remained active until the early 1920s when the ALA eliminated its Hospital Library Service, which was the end of the library activities at Ellis Island.

Conclusion Recovering the activities of the Ellis Island Library through diverse but corroborating sources of evidence examined in this essay pointed to the presence of libraries in the Ellis Island hospitals and contagious wards located on the Second and Third Island, which were the later additions to the immigration-processing buildings (on Island 1) from 1909 through early 1920s. The “library” space that emerges in these reconstructions does not map to stable locations. In particular, the analysis of visual evidence indicated that the library as a place involved multiple points of service and locations, and its liminal and interstitial nature. The library was ephemeral because it was a makeshift space characteristic of the extension programs for book lending through the NYPL outreach programs. The library services at the immigrant processing station reflect the institutional perspectives from the library profession and the involvement of the NYPL with the ALA as a supporter of the Ellis Island Hospital Library (through its ALA Library War Service), offering insights into the practice of American librarianship between the Progressive era and the New Deal. Although small and peripheral, the service for immigrants reflected the goals of building local facilities and branches for non-English-speaking communities and providing services to immigrants.61 In its later years and before the Ellis Island Hospital library was dismantled in the early 1920s, the service also reflected the goals of the ALA Enlarged Program and its “grandiose dream of library expansion” according to which the role of libraries “in the educational life of the nation” would also include an emphasis on “the role that the library could play in combatting bolshevism among immigrant groups” and on immigrants.62 Coincidentally, that program was also being evaluated in the 1920s August 1920 titled, “Where a Book is an Event.” In that communication she makes a case for sending discards and duplicates to the community center and library in Wayland, Kentucky for work with Native Americans (657–658). Further, she is listed doing editorial work for the firm of F. E. Kessenger, lawyer, Rector Street, New York (ALA Bulletin 1920, 1043). During her tenure at Ellis Island, Huxley was responsible for acquisitions of materials in many languages in print and sound recordings (as indicated in various ALA reports). 60 Huxley, 352. 61 Wayne A. Wiegand, “North America and Canada,” in A History of Modern Librarianship: Constructing the Heritage of Western Cultures Ed. Pamela Spence Richards, Wayne A. Wiegand and Marija Dalbello. (Santa Barbara: Libraries Unlimited/ABC-CLIO, 2016): 100. 62 Garrison, 222.

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and eventually dismantled at the same time as the library. The Ellis Island (hospital) library exemplifies the urban reform movement that historian Dee Garrison considers to be integral to the development of the public library service and branch library work and an expanded service to children, immigrants and adults, with libraries conceived as social centers. While the institution assumed “much of its modern form” by the 1920s, the program was waning together with “the early vision of the public library as an intellectual center and the librarians as major educational figure in the community was unrealized.”63 From the point of immigration history, the story of the Ellis Island library contributes to a larger project on the contemporary discourses of literacy, citizenship, and the immigrants’ reading and writing. The Ellis Island Library as a site for immigrant literacy offers a reading distinct from the representations of literacy from other liminal spaces in which immigrants were being processed. In the sparse records about the interstitial spaces of the hospital library the trope of passive literacy in the iconography of the spaces from the processing station was challenged by an active literacy practiced in the Ellis Island hospital library, “The Tower of Babel” where immigrants engaged in practices of reading and writing on their own terms.

References Primary Sources American Library Association. Bulletin of the American Library Association. [Chicago: American Library Association]. Vol. 1–16 (1907–1922). https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000551654/ Home; January 6, 2016. The Ellis Island Oral History Project, U.S. Department of the Interior. National Park Service [website], http://www.nps.gov/elis/historyculture/ellis-island-oral-history-project.htm; February 28, 2015. Ellis Island Photographs from the Collection of William Williams, Commissioner of Immigration, 1902–1913. New York Public Library [website], http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/ id?416780; January 6, 2016. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Historic American Building Survey. HABS NY-6086-M “Ellis Island, Contagious Disease Hospital Office Building, New York Harbor, New York, New York County, NY” (1908) “Perspective View from Northeast, Ellis Island, Contagious Disease Hospital Office Building” (Photographer: James W. Rosenthal, 2009) “Perspective View of Library from North - Ellis Island, Contagious Disease Hospital Staff House” HABS NY-6086-R-14 (Photographer: James W. Rosenthal, 2010) New York Public Library. Bulletin of the New York Public Library. New York: The Library. Vol. 1–32 (1897–1928). https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007916328; January 6, 2016. 63 Ibid., 222–223.



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The New York Public Library. Manuscripts and Archives. MssArc RG10 5928. Library Services in Staten Island [Album 1] (Photographer: Percy Loomis Sperr) Ellis Island [Album 2] (Photographer: Percy Loomis Sperr) William Williams Papers. Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library (1902–1943) MssCol 3346.

Literature Bayor, Roland H. Encountering Ellis Island: How European Immigrants Entered America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014. Cannato, Vincent J. American Passage: The History of Ellis Island. New York: Harper, 2010. Cipolla, Carlo M. Literacy and Development in the West. Baltimore: Pelican, 1969. Dalbello, Marija. “Reading Immigrants: Immigration as Site and Process of Reading and Writing,” pp. 169–196. In Reading and Writing from Below: Exploring the Margins of Modernity. Edited by Ann-Catrine Edlund, T.G. Ashplant and Anna Kuismin. Umeå: Umeå University, 2016. Dickinson, Asa Don, “By Flanders Bridge: The Adventures of an A.L.A. Man Overseas,” Bulletin of the American Library Association (Papers and the Proceedings of the 41st Annual Meeting of the American Library Association) 13, no. 3 (1919): 157—165. Gallagher, Claire B. “’I Was So Glad to be in School Here’: Religious Organizations and the School on Ellis Island in the Early 1900s.” In Children and Youth During the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, pp. 8l—101. Edited by James Marten. New York and London: New York University, 2014. Garrison, Dee. Apostles of Culture: The Public Librarian and American Society, 1876–1920. New York and London: The Free Press, 1979. Graham, Flora A. “Ellis Island from Three Points of View,” The American Journal of Nursing 18 (1918): 613—622. Grosvenor, Gilbert. “Some of Our Immigrants,” National Geographic Magazine 18, no. 5(1907): 317–334. Huxley, Florence A. “A.L.A. Work on Ellis Island,” The Library Journal (April 15, 1920): 350—352. Inwood: Through the Lens of Percy Loomis Sperr. http://myinwood.net/inwood-through-the-lens-ofpercy-loomis-sperr; July 11, 2016. Lundrigan, Margaret, and Tova Navarra. Staten Island: Volume II: A Closer Look. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 1999. Marten, James. Children and Youth During the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. New York and London: New York University, 2014. Novotny, Eric. “Library Services to Immigrants: The Debate in the Library Literature, 1900–1920, and a Chicago Case Study,” Reference & User Services Quarterly 42, no. 4 (2003): 342—352. Progress of Literacy in Various Countries: A Preliminary Statistical Study of Available Census Data Since 1900. Paris: UNESCO, 1953. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/ images/0000/000028/002898EB.pdf; January 6, 2016. Wiegand, Wayne A. “North America and Canada.” In A History of Modern Librarianship: Constructing the Heritage of Western Cultures, pp. 69—141. Edited by Pamela Spence Richards, Wayne A. Wiegand and Marija Dalbello. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited/ABC-CLIO, 2015.

Jonathan Cope

Libraries, Knowledge, and the Common Good The Cultural Politics of Labor Republicanism in Progressive-Era Wheeling, West Virginia1 In Wheeling, West Virginia, on January 26, 1904, an election was held that included a $50,000 bond levy required for the construction of a Carnegie library to replace the small public library that had been in operation since 1882. The measure failed to receive the sixty percent majority required for its passage. Organized labor, represented by the Ohio Valley Trades and Labor Assembly (OVTLA), was the key constituency that mobilized in opposition to the measure. Andrew Carnegie’s role in the bloody strike at Homestead, Pennsylvania in 1892 was a key motivation for organized labor’s rejection of the proposed library, but the OVTLA’s opposition to the library in Wheeling was not a historical anomaly based on labor’s animus towards the person of Carnegie alone. Labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein observes that the issue was a “skirmish in the larger, protracted struggle waged by so many turn-of-the-century Americans to define and defend a consciously working-class citizenship.”2 Although an isolated incident—Wheeling was one of only a few cities to reject a Carnegie library—this political struggle, and the discursive framework in which the debate occurred, raises important historical questions about American public libraries. The OVTLA’s opposition was part of a broader working-class political movement that consisted of variegated ideological and ethnic constituencies confronting a rapidly industrializing American economic system. It was a system that created great power and wealth for a few industrialists and financiers, but left many of those excluded from this wealth struggling to devise political approaches to effectively participate in the broader civic realm. In the debates about the library bond issue the OVTLA activists drew upon a tradition of nineteenth century labor republicanism that viewed freedom as “non-domination” (i.e., “the condition in which others can interfere even if they never actually do”) rather than “non-interference” (i.e., “when others actually interfere with choices”).3 This variant of labor republicanism was theorized primarily by artisans and wage-laborers whose economic independence was being diminished by the rise of an industrial economy that did not limit choices on the surface, but that acted to drive many formerly independent workers into a industrial 1 This research was grant-funded with a Professional Staff Congress of the City University of New York 2015 (Cycle 46) Research Award 2 Nelson Lichtenstein, The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit: Walter Reuther and the Fate of American Labor. (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1995), 2. 3 Alex Gourevitch, From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth: Labor and Republican Liberty in the Nineteenth Century (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 11. DOI 10.1515/9783110450842-005



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system of employment that offered little in the way of legal protections, autonomy, or material prosperity. The history of American public libraries is often popularly told in glowing terms as being a history of the “people’s university.” However, as Michael Harris argues in his examination of the motivations behind the founding of the Boston Public Library the 1850s,4 the ideologies and dispositions of Protestant social reformers heavily shaped the early history of the institution. This episode provides a window into how a politically engaged citizenry conceptualized the public library’s role in their community using a language of labor republicanism. Understanding the OVTLA’s opposition to the Carnegie library will provide library history with a picture of how a small group of non-elite citizens viewed the public library’s role in a burgeoning and contested democratic public sphere. It is vital to situate the OVTLA within the larger context of the American labor movements around the turn-of-the-century and within the city of Wheeling. The OVTLA’s opposition to the Carnegie library can be viewed as a natural outgrowth of the nineteenth century labor republican tradition that shaped their involvement in the civic affairs of Wheeling and this can be observed in the OVTLA’s discussions and debates about the proposed library and how the library is discursively constructed within them. This episode poses important questions for historians of the American public library, and for Library and Information Studies more generally, because the OVTLA’s turn-of-the-century labor republicanism can provide a new analytical lens through which to view questions of philanthropy, freedom, and power in 21st century libraries.

The Ohio Valley Trades and Labor Assembly in the World of American Labor and Politics In 1903 Wheeling was in a prime location in the Ohio River Valley between Pittsburgh and Cincinnati to participate in the rapid industrialization of the region. A 1911 Year Book produced by the Wheeling Board of Trade notes that iron, steel, tinplate, glass, pottery and tobacco industries were thriving.5 The large size of the cut iron nail manufacturing sector lead Wheeling to become dubbed the “nail capital of the world,” or simply “nail city.” That same 1911 Year Book boasts that “Wheeling is the heart of a great coal field, which contains the richest steam coal in the world… The supply is practically unlimited.”6 As in other industrializing American cities of the period, a mix of skilled and unskilled, native born and immigrant, rural and urban workers 4 Michael Harris, “The Purpose of the American Public Library. A Revisionist Interpretation of History,” Library Journal 98, no. 16 (1972): 2509–2514. 5 Wheeling West Virginia Board of Trade, Year Book for 1911, 33. 6 Ibid., 35.

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were flooding into the city to fill the demand for labor that fueled a rapidly expanding industrial economy. A trades assembly from this period (1882 to 1915) can be concisely described as “a mixed body covering a city or town and its vicinity and composed of delegates from local trade unions, workingmen’s clubs, and reform societies.”7 Established in 1882, the OVTLA was an assembly of this kind active in the Wheeling area. The membership of the Assembly reflected the differing perspectives within the American labor movement at the time. Many of the OVTLA’s 1882 founders and most active members were skilled craft workers (e.g., carpenters, potters, stogiemakers, ironworkers) drawn from what has been called “the aristocracy of labor.” In the longue durée of U.S. labor history, 1904 can be viewed as a time of transition, or as right in the middle of what some historians have called “the long nineteenth century”—an early phase of industrial development.8 At this time, the most powerful labor organization America had experienced was the Knights of Labor and the key role they played in the “Great Upheaval” of 1886 and the 1892 strike at Homestead. Like the workers profiled by Leon Fink in his examination of the Knights of Labor during the 1880s – 1890s, the OVTLA library opponents drew from an American tradition that “coalesced around a twin commitment to the citizen-as-producer and the producer-as-citizen” resulting in a distinctively American brand of labor republicanism that drew from both eighteenth century Jeffersonian republicanism and the “free labor” ideal of radical republicans during reconstruction.9 In part, late nineteenth century labor republicanism was a reaction to the rapid transformation of localized forms of ownership and production (e.g., family, collective) into private ownership and operation in national and international markets.10 In 1904 the OVTLA was responding to an industrial capitalism that had transformed the relationship between producer and society; evidence of which could be easily found in day-today experience. The possessors of great fortunes, such as Andrew Carnegie, seemed implacable in their opposition to the efforts of labor. These “robber barons” domination of national and most local political institutions (e.g., Congress, courts, police) meant that the responses varied based on local conditions. While American labor was able to occasionally win local struggles, it would not experience substantial political power— particularly at the federal level—until the passage of the Wagner Act and the Congress of Industrial Organizations’ industrial organizing drives in the 1930s. The presence of an institution like the OTVLA meant that the various factions within Wheeling’s labor

7 Norman J. Ware quoted in David T. Javersak, “The Ohio Valley Trades and Labor Assembly: The Formative Years, 1882–1915” (Ph.D. diss. West Virginia University, 1977), 214. 8 Steve Fraser, The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power (New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company, 2015). 9 Leon Fink, Workingmen’s Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983), 4. 10 Rich Yeselson, “Where’s the Outrage?” Dissent, Summer 2015, 142; Fraser, “The Age of Acquiescence.”



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movement had a platform from which to speak the language of class within the context of the scrum of municipal politics. A 1902 history of the OVTLA provides a biographical sketch of the leadership: predominantly American-born (seventy-one of the seventy-nine for whom there is information), of the five foreign-born delegates the UK, Canada, and Germany were the only countries of origin. There is little information on the rank-and-file membership of the Assembly and its affiliated unions. Eastern and Southern Europeans became more involved in the Assembly as their numbers in the ranks of Wheeling’s unions grew in the 1910s. Opposition to the library was most solid in Wheeling’s “community of German, Scandinavian, Polish, Irish, and Appalachian workers.”11 African-Americans were in the Assembly (Gabriel Jackson is on record as being a officer from 1893 until 1910) and “colored” hod carrier and bootblack unions joined in 1901, so some degree of black membership can be assumed; however, there is scant record of African-American participation in the public Assembly debates. Given that 1904 was the apogee of Jim Crow segregation the capacity for black participation in Wheeling’s civic affairs and most lucrative professions (e.g., African-Americans were barred from Wheeling’s steel mills until the 1930s12) was limited. Women were involved in OVTLA, but their public participation was severely limited as well. In 1904 the Assembly and Wheeling’s socialist club endorsed a resolution calling for women’s suffrage and equal pay. However, the participants in the library debate for which documentation can be found were craftsmen in the skilled trades and workers who were confronting and making sense of the dislocations being created by a new form of industrial capitalism. This skilled craftworker often found a highly gendered sense of manhood in his skills and ability to provide for his family. For example, on the library issue the vocal library opponent, Ironworker and former OVTLA President Michael Mahoney lambasted Carnegie for having “driven down the women and children to the workshop… depriv(ing) them of their natural buoyancy and youth.”13 Importantly, the OVTLA of this period was active in the key municipal issues of the day and were a visible presence in the social and political life of Wheeling’s working class. Many Assembly delegates were more closely aligned with the American Federation of Labor (AFL) craft unionism of Samuel Gompers. Nick Salvatore argues that Gompers theorized that the way for the working class to improve its lot was to “fully accept... industrial society and its hierarchical structure” and to focus “its energies on improving their position within that society.”14 This tendency can be observed in 11 Lichtenstein, 2. 12 Dominick Paul Cerrone, “Exiles from the South in Search of the Promised Land,” Wheeling National Heritage Area, accessed July 15, 2015, http://wheelingheritage.org/wheeling-ethnic-groups/wheeling-ethnic-groups-african-american. 13 Ohio Valley Trades & Labor Assembly, “Minute Book No. 3” (August 11, 1901): West Virginia Collection, West Virginia University Library, Morgantown, W. Va., hereafter WVC, 127. 14 Nick Salvatore,  Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist. (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 66.

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the Assembly’s commitment to a “nonpartisan” approach to elections and a hesitation to endorse independent labor or socialist candidates for public office (although the Assembly did eventually do so several times before AFL affiliation in 1915). This reflected Gompers’ belief that because “labor organizations had been the victims of so much political trickery that… the only way to keep this new organization free from taint was to exclude all political partisan action.”15 This approach made sense to men who could use their “skill monopolies to gain good contracts.”16 During the period from 1900 to 1915 the Wheeling socialist movement gained a more prominent role in the Assembly. A 1897 coal strike staged by the United Mine Workers in the region brought Eugene Debs to speak to a crowd of roughly 5,000 in downtown Wheeling on July 27. Debs not only advocated the cause of the miners, he also preached the gospel of the socialist “cooperative commonwealth”—drawing from the labor republican tradition—leading several local socialists to found the Eugene V. Debs club for Social Democracy in 1900 that later evolved into the Wheeling Chapter of the Socialist Party of America by 1901.17 The socialist party of Debs (roughly from 1900 to 1920) was a formidable force in American politics at the time. In 1912 Debs would receive nearly 6 percent of the national vote for president and over a thousand socialists were elected to public office on socialist tickets (a congressman from Wisconsin, and mayors in Butte, Montana; Flint, Michigan; New Castle, Pennsylvania; St. Marys, Ohio). Foreign-language and English publications such as Appeal to Reason (published in Girard, Kansas, with a circulation of over 750,000) and the Jewish Daily Forward constituted a rich movement and political culture that was able to hold together for twenty or so years despite enormous ethnic, regional, and cultural differences.18 Historian Nick Salvatore found that the movement used a rhetorical tradition of Jeffersonian republicanism; an appeal that at heart was “a spirited defense of the dignity of each individual.”19 In other words, the American socialist and labor movements of the period contained all of the contradictions of America itself, because they grew organically out of the uniquely American conditions of the period.20 The socialists active in the OVTLA (such as Valentine Reuther, father of future United Auto Workers President Walter Reuther who would serve as President of the OVTLA in 1909, and Albert Bauer, OVTLA secretary in 1901)21 sat in the ideological middle of this socialist milieu. They firmly believed that American democratic institutions could be used to bring about the socialist cooperative commonwealth. They 15 Gompers as quoted in Salvatore, 67. 16 Irving Howe, Socialism and America. (San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985), 23. 17 Frederick A. Barkey, Working Class Radicals: The Socialist Party in West Virginia, 1898–1920. (Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Press 2012), 9. 18 Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs; Howe, Socialism and America. 19 Salvatore, 228. 20 Lichtenstein, 5. 21 Barkey, Working Class Radicals, David T. Javersak, The Ohio Valley Trades and Labor Assembly: The Formative Years, 1882–1915.(Ph.D. dissertation West Virginia University, 1977).



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opposed both the “nonpartisan” approach of Gomper’s AFL to labor issues and the more radical actions of the Industrial Workers of the World, or “Wobblies,” (e.g., their opposition to signing union contracts and celebration of industrial sabotage); instead, they advocated to end capitalism through the ballot box and by building the power of industrial unions (a union organized throughout a particular industry rather than by specialization or trade). Importantly, the laborites in the OVTLA had a broad political vision that went beyond labor relations that can be traced to the labor republicanism espoused by the Knights of Labor in the 1880s. They were responsible for a platform that called for government ownership of all railroads, telegraphs, telephone lines; equal pay for men and women; municipal ownership of gas and electric utilities; the direct election of senators, and an eight hour work day.22 The Assembly raised funds through an annual Labor Day parade and picnic in addition to various industrial fairs, festivals, carnivals, and plays.23 The opposition to the Carnegie library in Wheeling emerged from a rich movement culture.

The Carnegie Library Question The Wheeling Board of Education voted to open a correspondence with Andrew Carnegie in 1899,24 and the first existing evidence of the OVTLA reaction to the proposal surfaces in 1901.25 The Board of Education considered a Carnegie library until the Library Committee was disbanded in 1910 and the decision was made to construct a new library without the help of Carnegie.26 Wheeling’s two major newspapers, the Wheeling Daily Intelligencer and the Wheeling Register, were strongly in favor of the bond, as was the majority of Wheeling’s middle class. The election occurred shortly after a period of flooding that likely deterred voters who might have voted in favor of the library bond, although turnout was still very high given these conditions. A January 27, 1904, analysis of the election results in the Daily Intelligencer found that it was the overwhelming opposition to the measure and strong turnout in the southern working class wards of Webster, Union, and Ritchie that guaranteed that the measure would fail to gain the sixty percent majority necessary for passage.27 For the OVTLA the campaign against the library bond was expansive and included a number of soapbox speeches, public meetings, and leaflets printed in both German and English 22 Javersak, 27. 23 Ibid28. 24 Charles A. Julian, History of the Ohio County Public Library (Presented at Lunch With Books, Ohio County Public Library 2013). 25 Ohio Valley Trades & Labor Assembly, “Minute Book No. 3,” (August 11, 1901): WVC, 127. 26 “Death Comes to Carnegie Library,” The Wheeling Majority (Wheeling, WV), Feb 17, 1910. 27 “Carnegie Library Bond Issue Ordinance Was Defeated,” Wheeling Daily Intelligencer (Wheeling, WV), January 27, 1904.

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expressing the OVTLA’s objections.28 The campaign against the library was recalled as a formative success in Victor Reuther’s recollections about Valentine Reuther’s (his and Walter’s father) involvement in Wheeling’s labor and socialist movements of the period.29 In his opening salvo against the first proposal for a Carnegie library in 1901, Michael Mahoney, a frequent antagonist of the socialist faction within the OVTLA who is described in a 1902 description of the membership as being “young, active, progressive and conservative, considerate of the rights of employer and employee,”30asked “Was it Mr. Carnegie’s anxiousness for the spread of education that caused his heart to become like steel to the cries of distress that went up at Homestead that memorable month of July, in 1892?”31 Mahoney went on to argue that [h]ad Mr. Carnegie guarded the interests of his employees properly at Homestead in 1892, there is no doubt that many of them would be happy possessors of libraries in their own homes and when they desired to educate their children or cultivate their own mind that no fear would enter their minds that their fingers would be stained with the blood of their fellow man? Whose blood has fertilized these books, taken from the shelves of the Carnegie libraries, which are nothing only discrowned souvenirs of organized labor, unbecoming monuments to the liberties of our country. As free American citizens, as organized working men, is this the kind of education you want to bequeath to your children and children’s children through all generations, to be the victims of aristocratic charity?32

In these statements Mahoney invoked a conception of individual freedom and autonomous educative action that emphasizes a “labor republican” discourse in which the producer/citizen is the ideal. It was the external power of a distant industrialist and philanthropist to create such an institution to which Mahoney objected. For labor republicans Carnegie’s ability to dictate the conditions under which his libraries were built was domination personified. Later, in a debate in the OVTLA’s meeting hall several days prior to the 1904 election when confronting an OVTLA delegate in favor of the bond measure, Mahoney conceded the importance of a new library and he confirmed that his vehement objection to the Carnegie library proposal stemmed from his sense that such a library would represent Carnegie’s domination of national political and economic life.33 While of a different ideological persuasion, frequent socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs declared in a 1901 letter that “[w]e want 28 David Javersak, “One Place on this Great Green Planet Where Andrew Carnegie Can’t Get a Momument with His Money,” West Virginia History 41, no. 1(1979). 29 Victor G. Reuther, The Brothers Reuther and the Story of the UAW: A Memoir. (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1976).  30 Barkey, Working Class Radicals, quoted in note no. 45 to chapter 1, 208. 31 Ohio Valley Trades & Labor Assembly, “Minute Book No. 3” (August, 11, 1901): WVC, 127. 32 Ibid., 127. 33 Ohio Valley Trades & Labor Assembly, “Minute Book No. 4” (January 24, 1904): WVC, 230.



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libraries, and we will have them in glorious abundance when capitalism is abolished and workingmen are no longer robbed by the philanthropic pirates of the Carnegie class. Then the library will be as it should be, a noble temple dedicated to culture and symbolizing the virtues of the people.”34 In the debate around the library the unionists in the OVTLA were struggling to assert a sense of agency with respect to their local public institutions. This was a time when many of the civic institutions that were to become commonplace later in the twentieth century were still in their infancy—the public library was no exception. These activists felt that a faceless “money power” held an iron grip on many of the emerging institutions. The debate around the Wheeling Carnegie library was an opportunity to assert this perspective. How did debate participants speak a “language of class” with respect to the library? During the contentious debates about the Carnegie library bond at the OVTLA Delegates meeting on Sunday, January 24, 1904, just two days prior to the January 26 election, Mahoney gave an emotional speech on the matter.35 Prior to the meeting, in a letter addressed to the OVTLA, the Wheeling Board of Education called upon “the well known fairness and disposition of the Trades Assembly” to request that the citizen John Coniff present an argument in favor of the library to the Assembly.36 Coniff argued his case to the Assembly in the following terms: A public library was conceded to be a necessity and the value of education did not depend on a college education, but to a man’s energy, pluck and determination. In this country more than any other the advantages of the highest education were better, poverty was no bar, the sons of toil had the same advantage as the rich. The natural impulse of the people was for education, the taste for good reading makes a happy man. The present library is not one-third sufficient for the needs of the people, there (sic) are craving, in fact they were greedy for good books.37

This passage is an example of how those in favor of the library drew from the same wellspring of American political rhetoric as the library’s opponents, but that they did so in manner that framed the library as providing a form of freedom that lacked coercion. In his response Mahoney emphasized some of the other problems involving civic infrastructure by noting that “these streets are disgraceful, dangerous and not fit to walk on”38 serving as reminder that a great deal of the civic infrastructure that would become commonplace in the twentieth century was still being built and that a library was but one of many civic priorities. Mahoney’s peroration proclaimed that if the measure were defeated that “there will be one place on this great green planet where Andrew Carnegie can’t get a mon34 Quoted in George Bobinski, Carnegie Libraries: Their History and Impact on American Public Library Development, (Chicago, IL: American Library Association. 1969), 103. 35 Ohio Valley Trades & Labor Assembly, “Minute Book No. 4” (January 24, 1904): WVC, 227. 36 Ibid., 227. 37 Ibid., 228. 38 Ibid., 228.

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ument with his money.”39 Mahoney found that “[t]he poor man can’t go into any such a library. Why it would be like me taking my furnishings and carpets from the simple little cottage that protects my family on Fourteenth street and trying to place them in a mansion on Fourteenth street and make it look like the original lavish furnishins (sic). How then do you expect a workingman to be at home in $75,000 library?”40 He goes on to claim that “Workingmen… could not speak above a whisper in it while other people could go there and do as they pleased.”41 The library opponents in the OVTLA spoke a language of class that was inseparable from their identities as workers. In the introduction to his classic work The Making of the English Working Class E. P. Thompson described class-consciousness as “the way in which… experiences are handled in cultural terms: embodied in traditions, values-systems, ideas and institutional forms.”42 In their responses to the Carnegie library the OVTLA made sense of the library politically in ways that were deeply tied to how they expressed their class consciousness which was discursively embedded in the labor republican tradition. The belief that, in Michael Mahoney’s words, “Wheeling should not be dictated to by a man from Scotland”43 was a way to fight back against a distant and abstract system of industrialization that was quickly transforming day-to-day lived experience; but it was also a perspective that identified the potential for Carnegie’s philanthropy to reinforce structures of domination and curtail republican freedom that was deeply objectionable. That the OVTLA prevailed in their campaign to stop the construction of a Carnegie library in Wheeling was the exception to Carnegie proposals rather than the rule; most cities and towns that were offered Carnegie Libraries accepted them.44 While the socialists and the AFL continued to struggle for their respective visions of justice for labor, they were soon to confront the limits of their fragile political coalition. Socialist influence in the OVTLA began to wane, and formal affiliation with the AFL occurred in 1915. While the OVTLA prevailed on the library issue, it was unsuccessful in many subsequent campaigns, (e.g., its attempts to unseat a federal judge, Alston Dayton, who was hostile to labor and municipal ownership of utilities) reflecting the national reality that labor did not achieve substantial political victories and organize industrially until the 1930s when it joined the labor/liberal New Deal political coalition. After the Carnegie negotiations concluded in 1910 the board of education opened a new library in 1911 that served as Wheeling’s main library until

39 Ibid., 230. 40 Ibid., 229. 41 Ibid., 230. 42 E.P Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class. (New York, NY: Pantheon Books.1964),10. 43 Ohio Valley Trades & Labor Assembly, “Minute Book No. 3” (August, 11, 1901): WVC, 127. 44 Bobinski, Carnegie Libraries, 3,115. Bobinski lists 225 “Libraries Which Never Materialized” in comparison to the 1,679 public library buildings constructed in 1,412 communities in America from 1880s to the 1920s.



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1973.45 The defeat of the Carnegie library in Wheeling was one of the OVTLA’s most notable political triumphs.

The Forgotten Tradition of Labor Republicanism and the American Public Library For Alex Gourevitch late nineteenth century labor republicanism in the United States provides political theory with a particularly compelling example of the republican theory of liberty transcending its origins in the privileged sectors of society.46 The classically liberal idea of freedom as non-interference (that has in many ways defined American liberalism and conservatism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries) is particularly unable to see how a philanthropic donation to a institution that would not be operated by Carnegie (Carnegie library grants famously paid for library construction, not books or maintenance) could be found objectionable; Carnegie would not be interfering with the way the library would be run. However, the OVTLA was animated by the nineteenth century labor republican struggle against domination that employed “a strategy of ‘self-education.’ The main role for the state, to the extent that it could be controlled, was certain regulatory limits, such as maximum-hours laws, and some public schooling. But it was up to worker-citizens to provide the actual content through their own institutions.”47 Viewed from the perspective of the OVTLA, it becomes clear that Carnegie’s philanthropy re-inscribed and asserted his domination of both the economic and political systems that dominated the United States at the time. As demonstrated in delegate Michael Mahoney’s statements against the library, the OVTLA expressed the view that Wheeling’s working class needed to feel a sense of ownership in their civic institutions—something that a library built by Carnegie’s money could never provide. What can this episode tell us about the history of the American public library? In this paper thus far, I have not engaged in the historical literature surrounding Carnegie’s philanthropy and the American public library during this period (1900 to 1915). I will limit my engagement to a discussion how the OVTLA discourse around the library can inform that literature. Bobinski’s influential study of Carnegie Libraries found that only 225 communities applied for and did not construct a library compared to the 1,679 buildings constructed in the United States. Of the rejected Carnegie library proposals for which documentation exists most were rejected because scarce municipal resources were prioritized for basic sanitation, streetlights, schools, etc. (issues that

45 Javersak, “One Place on This Great Green Planet.” 46 Gourevitch, From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth, 12. 47 Ibid., 158.

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the OVTLA was involved in as well).48 The one existing historical study of communities rejecting Carnegie libraries, Carnegie Denied: Communities Rejecting Carnegie Library Construction Grants, 1898 – 1925, identifies two other cities in which labor played a key role in communities rejecting Carnegie library proposals (Oelwein, Iowa in 1903 and in Mobile, Alabama, in 1914).49 The exceptional nature of the OVTLA’s successful rejection of a Carnegie library and the documentary record of their organization provides a window into how a politicized group, the labor republicans in OVTLA, perceived the class bias of the American public library at the beginning of the Progressive Era. Historians of the Public library such as Michael Harris and Eric Novtony50 have argued that one of the key “problems” that public libraries were attempting to address was anxiety about the influx of immigrants into the United States. In Harris’s examination of the American public library during this period he argues that the key motivation for the expansion of the public library and the Carnegie giving was a way for librarians and educators to acculturate immigrants to American institutions. These library actors continually “stressed the importance of their respective institutions in the ‘war’ to preserve democratic ideas and institutions from demagoguery, communism, and other subversive doctrines.”51 It is a historical irony that for the Irish, German, Scandinavian, Polish, and Jewish immigrants who participated in the U.S. labor and socialist movements of the period, it was the culture of the movement that played a large role—arguably much larger than the public library—in their process of Americanization. Carnegie biographer David Nasaw convincingly demonstrates that Carnegie’s philanthropy was not motivated by a sense of guilt over the enormous inequalities that industrialization created, but more by his readings of the social Darwinist Hebert Spencer. Carnegie believed that it was the obligation of the capitalist to follow the dictates of the market so that he or she could give a substantial amount away to philanthropy while contributing to the general industrial development of society. Using the logic of Darwinian evolution meant that those with “talent for organization and management” and who were rewarded with wealth were given this patrimony to “wisely give away.”52 Carnegie thought that, while this process would cause disruption and suffering, it would do more to alleviate poverty in the long run. For purposes of comparison, Carnegie can be viewed as exemplifying what Alex Gourevitch calls “laissez-faire republicanism,” the form of republicanism that would later become 48 Bobinski, Carnegie Libraries. 49 Robert Sidney Martin Ed. Carnegie Denied: Communities Rejecting Carnegie Library Construction Grants, 1898–1925. (Westport, Ct: Greenwood Press. 1993). 50 Eric Novotny, “Library Services to Immigrants: The Debate in the Library Literature, 1900—1920, and a Chicago Case Study.” Reference & User Services Quarterly. 2003, 42 no. 4: 342–352. 51 Harris, “The Purpose of the American Public Library,” 14. 52 Andrew Carnegie, “Wealth,” North American Review 148, no. 391 (1889); David Nasaw,  Andrew Carnegie. (New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2006), 348–349.



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ascendant, particularly in the twentieth century Republican Party. Labor republicans found independence in the development of the “cooperative commonwealth” and by struggling to develop self-governing institutions such as workers’ cooperatives that would provide greater leisure time (by limiting working hours, hence the centrality of the “eight hours for work eight hours for rest and eight hours for what we will” slogan of the period) and greater liberty through collective self-management. By contrast, laissez-fare republicans came to view “wage labor as a universal condition of free labor.”53 In other words, labor was free insofar as each individual worker was able to freely enter into a labor contract with an employer/possessor of capital who could most capably organize and coordinate production. In Siobhan Stevenson’s analysis of Andrew Carnegie, the Knights of Labor, and other library administrators’ public proclamations about libraries in the 1890s, Stevenson found that they both offered contesting constructions of the nature of the “missing” information present in society that libraries could provide.54 Stevenson found that when library administrators did discuss the informational needs of “the worker” they focused on the need for information on technical subjects that could be used for economic improvement by the talented and ambitious few.55 In the clash over the Wheeling Carnegie library there was very little evidence of a public debate about the nature of the library collection itself. In advocating for the Carnegie library OVTLA delegate McNamara compared the state of the library then in Wheeling to the library in nearby Steubenville, Ohio, and found that “the Steubenville library contained 150 volumes of sociology while the local one (Wheeling) had but 50. Steubenville had 64 periodicals on file, the Wheeling library 32 and contained rooms for women, children and men.”56 The OVTLA did fear that books that might support the cause of labor would be “debarred” from the library and that the proposed library would not be located in or near the working-class neighborhoods making it difficult to use (the library that Wheeling later built was located near Wheeling’s working-class neighborhoods).57 However, the records indicate that it was the larger domination that Carnegie’s philanthropy represented that motivated the OVTLA’s opposition to the bond. In conclusion, the available evidence suggests that—although all parties saw the need for a public library in Wheeling and did not differ much over the types of books or information that the library should contain—it was what the library represented in a larger social and political context that set the terms of the debate. Given the OVTLA’s other concerns and political stands it is obvious that the public library as a civic insti-

53 Gourevitch, From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth, 183. 54 Siobhan Stevenson, “The Political Economy of Andrew Carnegie’s Library Philanthropy, with a Reflection on its Relevance to the Philanthropic Work of Bill Gates,” Library & Information History 26, no. 4 (2010), 247. 55 Ibid., 249. 56 Ohio Valley Trades & Labor Assembly, “Minute Book No. 4” (January 24, 1904): WVC, 232. 57 Ibid., 232.

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tution was seen as embodying a larger struggle against domination. If Library and Information Studies examined questions about intellectual freedom through a labor republican lens that placed questions about the potential for domination at the center of debates about libraries and freedom, instead of cases in which only visible coercion occurs, it might cast important new light on issues such as the social role of libraries, the common good, philanthropy, corporate partnerships, and the outsourcing of services/resources, just to name a few. In other words, the key questions that the OVTLA activists raised in their opposition to the Wheeling Carnegie library are still very much with us today.

References Barkey, Frederick A. Working Class Radicals: The Socialist Party in West Virginia, 1898–1920. Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Press. 2012. Bobinski, George S. Carnegie Libraries: Their History and Impact on American Public Library Development. Chicago, IL: American Library Association, 1969. Carnegie, Andrew. “Wealth.” North American Review 148, no. 391 (1889): https://www.swarthmore. edu/SocSci/rbannis1/AIH19th/Carnegie.html. Cerrone, Dominick Paul. “Exiles from the South in Search of the Promised Land.” Wheeling National Heritage Area. Accessed July 15, 2015. http://wheelingheritage.org/wheeling ethnicgroups/ wheeling-ethnic-groups-african-american/. Fink, Leon. Workingmen’s Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1983. Fraser, Steve. The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power. New York: Little Brown and Company, 2015.  Gourevitch, Alex. From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth: Labor and Republican Liberty in the Nineteenth Century. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Harris, Michael. “The Purpose of the American Public Library. A Revisionist Interpretation of History.” Library Journal 98, no. 16 (1973): 2509–2514. Howe, Irving. Socialism and America. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985. Javersak, David T. The Ohio Valley Trades and Labor Assembly: The Formative Years, 1882 1915. Ph.D. dissertation West Virginia University, 1977. —. “One Place on this Great Green Planet Where Andrew Carnegie Can’t Get a Monument with his Money.” West Virginia History 41, no. 1 (1979): 7–19. Julian, Charles A. History of the Ohio County Public Library. Presented at Lunch With Books, Ohio County Public Library, 2013 http://www.ohiocountylibrary.org/uploads/wy_OCPLHistory-LWB-2013-04-16 PDFLibraryFile.pdf.Top of Form Lichtenstein, Nelson. The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit: Walter Reuther and the Fate of American Labor. New York, NY: Basic Books, 1995. Martin, Robert Sidney Ed. Carnegie Denied: Communities Rejecting Carnegie Library Construction Grants, 1898–1925. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. 1993. Nasaw, David.  Andrew Carnegie. New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2006. Novotny, Eric “Library Services to Immigrants: The Debate in the Library Literature, 1900–1920, and a Chicago Case Study.” Reference & User Services Quarterly 42, no. 4 (2003): 342–352.



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The Ohio Valley Trades & Labor Assembly, West Virginia Collection, West Virginia University Library, Morgantown, W. Va. Reuther, Victor G. The Brothers Reuther and the Story of the UAW: A Memoir. Boston Houghton Mifflin, 1976. Salvatore, Nick. Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2007. Stevenson, Siobhan. “The Political Economy of Andrew Carnegie’s Library Philanthropy, with a Reflection on its Relevance to the Philanthropic Work of Bill Gates.” Library & Information History 26, no. 4 (2010), 247. Thompson, E.P. The Making of the English Working Class. New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1964. Wheeling West Virginia Board of Trade. Year Book for 1911. 1911. Wheeling Majority, “Death Comes to Carnegie Library.” February 17, 1910. Wheeling Daily Intelligencer, “Carnegie Library Bond Issue Ordinance Was Defeated.” January 27, 1904. Yeselson, Rich. “Where’s the Outrage?” Dissent, Summer 2015, 142–145.

Brenda Mitchell-Powell

The 1939 Alexandria, Virginia, Public Library Sit-in Demonstration Accounts of modern civil rights struggles, and the roles of nationally prominent and popular individuals in those efforts, abound. Less widely known are the histories of early grassroots initiatives conceived and implemented by Black1 citizens as acts of defiance against Jim Crow policies to perpetuate segregation and the social, political, educational, economic, and legal privileges reserved for White citizens and to deny Black citizens opportunities to control the terms and conditions of their lives. The sit-in orchestrated by Samuel Wilbert Tucker to integrate2 the Alexandria public library is a lesser-known protest, but it exemplifies early models of civil rights demonstrations conceived to effect proactive changes in the quality of local Black citizens’ lives. Tucker’s amalgam of conceptual strategies, legal tactics, and precedents — public protest, civil disobedience, and assaults on the local municipal court system — implemented or adapted to integrate the Alexandria Library was later adopted by the Civil Rights

1 The researcher acknowledges the commonly promulgated concepts of race and racial categorizations as social constructs. This study, however, uses these popular concepts of race as a research lens for the investigation of how and why Alexandria’s elite Whites and, when useful, non-elite Whites, used notions of racial superiority and inferiority to manage populations and institutions to serve their specific needs and/or interests. For the purposes of discourse and analysis in this study, it is necessary to choose and use terminology to reference specific individuals and groups. When this research study was conducted, the common appellations for the racial groups profiled herein were “Caucasian” or “White” and “African American” or “Black.” It is the personal preference of the researcher to use the term Black when referring to people of Black African descent, because it evinces and affirms the continuum and unity of diasporic populations. See Chicago Manual of Style, 16th ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 402. Guidelines for terminology usage for “Ethnic, Socioeconomic, and Other Groups” appear in Chapter 8, subsections 8.37–8.42, on pages 401–403. The section for designations of groups by “Color” appears in subsection 8.39. When terminology for designations of groups by ‘color’ appears in quoted material, the format for capitalization used by the quoted author of the work is maintained. 2 “Segregation” or, as specifically used in this study, racial segregation, refers to a system of de jure enforced separation of racial groups by discriminatory means, such as barriers to social interaction or exclusion from educational institutions. Although sometimes used interchangeably, the terms “integration” and “desegregation” refer to two distinct processes. Integration or, as specifically used in this study, racial integration, is a broad social term that refers to the process of reducing or eliminating barriers to social interaction; creating equal opportunities, regardless of race; and developing a diverse society of equal citizens that values and respects various cultures. Desegregation, on the other hand, is included in the broader process of integration but refers particularly to the process of ending systematic racial segregation through the use of legal means. “Segregation,” Merriam-Webster’s Learner’s Dictionary (n.d.), http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/segregation; “Integration,” Merriam-Webster’s Learner’s Dictionary (n.d.), http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/integration; “Desegregation,” Merriam-Webster’s Learner’s Dictionary (n.d.), http://www.merriam-webster. com/dictionary/desegregation. DOI 10.1515/9783110450842-006



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Movement and national organizations in an effort to effect changes in the social mindsets of all Americans, as well as in the terms and conditions of Black Americans’ lives. Ultimately, the 1939 sit-in demonstration engineered by Tucker is significant not merely as a local effort enacted in response to the city’s refusal to integrate its only public library or for the impressive milestones it achieved in American library history, American social history, and civil rights history. For instance, among other achievements, the Alexandria protest is the first recorded example of a staged sit-in used as a tactic to pressure a municipality to provide Black citizens with access to a public library.3 Above all, however, the protest is noteworthy because Tucker’s choice of a library as a site for civil rights protest — rather than a site for public accommodations, public transportation, or service treatment — is unusual and prescient. The selection of a library as a site for contestation indicates Tucker’s awareness of the centrality of libraries as settings for civic and democratic engagement and empowerment, as well as settings for self-education, self-help, individual and group advancement, and social interaction. This research delineates the motivations and objectives for Tucker’s selection of a library as a site for a civil rights demonstration and recounts the protest as an act of proactive self-determination by members of a Black community frustrated by the blatant disregard of city administrators and officials who consciously denied Black residents equitable library service provisions.4 The study is unique because it incorporates primary-source documentation to rectify the historical silences and missing voices associated with the construction, operation, and evolution of the Robert H. Robinson Library as a lead-in to the account of the eventual integration of the Alexandria Library. The Robinson Library, named by Alexandria’s City Council to honor a Black Methodist minister and former slave who was the grandson of Caroline Branham, Martha Washington’s personal maid,5 was the modest facility hastily constructed in 3 “Boys Wanted to Read, but Librarians Had Them Jailed: Judge Continues Case for Week to Study Charges,” New Journal and Guide (September 2, 1939): 1; August Meier and Elliot Rudwick, Along the Color Line: Explorations in the Black Experience (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 341–342. 4 Primary source records of the Library Board and City Council meeting notes detail officials’ discussions on the subject of Black use of the Alexandria Library. Alexandria Library, Records, 1937‒ [ongoing], Alexandria Library, Special Collections, Alexandria, Virginia, Box 98B, Folder 16: Alex Lib[rary] Board: Minutes [January] 1938‒October 1947 [Board of Directors, Minutes of the Board of Directors of the Alexandria Library Society]. Alexandria Library, Records, 1937‒ [ongoing], Alexandria Library, Special Collections, Alexandria, Virginia, Box 98J, Folder 2: Alexandria Library — Administration, Correspondence, 1937–1944 [Samuel Tucker — Robinson]. Alexandria Library Company, Records, 1794‒1990, Alexandria Library, Special Collections, Alexandria, Virginia, Box 2M — Alexandria Library Company Minutes — Folder 1931‒1947. ACC# A2003‒016, City Clerk (CIT CLK, Department), Dockets Minutes — City Council, September 13, 1938‒January 27, 1940, 9/13/1938 to 1/27/1940, 200301612 — 02‒11‒01‒04, Folder: Special Meeting Tuesday, August 8, 1939, Folder: Regular Meeting Tuesday, Sept[ember] 26, 1939. 5 At the February 12, 1940, monthly meeting of the Library Board, Library Director Katharine H. Scoggin reported that the new Black branch would be named the “Robert H. Robinson Library,” a name

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1940 in the city’s integrated Parker-Gray neighborhood as the Black branch of the existing Whites-only Alexandria Library in order to circumvent integration. (Detailed accounts of the history of the Alexandria Library during its operation as a segregated facility are addressed in previous works and are not, therefore, addressed at length in this study.6) The chronicle of the 1939 Alexandria public library sit-in demonstration, the construction and evolution of the Robinson Library, and the eventual integration of the Alexandria Library — twenty-three years after the protest occurred — connects this study to the theme of “Traditions & Innovations” by expanding the nexus of concepts about libraries as physical places and social spaces, educational institutions, cultural centers, community repositories, and sites of civic and democratic engagement. Based in large part on primary sources, though relevant secondary sources were also consulted, this essay is a microhistory of the first known and recorded effort by Black Americans in a local community to conduct a sit-in demonstration to integrate a Whites-only public library. Situating the need and desire for access to the local public library by Black Alexandrians in the broader realm of social activism, this microhistory illustrates the role and function of public libraries in a community, the exploitation of race in the context of municipal education provisions and opportunities for upward mobility, and the symbolism imbued in public library access — especially in the South where normative traditions concerning race dictated acceptable social mores. Above all, this microhistory demonstrates how national efforts by organized groups of Black Americans seeking public library admittance were often predicated on early attempts by Black citizens in local communities to achieve the same goal. The 1937 construction of Alexandria’s first public library was a momentous event for all the city’s residents, irrespective of race. Other southern cities had provided their citizens with public library access decades previously.7 The Alexandria Library Assoselected by the City Council. Alexandria Library, Records, 1937‒ [ongoing], Alexandria Library, Special Collections, Alexandria, Virginia, Box 98B, Folder 16: Alex Lib[rary] Board: Minutes [January] 1938‒October 1947 [Board of Directors, Minutes of the Board of Directors of the Alexandria Library Society], Monday, February 12, 1940, Meeting Minutes, 47–48. 6 See, for example, William Seale, The Alexandria Library Company (Alexandria: Alexandria Library Company, 2007); Beverly Seehorn Brandt, “The Alexandria, Virginia, Library: Its History, Present Facilities, and Future Programs,” unpublished Master’s thesis, Catholic University of America, Washington, DC (April 1950); and Jeanne G. Plitt and Marjorie D. Tallichet, “A History of the Alexandria Library,” Fireside Sentinel (July 1988): 61–68. Unfortunately, Seale’s account of the Alexandria Library Company’s history includes numerous factual errors. Seale claims, for example, that as a result of the sit-in, the Alexandria Library was integrated. In fact, the public library was not fully integrated for another twenty-three years. Researchers are advised to consult the Alexandria Library Special Collections’ primary-source materials. See also Beverly Seehorn Brandt, “The Alexandria, Virginia, Library: Its History, Present Facilities, and Future Programs.” 7 According to the U.S. Bureau of Education, Statistics of Libraries and Library Legislation in the United States, 1895–1896 (Washington, DC Government Printing Office, 1897), Mississippi and the District of



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ciation, by contrast, had retained its subscription-based format, which limited access to services and resources by class as well as by race, because only those residents with ample discretionary income and discretionary time could afford the required fees and restricted hours of operation associated with use of the subscription library. Taxes paid by all city residents —Blacks as well as Whites — helped subsidize the segregated Alexandria Library, but a broad constituency of elite and non-elite Whites believed they had waited patiently for access to free public library services and they were loath to relinquish the privilege of racial exclusivity to Blacks. No consideration was given to the fact that Alexandria’s Black citizens had also waited during those 143 years from the founding of the Library Company of Alexandria — the city’s subscription library — in 1794 for free, public library services.8 As physical and social constructs, the Alexandria Library and, later, the Robert H. Robinson Library, epitomized places and spaces that affirmed and perpetuated Jim Crow normative policies of separate and unequal. They were places and spaces that symbolized the ways in which Whites and Blacks navigated social and cultural systems and institutions conceived to ensure both their disengagement and their interdependence. The 1939 Alexandria public library sit-in demonstration is addressed in few scholarly sources, and none of those sources features detailed, primary-source documentation focused exclusively on the event from Tucker’s protest incentives and objectives through the demonstration’s impact and aftermath for the city of Alexandria and for its White and Black residents. Furthermore, while numerous secondary-source publications present well-researched frameworks for studies of American racial history, racial relations, social interaction, southern mores, and hegemonic control (for instance, using facilities such as public libraries and educational institutions to affirm and assert power) during the era of Jim Crow, few of these works reference Alexandria’s 1939 public library protest. In these latter works, if the sit-in is mentioned at all, the narrative is cursory or parenthetical. A few titles, however, merit attention for their admirable coverage of the sit-in or for their geographical, historical, social, or legal contextualization of the protest. Eliza Atkins Gleason was the first Black American to be awarded a doctoral degree in library and information science (University of Chicago, 1940) and the first director of the Atlanta University School of Library Science. The Southern Negro and

Columbia, for example, enacted enabling laws for the subsidy of public libraries in 1892 and 1896, respectively. See pages 525–526. 8 In “Table 7: Public Library Service to Negroes in 1939 from Local Public Libraries,” Eliza Atkins Gleason compiles data on the total number of public libraries in each of the thirteen southern states and on the number of Blacks serviced by those libraries. The Southern Negro and the Public Library: A Study of the Government and Administration of Public Library Service to Negroes in the South (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1941), 90.

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the Public Library: A Study of the Government and Administration of Public Library Service to Negroes in the South, an expanded version of her dissertation, frames the Alexandria library protest within governmental legalities in service provision to Black citizens. Her coverage of the sit-in is limited to four pages, but her timely, considered, and objective inclusion — with exhaustive statistical data, as well as meticulous research that compares governmental library service provisions for southern Whites as well as for Blacks — is the first, published scholarly treatment of the Alexandria protest. In 1939, during her research for The Southern Negro and the Public Library, Gleason found that of 774 total public libraries in the thirteen southern states, only ninety-nine (12.79%) offered service to Black patrons. Of 8,805,635 Black Americans in those thirteen states, only 1,883,125 (21.39%) had access to a library.9 In her unpublished Master’s thesis titled “Integration in Public Library Service in Thirteen Southern States, 1954–1962,” Bernice Lloyd Bell queries 290 libraries to determine where Blacks are permitted to use the main or central public library. Her quantitative study offers a useful update for some of the data originally compiled by Gleason in The Southern Negro and the Public Library, but the absence of substantive conclusions drawn from her questionnaire results is a disappointment. J. Douglas Smith’s monumental Managing White Supremacy: Race, Politics, and Citizenship in Jim Crow Virginia incorporates primary-source data that attests to the ways in which Blacks and their allies led the opposition to the paternalism with which elite Whites managed racial relations to perpetuate the status quo in Jim Crow Virginia. Smith explicates the Alexandria public library demonstration as a significant component of Black-led opposition to White management of race relations throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia. In Blue Laws and Black Codes: Conflict, Courts, and Change in Twentieth-Century Virginia, Peter Wallenstein uses Tucker’s public library protest as an example of Blacks’ direct-action tactics against White oppression. He argues that more legal changes were implemented by citizens’ appeals to state and federal court systems than by efforts to modify legislation. John Egerton’s Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South, Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore’s Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919–1950, and the compilation of essays edited by Charles M. Payne and Adam Green titled Time Longer than Rope: A Century of African American Activism, 1850–1950 all remind readers that Black resistance to oppression is not a mid-twentieth-century phenomenon and that all freedom struggles provide integral components in the framework to situate the 1939 Alexandria public library demonstration along the continuum of parallels, continuities, and discontinuities of ongoing activism. Each of these works is remarkable in its depth of scholarship and original insights. Louise S. Robbins’ The Dismissal of Miss Ruth Brown: Civil Rights, Censorship, and the American Library and Patterson Toby Graham’s “Public Librarians and the Civil Rights Movement: Alabama, 1955–1965” profile courageous librarians who confronted 9 Gleason, The Southern Negro and the Public Library, 90.



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the systemic racism, sexism, xenophobia, intolerance, and nationalistic imperatives that characterized southern communities and institutions and challenged (or punished) library professionals who actively sought or cultivated non-White patrons. Graham attributes the major changes in library protocols and service arrangements to the efforts of Black activists rather than White librarians who, he argues, were often torn between southern mores and professional ethics.10 While acknowledging the contributions of valiant White professionals such as Juliette Hampton Morgan and Emily Wheelock Reed, Graham contends that integration “stood little chance against a tradition that overpowered white consciences, democratic values, and even Christian teachings.”11 Graham’s dissertation titled “Segregation and Civil Rights in Alabama’s Public Libraries, 1918–1965” provides the basis for his book A Right to Read: Segregation and Civil Rights in Alabama’s Public Libraries, 1900‒1965. Although he addresses a geographical venue that is far more wedded to southern hegemonic traditions than northern Virginia, the site of Tucker’s initiatives, Graham’s research is invaluable for thematic connections to the present research and for perspectives of library professionals on segregated facilities and resources. In her tour de force dissertation titled “Accommodating Access: ‘Colored’ Carnegie Libraries, 1905–1925,” Cheryl Knott Malone offers a cogent and well-written response to Phyllis Dain’s article “Ambivalence and Paradox: The Social Bonds of the Public Library.” Malone concludes that “…the library profession’s inability to ensure equity in the information delivery system existed alongside its philosophical commitment to free public access for all” and that “ambivalence toward accommodation and access…sustains the gap between philosophy and practice.”12 For all the progress made in library service provisions since 1996 to underserved communities, non-traditional readers, literate nonreaders, the illiterate, and those for whom English is a second language, Malone’s critique is as valid today as it was then. Abigail A. Van Slyck’s Free to All: Carnegie Libraries & American Culture 1890–1920 investigates the cultural and social meanings imbued in the architectural structures and service functions of iconic Carnegie-funded facilities, while The Library as Place: History, Community, and Culture, a masterful collection edited by John E. Buschman and Gloria J. Leckie, compiles original essays that probe the concept of libraries as various physical places and social spaces — real and imagined, embraced and contested, among others — by the communities and users they serve and/or seek. Institutions of Reading: The Social Life of Libraries in the United States, edited by Thomas 10 Patterson Toby Graham, “Public Librarians and the Civil Rights Movement: Alabama, 1955–1965,” Library Quarterly 71, no. 1 (2001): 24. See also William T. Miller, “Library Service for Negroes in the New South: Birmingham, Alabama, 1871–1918,” Alabama Librarian 27 (November/December 1975): 6–8. 11 Graham, “Segregation and Civil Rights in Alabama’s Public Libraries, 1918–1965,” 276. 12 Cheryl Knott Malone, “Accommodating Access: ‘Colored’ Carnegie Libraries, 1905–1925,” Ph.D. dissertation, Graduate School of the University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas (1996), UMI 9705902, 266–267.

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Augst and Kenneth Carpenter, places libraries in a variety of broad contexts — historical and contemporary, private and public, traditional and high-tech, large and small, commercial and community — to analyze the function, purpose, and meaning of physical places and social spaces dedicated to fostering social and cultural interaction and reading for instruction, aspiration, empowerment, and enjoyment. Given the paucity of information on Tucker’s 1939 sit-in, the erroneous and misleading details on the protest in David M. Battles’ frequently cited The History of Public Library Access for African Americans in the South or, Leaving Behind the Plow negate the potential value of his reportage. Stephen J. Ackerman’s articles on Tucker also are frequently cited, but the absence of attributions for the profusion of quoted material, the absence of bibliographic citations, and the (virtually) simultaneous publication of two iterations of the same article — one in the Washington Post Magazine (“The Trials of S. W. Tucker: The Alexandria-Born Lawyer Wasn’t One of the Most Famous Leaders of the Civil Rights Struggle. But his Enemies Always Knew Who He Was”) and the other in the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (“Samuel Wilbert Tucker: The Unsung Hero of the School Desegregation Movement”) — limit the usefulness of the material for scholars. Ackerman, nevertheless, deserves credit for introducing mainstream audiences to a lesser-known civil rights leader. By contrast, his chronology of Tucker’s life is accurate and detailed.13 Neither the American Library Association (ALA) nor the affiliated state chapters nor the institutional and individual members of the organization were immune from the racial prejudices that affected American society in its entirety. Though not exclusive to the South, these prejudices were particularly entrenched in southern states where hegemonic influences and traditions were most prevalent. Two books are essential reading for an understanding of the “odyssey of selfdefinition for the profession.”14 The Intellectual Freedom Manual, compiled by the Office for Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association, is the authoritative account of the profession’s checkered involvement in, and embrace of, intellectual freedom and equitable information access. In Censorship and the American Library: The American Library Association’s Response to Threats to Intellectual Freedom, 1939–1969, Louise S. Robbins similarly recounts the professional genesis of intellectual freedom and information access, but she situates those movements in historical and social contexts (similarly to the study under review), which enriches their impact and broadens their applicability. The chronological scope of Robbins’ research (1939–1969), which encompasses the implementation of the Alexandria sit-in demonstration as well as

13 S[tephen] J. Ackerman, comp., “S. W. Tucker Chronology” (August 15, 2000), Unpublished document, Alexandria Library — Special Collections, Alexandria Library Local History, Alexandria Library, Special Collections, Alexandria, Virginia, Vertical File: Biography — Tucker, Samuel W. 14 Louise S. Robbins, Censorship and the American Library: The American Library Association’s Response to Threats to Intellectual Freedom, 1939–1969 (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1996), 1.



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the history, sociological implications, and events associated with the ultimate integration of the library, makes her work particularly relevant for this study. Founded in 1794, the Alexandria Library Company is the oldest library system in the Commonwealth of Virginia, but it remained a subscription service until a partnership of public/private entities established a free public institution in 1937. The Library Company (the private, administrative division of both the subscription library and, later, the public library) agreed to form and manage the library and to commit its endowment for library furnishings, so the public library retained a private component. Dr. and Mrs. Robert South Barrett (a prominent and influential Alexandrian couple) agreed to donate funding for the construction of a library building. Additional funds to construct the library were paid by the federal Public Works program. Labor was provided by the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The Alexandria City Council agreed to appropriate five-thousand dollars per annum for library operation and the Quaker Meeting (the basic organizational unit of the Society of Friends, also known as Quakers) agreed to contribute a free ninety-nine-year lease on the building site.15 When the Alexandria Library opened as the city’s first public facility, no one anticipated a threat to the normative standards, no one anticipated that the exclusion of Blacks from the library would be challenged, and no one anticipated that Blacks would perceive library access as a right worth pursuing. The Library Board and City Council briefly discussed Black use of the Alexandria Library prior to its opening as a public facility, but decision-making was deferred and no further action was taken. The topic of Black access to the library’s resources and its physical place and social space was broached again in March 1939. As previously, the Library Board members deferred decision-making and action on the matter. The policy of denying Black city residents the right to patronize Alexandria’s only public library continued unabated.16 15 For primary-source documentation on the history of the Alexandria Library Company see Alexandria Library Company, Records, 1794‒1990, Alexandria Library, Special Collections, Alexandria, Virginia, Box 2M, Folder 17C: History of Alexandria Library Company. For additional material on the history of the Alexandria Library, see Beverly Seehorn Brandt, “The Alexandria, Virginia, Library: Its History, Present Facilities, and Future Programs,” unpublished Master’s thesis, Catholic University of America, Washington, DC (April 1950). Brandt comments that a few Negroes applied for library privileges at the Alexandria Library in the years following its opening. However, she mentions neither George Wilson’s suit against the Librarian and the city of Alexandria nor the 1939 sit-in demonstration to integrate the library. Brandt, “The Alexandria, Virginia, Library,” 24‒26. 16 Primary source records of the Library Board and City Council meeting notes detail officials’ discussions on the subject of Black use of the Alexandria Library. Alexandria Library, Records, 1937‒ [ongoing], Alexandria Library, Special Collections, Alexandria, Virginia, Box 98B, Folder 16: Alex Lib[rary] Board: Minutes [January] 1938‒October 1947 [Board of Directors, Minutes of the Board of Directors of the Alexandria Library Society]. Alexandria Library, Records, 1937‒ [ongoing], Alexandria Library, Special Collections, Alexandria, Virginia, Box 98J, Folder 2: Alexandria Library — Administration, Correspondence, 1937–1944 [Samuel Tucker — Robinson]. Alexandria Library Company, Re-

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Figure 1: “Samuel Wilbert Tucker” (June 18, 1913–October 19, 1990). Photograph courtesy of the Alexandria Library, City of Alexandria, Virginia. Alexandria Library, Special Collections. Document of the Month, February 2004. Florence Murray, photographer. www.alexandria.lib.va.us/.../feb_2004/doc.html.

Twenty-six-year-old Black Alexandrian Samuel Wilbert Tucker (1913–1990) was an activist in the tradition of his parents and forebears on the eve of his orchestration of the public library sit-in. His mother, Fannie L. (Williams) Tucker, earned a college degree from Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute when most southern Blacks had only a grade school education, if they had any formal education whatsoever. She taught school prior to her marriage and stressed reading and knowledge acquisition for all of her children. Samuel was taught to read when he was three years old.17 His father was a businessman, realtor, and community activist who helped spearhead the formation of the Alexandria branch of the NAACP. Tucker received his early legal training through the tutelage of his father’s business associate Attorney Tom Watson who assigned his young protégé legal research at the Library of Congress (LC), one of only two public libraries in the District of Columbia open to Blacks. (The other facility was the District of Columbia Public Library.) Alexandria provided Black youths with only a grade school education, so Tucker arranged a District of Columbia residence address so he could attend Armstrong High School in the capital. He continued to conduct legal research for Watson at LC following his graduation from Howard University in 1933. Tucker never attended law school, but he studied law on his own and successfully sat for the bar on his first attempt just six months after graduation from Howard. He was so young when he passed the bar exam that he had to wait a year before he could practice law in Virginia at age twenty-one.18 A public library was the source of Tucker’s legal education, cords, 1794‒1990, Alexandria Library, Special Collections, Alexandria, Virginia, Box 2M — Alexandria Library Company Minutes — Folder 1931‒1947. For information on the Library Board discussions of Black use of the library in advance of the facility’s 1937 opening, see the Library Board meeting notes from Monday, June 14, 1937, pages 160–165 (especially page 162). ACC# A2003‒016, City Clerk (CIT CLK, Department), Dockets Minutes — City Council, September 13, 1938‒January 27, 1940, 9/13/1938 to 1/27/1940, 200301612 — 02‒11‒01‒04, Folder: Special Meeting Tuesday, August 8, 1939, Folder: Regular Meeting Tuesday, Sept[ember] 26, 1939. 17 Elsie Tucker Thomas, interview by Matt Spangler, September 30, 1998, City of Alexandria, Virginia, for the documentary “Out of Obscurity,” unpublished transcript quoted with the permission of Matt Spangler. Alexandria Library — Special Collections, Alexandria Library Local History, Vertical File: Biography — Tucker, Samuel W. Samuel Wilbert Tucker Collection, 1939 Library Sit-in Demonstration, Manuscript Number B2010.001 — Alexandria Black History Museum Archives, Box 1, Folders 1–11. 18 Elsie Tucker Thomas, interview by Matt Spangler, September 30, 1998, City of Alexandria, Virginia, for the documentary “Out of Obscurity,” unpublished transcript quoted with the permission of Matt



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and he reasoned that other Black Alexandrians should have similar opportunities for self-directed learning. Tucker also knew that libraries fueled community growth and development, maximized individual and group ambitions, and enabled all citizens to become full participants in civic engagement and the democratic process. The genesis of Tucker’s response to the exclusion of Black citizens from Alexandria’s public library was predicated on four incentives. First, during his enrollment at Howard University, Charles Hamilton Houston established the first United States program in civil rights law, oversaw the university’s full accreditation, and converted the school from an evening-only program to a full-time institution. Dr. Howard Thurman, Howard University chaplain from 1932 to 1944 and outspoken proponent of Mohandas Karamchand “Mahatma” Gandhi’s strategies of nonviolent civil disobedience, actively encouraged the pairing of faith and social justice. Houston and Thurman were Tucker’s mentors and their influence inspired both his legal career and his social activism.19 Second, the successful “sit-down” strikes conducted by automobile workers and Black labor activists earlier in the 1930s induced Tucker to conceive, plan, and execute a similar strategy for library protest modeled on their activities.20 Third, a national study conducted from 1929 until 1931 for the NAACP concluded that the organization’s priority should be “the total abolition of racial segregation in tax-supported educational institutions.”21 Fourth, as an attendee of the 30th Annual NAACP National Conference, Spangler. Alexandria Library — Special Collections, Alexandria Library Local History, Vertical File: Biography — Tucker, Samuel W. Samuel Wilbert Tucker Collection, 1939 Library Sit-in Demonstration, Manuscript Number B2010.001 — Alexandria Black History Museum Archives, Box 1, Folders 1–11. 19 Julia Spaulding Tucker, interview by Matt Spangler, Summer 1999, City of Richmond, Virginia, for the documentary “Out of Obscurity,” unpublished transcript quoted with the permission of Matt Spangler. 20 Auto workers conducted demonstrations in 1936 in two Flint Strikes (Flint, Michigan), a Bendix Strike (South Bend, Indiana), and at plants in Atlanta, Kansas City, and Cleveland. Approximately 200,000 Chrysler auto workers conducted a “sit-down” strike in 1937 at the Chrysler Plants in Detroit, Michigan. Earlier, successful sit-down strikes were conducted in 1934 by rubber workers against General Tire and Rubber in Akron, Ohio. “Bendix Strike, South Bend, Indiana, 1936,” Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University (2010), http://www.reuther.wayne.edu/node/5636; “Chrysler Strike, Cadillac Square, Detroit, Michigan, March 24, 1937,” Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan (2010), http://www.reuther.wayne.edu/node/5646; Sidney Fine, Sit-Down: The General Motors Strike of 1936–1937 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1969); Rachel Meyer, “The Rise and Fall of the Sit-Down Strike,” in The Encyclopedia of Strikes in American History, ed. Aaron Brenner, Immanuel Ness, and Benjamin Day (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 2009), 204–215; Daniel Nelson, “Origins of the Sit-Down Era: Worker Militancy and Innovation in the Rubber Industry, 1934–38,” Labor History 23, no. 2 (Spring 1982): 198–225; and Joel Seidman, Sit-Down (New York: The League for Industrial Democracy, 1937), http://spot.colorado.edu/~wehr/491R8TXT. See also Stephen Meyer, “The Degradation of Work Revisited: Workers and Technology in the American Auto Industry, 1900–2000,” Automobile in American Life and Society (2004), http://www.autolife.umd.umich.edu/Labor/L_Overview/L_Overview6.htm. 21 Nathan R. Margold, Preliminary Report to the Joint Committee Supervising the Expenditure of the 1930 Appropriation by the American Fund for Public Service [1931], Typescript, NAACP Records, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (070.00.00); Minnie Finch, The NAACP: Its Fight for Justice

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held in Richmond, Virginia, during the summer of 1939 — the same year and at approximately the same time that ALA met in Richmond for their annual convention — Tucker supported the conclusions of the national study, which were formally adopted by the NAACP on July 1, 1939. He became one of a number of talented Howard University alumni who embraced opportunities to force Virginia courts to mandate equal protection or to bankrupt state and municipal governments that preferred to maintain segregated public facilities. Tucker, however, would accept nothing less than equity.22 Employing the combined strategies of public protest, civil disobedience, and municipal litigation, Tucker launched a grassroots initiative to dismantle the social, legal, and institutional barriers that barred Blacks from Alexandria’s tax-supported public library. Tucker’s civil rights demonstration did not succeed in its stated mission, because the Library Board, the City Council, and the City Manager ultimately chose to construct a separate Blacks-only facility rather than integrate the city’s iconic public library.23 The (Metuchen: Scarecrow Press, 1981), 84. Genna Rae McNeil authored Groundwork: Charles Hamilton Houston and the Struggle for Civil Rights (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), the definitive biography of Houston. McNeil is also the author of an article titled “Before Brown: Reflections on Historical Context and Vision,” American University Law Review 52 (2002): 1431–1460, http:// www.wvu.edu/~lawfac/jscully/Race/documents/McNeil.BeforeBrown.pdf. The definitive work on the NAACP’s efforts to end segregated education is Mark V. Tushnet’s The NAACP’s Legal Strategy against Segregated Education, 1925–1950 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987). For the involvement of the Supreme Court of the United States in desegregation initiatives prior to Brown v. Board of Education, see Michael J. Klarman, From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). By contrast, in Inherently Unequal: The Betrayal of Equal Rights by the Supreme Court, 1865‒1903 (New York: Walker & Company, 2011), Lawrence Goldstone chronicles the subversion of equal rights by the Supreme Court, including overturning the Civil Rights Act of 1875. 22 “Librarian Faces Jim Crow Suit,” Chicago Defender (May 20, 1939): 1; “Court Awaits Written Arguments in Library Case Which Is Pending,” Alexandria Gazette (September 2, 1939): 9; “Deny Petition for Writ in Library Case: Decision Handed Down this Afternoon by Judge William P. Woolls; Filed May 8 Last; George Wilson Sought Use of Library through Court Proceedings,” Alexandria Gazette (September 12, 1939): 1. On January 30, 1940, after Judge William Pape Woolls issued his final ruling on a Black applicant’s library card request, Tucker and his friend George Wilson’s returned to the Alexandria Library to resubmit Wilson’s application. Library Director Katharine H. Scoggin merely offered them library cards limited to use in the proposed Black library. Tucker was outraged and wrote Scoggin a stern response, in which he stated, “I refuse and will always refuse to accept a card to be used at the library to be constructed and operated at Alfred and Wythe Streets in lieu of a card to be used at the existing library on Queen Street for which I have no application.” “Samuel Wilbert Tucker’s Letter to Katharine H. Scoggin,” Personal communication from Samuel Wilbert Tucker to Katharine H. Scoggin, February 13, 1940. Records, 1937‒ [ongoing], Alexandria Library, Special Collections, City of Alexandria, Virginia, Box 98J, Folder 2: Alexandria Library — Administration, Correspondence, 1937–1944. Document courtesy of Alexandria Library, City of Alexandria, Virginia. 23 Alexandria Library, Records, 1937‒ [ongoing], Alexandria Library, Special Collections, Alexandria, Virginia, Box 98B, Folder 16: Alex Lib[rary] Board: Minutes [January] 1938‒October 1947 [Board of Directors, Minutes of the Board of Directors of the Alexandria Library Society], Sunday, January 22, 1940, Library Board meeting minutes, page 46. Also in Box 98B, Folder 16, see Library Board meeting min-



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Robert H. Robinson Library was built in Alexandria’s integrated Parker-Gray neighborhood in the spring of 1940 — less than one year following the library sit-in — to serve the city’s Black residents. Tucker regarded the outcome of the protest as a defeat. Nonetheless, the event was a critical initiative not only in the history of Alexandria, but also in American public library history, American social history, and civil rights history. Rather than wait for social, political, and cultural changes by elite Whites through top-down decision making, Tucker led a group of young, Black Alexandrians in the implementation of bottom-up activities to effectuate changes that served Black self-interest. In the absence of Tucker’s legal initiatives to topple Jim Crow, Black Alexandrians would have waited indefinitely for a voluntary top-down decision by the elite Whites who managed the city’s race relations and controlled operation of the library. The Library Board, in consultation with the Alexandria City Council and the city manager, dictated which citizens would be granted permission for public library access. They all preferred to maintain the racial status quo.24

The 1939 Alexandria, Virginia, Public Library Sit-in Demonstration In an effort to pressure the Alexandria Library to admit Blacks, Tucker launched the first of a two-pronged legal strategy to challenge the city’s systematic policy of racial discrimination. On Friday, March 17, 1939, he and retired Army Sergeant George Wilson, a friend and fellow Alexandrian, went to the Alexandria Library where Tucker completed an application for a library card on Wilson’s behalf.25 Tucker wanted to test utes for Monday, March 13, 1939, pages 26–27; Wednesday, April 19, 1939, pages 28–29; and Monday, May 8, 1939, pages 30–31 for Library Board discussions of “questions of [a] colored library situation.” “Alexandria Officials Welsh in Library Case: Applicants Still Denied Right to Use Facilities,” Washington Tribune (February 3, 1940): 9. 24 ACC# A2003‒016. City Clerk (CIT CLK, Department), Dockets Minutes — City Council, September 13, 1938‒January 27, 1940, 9/13/1938 to 1/27/1940, 200301612 — 02‒11‒01‒04, Alexandria Library, Records, 1937‒ [ongoing], Alexandria Library, Special Collections, Alexandria, Virginia, Box 98B, Folder 16: Alex Lib Board: Minutes [January] 1938‒October 1947 [Board of Directors. Minutes of the Board of Directors of the Alexandria Library Society], Library Board Meeting Minutes, Thursday, January 11, 1940, pages 44–45; Monday, January 22, 1940, page 46; Monday, February 12, 1940, pages 47–48; Monday, March 11, 1940, pages 49–50. “Electric Inspector’s Salary Is Approved: Will Have an Assistant; Plans for Library for Colored Set Up; Referred to Library Committee,” Alexandria Gazette (September 12, 1939): 1 and 9; “Fund for Colored Library Is Passed on First Reading,” Alexandria Gazette (January 13, 1940): 1; “Earmark $2,500 for Va. Library as Aftermath of Alexandria Court Tilt,” Chicago Defender (January 27, 1940): 1; “Alexandria Officials Welsh in Library Case: Applicants Still Denied Right to Use Facilities,” Washington Tribune (February 3, 1940): 9. 25 “Samuel Wilbert Tucker’s Letter to Katharine H. Scoggin,” Personal communication from Samuel Wilbert Tucker to Katharine H. Scoggin, February 13, 1940. Records, 1937‒ [ongoing], Alexandria

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the library’s willingness to grant a library card to a Black applicant without the force of a legal mandate. However, as Tucker anticipated, Wilson’s application was summarily rejected and he was denied public library privileges. When Wilson’s application was rejected, Tucker filed a writ of mandamus26 with the municipal court system that compelled Library Director Katharine H. Scoggin and the public library’s Board of Trustees to grant Wilson’s request for library privileges. While awaiting a ruling on the writ, Tucker executed the second legal prong of his integration strategy: a sit-in demonstration to pressure the city and the library to admit Black patrons. Eleven young Black men from Alexandria were recruited to participate in the public protest. Tucker secretly taught the men nonviolent civil-disobedience tactics to prepare them for the sit-in. He expected the demonstrators to be arrested, so he planned to meet them upon their arrival at the police station, arrange their bond and release, and serve as their attorney during the subsequent hearings.27 On the morning of Monday, August 21, 1939, only six of Tucker’s eleven recruits arrived to participate in the protest. The parents of the five other recruits voiced concerns for the safety of their sons and refused to allow them to participate in the demonstration.28 One by one, Edward Gaddis, age twenty-one; Morris L. Murray, age Library, Special Collections, City of Alexandria, Virginia, Box 98J, Folder 2: Alexandria Library — Administration, Correspondence, 1937–1944. Document courtesy of Alexandria Library, City of Alexandria, Virginia. 26 “A (writ of) mandamus is an order from a court to an inferior government official ordering the government official to properly fulfill their official duties or correct an abuse of discretion.” “Mandamus,” Legal Information Institute [LII], Cornell University Law School (n.d.), http://www.law.cornell. edu/wex/mandamus. “Library Case on Calendar for December: Alexandria Citizen Sues for Right to Borrow Literature,” Chicago Defender (December 2, 1939): 1. 27 Samuel Wilbert Tucker interview in “The Road to Brown.” Producer, writer, and director Mykola Kulish, “The Road to Brown,” distributed by California Newsreel, sponsored by University of Virginia, videocassette, 1989, executive producer William A. Elwood, associate producer Rowena Pon, black-and-white and color, 57:54 minutes. Samuel Wilbert Tucker interview in “Out of Obscurity.” Ted Poston, Staff Correspondent, “Alexandria Library Opens This Month; Resulted from Fight on Virginia Bias. Victory First Tangible Result of an Unprecedented Challenge to Southern Practice of Excluding Negroes from Public Institutions,” Pittsburgh Courier (March 16, 1940): 12. Dorothy Evans Turner, in discussion with the author, April 29, 2014. These details were also reported in a personal interview conducted by Matt Spangler with William Evans, Summer 1998, City of Alexandria, Virginia, for the documentary “Out of Obscurity.” Unpublished transcript quoted with the permission of Matt Spangler. Ted Poston, staff writer for the Pittsburgh Courier, wrote, “The N.A.A.C.P. recognized the importance of Attorney Tucker’s fight, and Charles Houston, Leon Ransome and other members of the association’s staff assisted him in consultations.” Ted Poston, Staff Correspondent, “Alexandria Library Opens This Month; Resulted from Fight on Virginia Bias. Victory First Tangible Result of an Unprecedented Challenge to Southern Practice of Excluding Negroes from Public Institutions,” Pittsburgh Courier (March 16, 1940): 12. 28 William “Buddy” Evans, for example, decided to participate in the sit-in against the wishes of his father. William Evans, interview by Matt Spangler, Summer 1998, City of Alexandria, Virginia, for the documentary “Out of Obscurity,” unpublished transcript quoted with the permission of Matt Spangler.



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twenty-two; Clarence “Buck” Strange, age twenty; and Otto Lee Tucker, age twenty-two and the younger brother of Samuel Tucker, walked to the library’s circulation desk and requested a library card. Each of their respective requests was denied by Assistant Librarian Alice Green, who informed the men that library policies restricted use of the facility and its resources to Whites. Following Tucker’s instructions, the men then proceeded one by one to the library shelves, rather than leave the library as ordered, and each selected a book at random, took a seat at a different table in the library, and silently read. The fifth young man, William “Buddy” Evans, age nineteen, inadvertently bypassed the circulation desk and went directly to a library shelf. Bobby Strange, age fourteen, the youngest of the eleven recruits and the brother of protester Clarence Strange, served as a “runner” for Tucker, repeatedly sprinting the three blocks from the Alexandria Library to Tucker’s nearby law office to supply ongoing reports of library and police activities.29 When Scoggin failed to persuade the protestors to leave the library, she contacted City Manager Carl Budwesky and Police Captain John S. Arnold to discuss the unfolding drama. Arnold dispatched two police officers — John F. Kelley and John C. Wilkerson — to the scene to handle the “commotion.”30 Upon their arrival at the library, the officers ordered the protestors to leave the facility, but the men remained seated, silent, and composed.31 The library sit-in demonstrators emerged from the library under arrest by the police after an hour in the library and were taken to Police Court. Bobby Strange raced to notify Tucker that a crowd of two- to three-hundred spectators had assembled outside the library. Prior to the sit-in, media-savvy Tucker had alerted the local newspapers to the upcoming protest to ensure coverage of the event.32 The Chicago Defender — one of the nation’s largest and most influential Black newspapers — Washington Post, Washington Times-Herald, and Washington Tribune, as well as the Alexandria Gazette — the city’s paper of record — provided initial coverage of the 29 “5 Arrested at City Library: Colored Youths Ignore Request to Leave; Held by Police,” Alexandria Gazette (August 21, 1939): 1; “Decision Is Deferred on Library Case,” Alexandria Gazette (August 22, 1939): 1; “Opinions Are Asked in Use of Library: Cases of Five Colored Men Again Go Over Following Hearing of Two Today; Crowd at Hearing; Authorities to Be Submitted by Friday to Judge James Reece Duncan,” Alexandria Gazette (August 29, 1939): 1. 30 “5 Arrested for Using City Library in Virginia; Case Puzzles Judge,” Chicago Defender (September 2, 1939): 1 and 2; “Quintet Arrested for Library ‘Sit-Down,’” Washington Tribune (August 26, 1939): 1 and 2. 31 “5 Arrested for Using City Library in Virginia; Case Puzzles Judge,” Chicago Defender (September 2, 1939): 1 and 2; “Quintet Arrested for Library ‘Sit-Down,’” Washington Tribune (August 26, 1939): 1 and 2. 32 “5 Arrested for Using City Library in Virginia; Case Puzzles Judge,” 1 and 2; “Quintet Arrested for Library ‘Sit-Down,’” 1 and 2; “Five Colored Youths Stage Alexandria Library ‘Sit-Down’: All to Face Court Today on Charge of Disorderly Conduct for Efforts to Compel Extension of Book Privileges,” Washington Post (August 22, 1939): 3; “Boys Wanted to Read, but Librarians Had Them Jailed: Judge Continues Case for Week to Study Charges,” New Journal and Guide (September 2, 1939): 1.

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demonstration. Unfortunately for scholars and students of public library evolution, American social history, and American civil rights history, subsequent news coverage of the sit-in was significantly limited due to the nation’s preoccupation with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.33 The protesters were initially charged with trespassing, but Tucker persuaded the court to amend the charge to disorderly conduct, which he knew he could trump through his use of nonviolent civil-disobedience training and well-conceived legal tactics.34

Figure 2: “The five young men above are being escorted to the police court, Monday [August 21, 1939], by Policeman John F. Kelley who placed them under arrest for reading in the City Library, pictured in rear, which Alexandria city authorities contend is for white persons only. Left to right, they are (front row) Morris L. Murray and Clarence Strange; (back row) William Evans, Otto L. Tucker, Edward Gaddis, and Officer Kelley. The youths are making a test case of the library affair.” “Young Alexandria Goes to Bat” (August 26, 1939). Washington Tribune. Photographer unidentified [Florence Murray?]. http://www.alexandriava.gov/ uploadedFiles/historic/info/blackhistory/BHLessonPlanSitDownStrike.pdf.

The next day, the five protesters appeared in Police Court before Judge James Reece Duncan for the first hearing. City Attorney and trial prosecutor Armistead Lloyd Boothe and defense attorney Tucker questioned and cross-questioned the police officers, the library assistant, and the library director, all of whom readily acknowledged that the protesters were quiet, orderly, properly attired, and respectful of library property. Responding to Tucker’s inquiries, Officer Kelley “admitted that the only disorder in question was because the men were members of the ‘Race’ and the library was for

33 The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was the nonaggression agreement between Germany and the Soviet Union, which was signed on the morning of August 24, 1939. “Modern History Sourcebook: The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, 1939” (August 1997), http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1939pact.html; “German-Soviet Pact,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (June 20, 2014), http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005156. 34 Florence Murray, “Claims Cops Broke Law in Library Case: Says Race Is No Crime Under Ordinance of Trespassing,” Chicago Defender (September 23, 1939): 4; “Decision Is Deferred on Library Case,” 1. The article titled “Heroic Conduct,” which originally appeared in the Washington Tribune and was later reprinted in its entirety in the New Journal and Guide, reported that under the terms of a City of Alexandria ordinance, “a Negro who dares to enter and use the facilities of the City Library which white employees have come to regard as No-Colored Man’s Land are liable to [the] charge [of disorderly conduct].” “Heroic Conduct,” New Journal and Guide (September 30, 1939): 8.



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white people.”35 Scoggin testified that the men would not have been removed from the library if they were White.36 Other library employees also testified that the demonstrators were refused library cards solely because the Library Board had ordered that books not be loaned to “colored” residents.37 Judge Duncan conceded that there was no evidence of disorderly conduct and that the case was a matter of constitutional privileges. He nonetheless issued no ruling and the charge of disorderly conduct was upheld pending a continuance requested by Boothe.38 Fearful of the prospect of mandated changes in existing public library policies that reflected traditional southern social mores, city administrators responded to the court proceedings with immediate action. Four prospective options were considered. The first option was to establish a Black library in the Parker-Gray School where Black students were already enrolled. The second option was to integrate the existing public library — an alternative that was immediately rejected as socially inconceivable. The third option was to permit Black patronage of the public library if those users could be restricted to a small, segregated section of the library. Entry to the facility for these users would be through a separate door in the building. Again, the potential social ramifications were unacceptable to members of the Library Board and the City Council, as well as to the city manager. The fourth option — a segregated Black library — was deemed the least objectionable alternative by the city’s administrators. City Manager Carl Budwesky was authorized by the city administrators to determine the cost to construct a separate library for Black residents.39 In addition, the Library 35 “Quintet Arrested for Library ‘Sit-Down,’” 1 and 2; “Va. Library War in Court Again: Five Youths Arrested for Using Public Institution,” Washington Afro-American (August 26, 1939): 1 and 2. 36 “Denied Library Use, Youths Face Trial in Sit-Down Strike,” Pittsburgh Courier (September 7, 1939): 2. 37 Ibid. 38 “5 Arrested for Using City Library in Virginia; Case Puzzles Judge,” 1 and 2; “Va. Library War in Court Again: Five Youths Arrested for Using Public Institution,” 1 and 2; “Denied Library Use, Youths Face Trial in Sit-Down Strike,” 2. 39 Alexandria Library Company, Records, 1794‒1990, Alexandria Library, Special Collections, Alexandria, Virginia, Box 2M — Alexandria Library Company Minutes — Folder 1931‒1947. Alexandria Library, Records, 1937‒ [ongoing], Alexandria Library, Special Collections, Alexandria, Virginia, Box 98B, Folder 16: Alex Lib[rary] Board: Minutes [January] 1938‒October 1947 [Board of Directors, Minutes of the Board of Directors of the Alexandria Library Society], Library Board meeting notes, Monday, March 13, 1939, pages 26–27; Wednesday, April 19, 1939, pages 28–29; and Monday May 8, 1939, pages 30–31. In the Monday, May 8, 1939, Library Board meeting notes, Mrs. Albert A. Smoot, President of the Alexandria Library Board, mentions “that the Interracial Committee had endorsed [the] Library’s plan for an annex, but had requested that the same entrance be used for both races.” Library Board meeting notes, page 30. There is no specific mention in the minutes of a separate entrance for Blacks, but it can be assumed that that was the Board’s intent, since the Interracial Committee felt compelled to request that all patrons use of the same entrance. The idea of an annex with a common entrance was, apparently, unappealing, because Mrs. Outwater (no given name is provided in the primary-source records) then advised formulating a plan, accompanied by expenses, for the establishment of a separate library. She proposed that the plan be presented to the City Council. Library Board meeting notes, pages 30–31. ACC# A2003‒016, City Clerk (CIT CLK, Department), Dockets Minutes —

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Company Board of Directors decided that a sign would be posted indicating that the facility was reserved for the exclusive use of “members” — reread as Whites only — and that no one staff person would be left alone in the building.40 At the second hearing, Prosecutor Boothe maintained that the protestors were not entitled to use the library, because it was not a “public” space. He argued that the Commonwealth of Virginia separated the races and that the defendants should not have assumed Blacks could use the library.41 Leveraging Judge Duncan’s first-hearing pronouncement that the case was based on constitutional privileges, Tucker contended that segregation was a violation of the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.42 Judge Duncan, who was still reluctant to rule in the case, issued the prosecutor another continuance until Friday, September 1, 1939. On September 1, 1939, anticipating final arguments and a judicial ruling on Boothe’s continuance, Black and White Alexandrians crowded the courtroom and the entryway to the courthouse. To their dismay, only disappointment and confusion ensued. Judge Duncan exited the courtroom after ruling on a few minor cases and went to his chambers. Boothe and Tucker were summoned to join him. The men met for an extended period of time and then Boothe and Tucker left both the judge’s City Council, September 13, 1938‒January 27, 1940, 9/13/1938 to 1/27/1940, 200301612 — 02‒11‒01‒04. Folder: Special Meeting Tuesday, August 8, 1939, Folder: Regular Meeting Tuesday, Sept[ember] 26, 1939. “Five Colored Youths Stage Alexandria Library ‘Sit-Down’: All to Face Court Today on Charge of Disorderly Conduct for Efforts to Compel Extension of Book Privileges,” 3; “Five Colored Boys, Refusing to Leave Library, Arrested,” Washington Times-Herald (August 22, 1939): 4; “Electric Inspector’s Salary Is Approved: Will Have an Assistant; Plans for Library for Colored Set Up; Referred to Library Committee,” Alexandria Gazette (September 12, 1939): 1 and 9. 40 Alexandria Library, Records, 1937‒ [ongoing], Alexandria Library, Special Collections, Alexandria, Virginia, Box 98B, Folder 16: Alex Lib[rary] Board: Minutes [January] 1938‒October 1947 [Board of Directors, Minutes of the Board of Directors of the Alexandria Library Society], Sunday, August 27, 1939, Library Board meeting minutes, page 34; Alexandria Library, Records, 1937‒ [ongoing], Alexandria Library, Special Collections, Alexandria, Virginia, Box 98B, Folder 16: Alex Lib[rary] Board: Minutes [January] 1938‒October 1947 [Board of Directors, Minutes of the Board of Directors of the Alexandria Library Society], Monday, December 11, 1939, Library Board meeting minutes, page 40. 41 “Opinions Are Asked in Use of Library: Cases of Five Colored Men Again Go Over Following Hearing of Two Today; Crowd at Hearing; Authorities to Be Submitted by Friday to Judge James Reece Duncan,” Alexandria Gazette (August 29, 1939): 1; “Hearing Is Set in Alexandria Library Case: 5 Youths Who Staged ‘Sitdown Strike’ Will Face Court Tuesday,” Washington Tribune (August 21[?], 1939): [?]. This Washington Tribune article was obtained from Alexandria Library Special Collections and the donor noted neither a date nor a page number on the clipping. Citation verification is problematic for articles from the Washington Tribune, a District of Columbia Black newspaper at the time of the sit-in. The newspaper was only published between 1921 and 1946 and no archive holds a complete print run. Microform holdings of the newspaper are only available to 1935. 42 “5 Arrested for Using City Library in Virginia; Case Puzzles Judge,” 1 and 2; “Five to Face Trial for Sit Strike,” Atlantic Daily World (August 28, 1939): 1; “5 Youths Face Strike Charge: Denied Use of Library in Virginia, Boys Stage Sit-Down,” New York Amsterdam News: (September 9, 1939): 3; “Denied Library Use, Youths Face Trial in Sit-Down Strike,” 2; “Judicial Red Tape Delays Library Case: Question Validity of the [Fourteenth] and [Fifteenth] Amendments,” Chicago Defender (September 9, 1939): 6.



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chambers and the courtroom. Judge Duncan instructed both litigators not to discuss the trial or their meeting and both men complied. Judge Duncan never heard final arguments for or against the library protestors following the continuance he issued at the end of the second hearing. He never issued a ruling on the requested legal briefs and he never issued a ruling on the sit-in protesters’ case. The demonstrators served no time in jail and no fines were imposed.43 During the week of Monday, September 11, 1939, in Corporation Court, Judge William Pape Woolls ruled on the initial writ submitted by Tucker in support of George Wilson’s library card application. Rejecting the plaintiff’s initial writ, Woolls stated that had Wilson properly identified himself and provided proof of residency in Alexandria, he would have been granted a reading card.44 Nevertheless, he granted Tucker a continuance to amend and resubmit the writ on Wilson’s behalf. On Wednesday, January 10, 1940, in his final decision on Wilson’s writ, Woolls ruled that Scoggin denied Wilson’s library card application because his request was completed on his behalf by Tucker and because Wilson failed to identify himself and to provide evidence of residence in Alexandria — not because of his race.45 Woolls noted, however, that the “evidence [provided by] the Alexandria Library has no regulations limiting the library’s use and facilities to the white race.”46 Black Alexandrians interpreted the ruling as a partial victory. Whites, on the other hand, were appalled by Woolls’ ruling and fearful that there would be an onslaught of Blacks in the public library applying for library cards. Indecision and delays were the hallmarks of city administrators’ response to Black citizens’ demand for library cards. Immediate decision making and action, on the other hand, characterized city administrators’ reaction to the Woolls ruling. The Library Board held an emergency meeting the day following Woolls’ ruling. Two days after the ruling, the City Council approved funds to construct a segregated Black library and to pay for a site. Ten days later, the Library Board decided that colored

43 “Attorneys File Briefs in Virginia Library Case,” Chicago Defender (September 23, 1939): 3. 44 “Way Paved to Open Alexandria Library to Colored: Judge Finds No Legal Bar against Them but Jurist Denies Petition, However, on Technicality,” New Journal and Guide (January 20, 1940): 4; Florence Murray, comp. and ed., The Negro Handbook: A Manual of Current Facts, Statistics and General Information Concerning the Negro in the United States, “Miscellaneous Civil Rights Cases,” “Alexandria Library Case: 1939‒[19]40” (New York: Wendell Malliet and Company, 1942), 45‒46; “Attorneys File Briefs in Virginia Library Case,” 3. 45 “Colored Resident Denied Writ to Force Library Privileges: Mandamus Denied George Wilson by Court on Technicality; Application Incorrect; Correct Application Would Force Writ Judge Woolls Indicates,” Alexandria Gazette (January 11, 1940): 1; “Judge’s Decision Opens Library in Alexandria,” Washington Tribune (January 13, 1940): 1. 46 “Fund for Colored Library Is Passed on First Reading,” Alexandria Gazette (January 13, 1940): 1; “Earmark $2,500 for Va. Library as Aftermath of Alexandria Court Tilt,” Chicago Defender (January 27, 1940): 1.

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applicants could register in the library, but that they would not be issued library cards and they could not borrow books until the new Black library was opened.47 Tucker and Wilson resubmitted library card applications at the Alexandria Library on Tuesday, January 30, 1940, but Scoggin offered them cards limited to use in the proposed Black library. An outraged Tucker wrote Scoggin a stern response in which he stated, “I refuse and will always refuse to accept a card to be used at the library to be constructed and operated at Alfred and Wythe Streets in lieu of a card to be used at the existing library on Queen Street for which I have no application.”48 Tucker planned to appeal Wilson’s case, but he became ill shortly after Judge Woolls’ final ruling. During his illness, a group of Black citizens met with city officials and assured them that a segregated library was an acceptable alternative to the integration of the Alexandria Library. This preemptive gesture undermined Tucker’s municipal legal efforts to force Alexandria to integrate its only public library. Tucker never again addressed the protestors’ case.49 To circumvent integration of the Whites-only public library, the Robert H. Robinson Library, constructed in less than a year from the date of the library protest in August 1939, opened on Wednesday, April 24, 1940, as a Black branch of Alexandria’s library system.50 Evelyn Roper Beam, a Black professional who earned a library degree from Hampton University and a librarian’s certificate from the Commonwealth of Virginia, 47 Alexandria Library, Records, 1937‒ [ongoing], Alexandria Library, Special Collections, Alexandria, Virginia, Box 98B, Folder 16: Alex Lib[rary] Board: Minutes [January] 1938‒October 1947 [Board of Directors, Minutes of the Board of Directors of the Alexandria Library Society], Sunday, January 22, 1940, Library Board meeting minutes, page 46. 48 Personal communication from Samuel Wilbert Tucker to Katharine H. Scoggin, February 13, 1940, Alexandria Library, Records, 1937‒ [ongoing], Alexandria Library, Special Collections, Alexandria, Virginia, Box 98J, Folder 2: Alexandria Library — Administration, Correspondence, 1937–1944. “Alexandria Officials Welsh in Library Case: Applicants Still Denied Right to Use Facilities,” Washington Tribune (February 3, 1940): 9. 49 Elsie Tucker Thomas, interview by Matt Spangler, September 30, 1998, City of Alexandria, Virginia, for the documentary “Out of Obscurity,” unpublished transcript quoted with the permission of Matt Spangler. Available archival resources provide no information about whether this particular group of Black citizens was the same group that met previously with the committee established by the Library Board and urged the construction of a boys’ club and community center for Black children rather than the construction of a public library. 50 Alexandria Library, Records, 1937‒ [ongoing], Alexandria Library, Special Collections, Alexandria, Virginia, Box 98B, Folder 16: Alex Lib Board: Minutes [January] 1938‒October 1947 [Board of Directors. Minutes of the Board of Directors of the Alexandria Library Society], Library Board meeting minutes, Monday, April 8, 1940, pages 51–52. At the regular monthly meeting of the Library Board on Monday, April 8, 1940, Library Director Katharine H. Scoggin announced plans for the opening of the Robinson Library on Monday, April 22, 1940. (In fact, the Robinson Library did not open until Wednesday, April 24, 1940.) Scoggin also announced that the City Council had been invited to attend the opening and she suggested that the Library Board members also attend to receive the Council. There is no archival information as to whether any of the Library Board members actually attended the Robinson opening.



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was hired as the first librarian at the Robinson Library. Although a full-time credentialed librarian, Beam was paid $720.00 per annum when she was hired to work at the Robinson Library; by contrast, the salary paid to Ellen Coolidge Burke, a White Assistant Librarian/Cataloger at the Alexandria Library was $1,940.00.51 There is no record of exactly when or why Beam left her position, but subsequent Library Board meeting notes indicate that Hazel Miller succeeded her as librarian in 1942; Miller, in turn, was succeeded by Sara Murphy Carr in 1944.52 Unlike Scoggin, Carr was not permitted to make a formal presentation to the Library Board until 1948. Prior to that time, her reports on the status of the Robinson Library — including the number of new patrons (adults, high school students, and elementary school children), plus the number of books acquired and circulated and the number and type of programs planned — were delivered to the Alexandria Library Director, who presented the information to the Library Board members at their monthly meetings.53 Gladys Howard Davis, a Black native of Alexandria and one of the researcher’s oral history interviewees, was hired on February 15, 1947, as a paraprofessional library assistant to help with service provisions, such as receiving library card applications, typing library cards, assisting with

51 Alexandria Library, Records, 1937‒ [ongoing], Alexandria Library, Special Collections, Alexandria, Virginia, Box 98B, Folder 16: Alex Lib Board: Minutes [January] 1938‒October 1947 [Board of Directors. Minutes of the Board of Directors of the Alexandria Library Society], Library Board meeting minutes, Monday, December 11, 1939, Library board meeting notes, pages 40–41; Monday, February 12, 1940, Library Board meeting notes, pages 47–48. 52 Alexandria Library Company, Records, 1794‒1990, Alexandria Library, Special Collections, Alexandria, Virginia, Box 2M — Alexandria Library Company Minutes — Folder 1931‒1947, Alexandria Library Society, Library Board meeting notes, Monday November 2, 1942. Alexandria Library Board of Directors, Minutes of the Board of Directors of the Alexandria Library Society, January 1938–October 1947, Alexandria Library, Special Collections, Alexandria, Virginia, Box 98B, Folder 16. The minutes from the meeting of the Alexandria Library Society on Monday, November 2, 1942, were typed on an unpaginated two-page document inserted between the pages of the Library Board meeting minutes (between pages 181‒183) for Tuesday, November 10, 1942. At this point, no credentialed librarian was employed at the Robinson Library, because the position had not been filled. (Beam is presumed to have left her position, though archival sources provide no further information.) According to the notes on page one of the unpaginated two-page document, a high school student oversaw the operation of the Robinson Library during this period. The absence of a credentialed librarian at the Robinson Library contrasts significantly with the concern for the “high standing” of the Alexandria Library and its staff, as expressed during the Monday, June 14, 1937, Library Board meeting when the importance of staff certifications was discussed. Also in 1942, Elizabeth Watson replaced Scoggin as Library Director. According to the Monday, November 6, 1944, Library Board meeting minutes, a permanent librarian for the Robinson Library had been hired, but no name was mentioned. The unnamed librarian was Sara Murphy Carr. 53 “Robert Robinson Memorial Library: Monthly Reports,” Alexandria Library, Records, 1937‒ [ongoing], Alexandria Library, Special Collections, Alexandria, Virginia, Box 98B‒1, Folder 1: Board: Minutes 1947‒[19]80, Friday, April 9, 1948, meeting minutes, page 3; ibid. Wednesday, June 23, 1948, Library Board meeting minutes, page 5.

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the processing of newly acquired library materials, and overseeing some of the activities for children. Davis also provided limited service provisions to adults.54 Limited hours, castoff books, and inconsistent staffing were among numerous examples of the inequitable operation of the Alexandria and Robinson Libraries. For example, the Alexandria Library included a large, amply furnished space dedicated to children’s services whereas the Robinson Library consisted of a single room, sparsely furnished, with small, dedicated spaces only for the librarian, the janitor, and the lavatory. Pittsburgh Courier writer Ted Poston described the Robinson Library as “modest” and reported that there were “better facilities in the capitol” [sic].55 In addition, the spacious, light-filled Alexandria Library was beautifully landscaped by the city’s garden club. Major improvements were made to the facility in 1954 and 1964. Funding was not appropriated for the expansion of the original, one-room Robinson Library until 1988, in spite of decades of overcrowded conditions for library patrons.56

Figure 3: “The Alexandria Library.” “Exterior view of the Alexandria Library,” circa 1937. Photograph of the Alexandria Library courtesy of the Alexandria Library, Special Collections. City of Alexandria, Virginia. Photographer unidentified.

Figure 4: Exterior view of the Robert H. Robinson Library. “Robert Robinson Library,” with Miss Bracie entering, circa 1950. Photograph of the Robinson Library courtesy of the Alexandria Black History Museum. City of Alexandria, Virginia. Photographer unidentified. http://www.alexandriava.gov/uploadedFiles/historic/info/blackhistory/BHLessonPlanSitDownStrike.pdf.

54 Gladys Howard Davis, in discussion with the author, January 17, 2014, City of Alexandria, Virginia. 55 Ted Poston, Staff Correspondent, “Alexandria Library Opens This Month; Resulted from Fight on Virginia Bias. Victory First Tangible Result of an Unprecedented Challenge to Southern Practice of Excluding Negroes from Public Institutions,” Pittsburgh Courier (March 16, 1940): 12. 56 Alexandria Library Company, Records, 1794‒1990, Alexandria Library, Special Collections, Alexandria, Virginia, Box 2M — Alexandria Library Company Minutes — Folder 1931‒1947, Library Board meeting minutes, Monday, November 6, 1944, pages 192–193.



The 1939 Alexandria, Virginia, Public Library Sit-in Demonstration 

Figure 5: “The Alexandria Library.” Interior view of the spacious, light-filled Alexandria Library. Photograph of the Alexandria Library courtesy of the Alexandria Library, Special Collections, City of Alexandria, Virginia. Photographer unidentified. http://www.alexandriava.gov/ uploadedFiles/historic/info/blackhistory/ BHLessonPlanSitDownStrike.pdf.

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Figure 6: Robert H. Robinson Library. “Robinson Library Librarian Mrs. Murphy S. Carr [Sara Murphy Carr], April 1946.” Photograph of the Robinson Library courtesy of the Alexandria Black History Museum, City of Alexandria, Virginia. Photographer unidentified. http:// www.alexandriava.gov/uploadedFiles/historic/ info/blackhistory/BHLessonPlanSitDownStrike. pdf.

Although stocked primarily with castoff books, operated with limited hours, and staffed inconsistently — for example, for an unspecified period of time (available Library Board meeting notes do not specify dates), the Robinson Library was supervised by a high school student with no previous library training57 — the Jim Crow library was welcomed by those Blacks eager for access to any public library. Interestingly, Ferdinand Day, an admired and esteemed community leader who was one of the researcher’s oral history interviewees as well as a cousin of sit-in demonstrator William “Buddy” Davis, reported that he regularly used the resources in the library. He did, however, note that the library’s books and magazines were primarily castoffs from the Alexandria Library or donated materials. Day also reported that he and other community members used the library as a meeting space for discussions of community affairs, plans for neighborhood improvements, and arrangements for social events for adults and children.58 Churches were perceived to be religious spaces dominated by their denominational members, whereas the Robinson Library was perceived as a secular space where all were welcome regardless of denominational affiliation. On the other hand, other Black community members shared Tucker’s resent57 Alexandria Library Company, Records, 1794‒1990, Alexandria Library, Special Collections, Alexandria, Virginia, Box 2M — Alexandria Library Company Minutes — Folder 1931‒1947, Monday, November 2, 1942, Library Board meeting notes, an unpaginated two-page document inserted between the pages of the meeting minutes for Tuesday, November 10, 1942, pages 181–183. 58 Ferdinand Day, in discussion with the author, September 25, 2014.

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ment of the Robinson Library and regarded the facility as an insulting example of Jim Crow policies of separate and unequal. These Black citizens never used the space or the resources of the Robinson Library. The differing opinions of Alexandria’s Black citizens toward the Robinson Library reflect the ambivalence with which the facility was regarded. In an article written for the Pittsburgh Courier, Ted Poston writes, “The establishment of the Negro library has been greeted with mixed reactions by the [Black] residents [of Alexandria].”59 When interviewed by documentary videographer Matt Spangler for the film “Out of Obscurity: The Story of the 1939 Alexandria Library Sit-in,” Elsie Tucker Thomas, sister of Samuel Wilbert Tucker, stated that neither she nor any member of the Tucker family ever used the Robinson Library.60 When interviewed by this study’s researcher, Dorothy “Peaches” Evans Turner, the younger sister of protester William “Buddy” Evans, commented that, like the Tucker family, all the Evans’ family members refused to use the Robinson Library.61 Integration was initiated at the Alexandria Library in February 195962 when Black high school students and adults were permitted to use the facility. Black high school students and adults made limited use of the Robinson Library, so their presence in the Alexandria Library was perceived as a lesser threat to White library patrons. The primary users of the Robinson Library were elementary school students who patronized the facility for assistance with their homework and for planned entertainment programs, such as story hours, puppet shows, and reading clubs.63 After Black high school students and adults were permitted to use the Alexandria Library, the Robinson Library became a juvenile branch until it was closed to the public on July 1, 1962, when the building became the Bookmobile headquarters. Also on July 1, 1962, Black children were admitted to the Alexandria Library and integration was fully implemented.64 However, even after integration implementation, the availability of library access for Blacks was not publicized.

59 Poston, “Alexandria Library Opens This Month,” 12. 60 Elsie Tucker Thomas, interview by Matt Spangler, September 30, 1998, City of Alexandria, Virginia, for the documentary “Out of Obscurity,” unpublished transcript quoted with the permission of Matt Spangler. 61 Dorothy Evans Turner, in discussion with the author, April 29, 2014. 62 Alexandria Library, Records, 1937‒ [ongoing], Alexandria Library, Special Collections, Alexandria, Virginia, Box 98C, Folder 13: Annual Reports — Alex Lib — J[uly 1] 1956‒Ju[ne] 1957 to J[uly 1] 1958‒ Ju[ne 30] 1959, Annual Report July 1958–June 1959. 63 Alexandria Library, Records, 1937‒ [ongoing], Alexandria Library, Special Collections, Alexandria, Virginia, Box 98C, Folder 14, Alexandria Library Annual Report July 1959–June 1960, pages 12–13. 64 Alexandria Library, Records, 1937‒ [ongoing], Alexandria Library, Special Collections, Alexandria, Virginia, Box 98C, Folder 14, Alexandria Library Annual Report June 1, 1962–June 30, 1963, page one of an unpaginated document.



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Conclusion The 1939 Alexandria public library sit-in demonstration did not achieve Tucker’s goal of integration. Nevertheless, the protest remains a watershed event because it triggered a public crisis of authority in an institution that epitomized the ideals Whites reserved for themselves and denied Blacks: literacy, education, culture, and power. The protest is significant for six reasons. First, the demonstration is the first recorded example of a staged sit-in used as a tactic to pressure a municipality to provide Black citizens with access to a public library. Second, the demonstration is the first recorded instance of a sit-in protest waged directly against the issue of segregation, rather than for enhanced allocation of public accommodations or service treatment.65 Third, the library sit-in illustrates the potential of public protest and nonviolent civil disobedience to compel accommodation, if not equity. Fourth, the protest exemplifies proactive defiance initiated by Black Alexandrians to further self-interests in the face of conspicuous disregard by the Library Board and city officials. Fifth, the sit-in anticipated the Black Library Movement that began in the 1940s when other citizens in other municipalities lobbied or protested for access to their local libraries. (Although the sit-in anticipated the Black Library Movement, this researcher found no direct connection between that genesis and the Alexandria public library protest. There may have been indirect connections, but they are not recorded.) Sixth, the choice of the public library as a site for civil rights protest threatened the metaphoric symbol of everything that differentiated Whites and Blacks and everything that justified Black subjugation. Intellectual, cultural, and aspirational pursuits were viewed as the exclusive province of Whites; Blacks, who Whites believed lacked higher-order critical-thinking skills, were relegated to menial endeavors supervised by Whites and they were expected to passively accept their lot.66 The confrontation that transpired during Alexandria’s public library sit-in also reflected a confluence of five interrelated, interdependent challenges. First, it introduced overt opposition to established norms conceived to perpetuate Jim Crow laws. In addition, the confrontation represented a demand for social equity, because Black Alexandrians briefly shared a social space previously reserved for the exclusive use of White citizens. Third, it represented a demand for intellectual and cultural equity, because it underscored the centrality of libraries in the process of self-directed education, self-help, and individual and group advancement. Fourth, it represented a demand for economic equity through its insistence on access to the same public services provided to White citizens through taxes collected from all city residents. Finally, the confrontation represented a demand for judicial equity, because it forced the city to participate in a legal process frequently used to exploit Black powerlessness. 65 Meier and Rudwick, Along the Color Line, 341–342. 66 W[illiam] E[dward] B[urghardt] Du Bois, “Of the Training of Black Men,” Atlantic Monthly 90 (September 1902): 289–297.

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Although the immediate result of the sit-in was appeasement, Tucker initiated the momentum that eventually led to change. He deserves to be remembered not as a titular figurehead of a symbolic civil rights initiative but, rather, as an agent of social change imbued with meaning. The sit-in deserves to be remembered not merely as a past event, but as a portent of future social activism and an example of the power of public protest to effect change. The demonstration also warrants recognition and remembrance not merely as a local event, but also as a commanding story of American social history with regional and national implications. As a player in the sit-in drama and a symbol of all public libraries, the Alexandria Library deserves to be hailed as a cornerstone of the community and a modern-day centralized social agency and educational institution that provides free access to organized information and options for individual and group growth and advancement. Public libraries also serve as constructed physical places and social spaces in which to mediate and shape diverse human interactions. Tucker’s sit-in employed a “quintessentially democratic” tactic — a tactic Rachel Meyer describes as more radical than its demands — to challenge the public library’s racial discrimination.67 Tucker and the five sit-in protesters acted against not only library and city officials, but also the larger Black community, including those individuals who later cooperated with authorities by accepting the compromise of a segregated library. Following the demonstration, White Alexandrians had an opportunity to fulfill the promise of democracy embodied by public libraries. They had an opportunity to secure for themselves and their community a more engaged and informed citizenry. Instead, they remained wedded to nostalgic ideals of a southern past that were socially and morally regressive, as well as racist. Rather than use municipal funding to benefit an existing library for use by all Alexandrians, White officials chose to construct a separate and unequal Black library that belied the professed mission of public libraries as democratic institutions and underscored America’s sustained racial dilemma. By denying a select group of Americans access to organized resources, they consciously limited, rather than expanded, the ethos of “public” in public libraries.

67 Rachel Meyer, “The Rise and Fall of the Sit-Down Strike,” in The Encyclopedia of Strikes in American History, ed. Aaron Brenner, Immanuel Ness, and Benjamin Day, 204–215 (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 2009).



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References Archival Sources ACC# A2003‒016, City Clerk (CIT CLK, Department), Dockets Minutes — City Council. September 13, 1938‒January 27, 1940. 9/13/1938 to 1/27/1940. 200301612 — 02‒11‒01‒04. Folder: Special Meeting Tuesday, August 8, 1939; Folder: Regular Meeting Tuesday, Sept[ember] 26, 1939. Alexandria Library. Records, 1937‒ [ongoing]. Alexandria Library. Special Collections. Alexandria, Virginia. Box 98B, Folder 16: Alex Lib[rary] Board: Minutes [January] 1938‒October 1947 [Board of Directors, Minutes of the Board of Directors of the Alexandria Library Society]. Alexandria Library. Records, 1937‒ [ongoing]. Alexandria Library. Special Collections. Alexandria, Virginia. Box 98B, Folder 16: Alex Lib[rary] Board: Minutes [January] 1938‒October 1947 [Board of Directors, Minutes of the Board of Directors of the Alexandria Library Society]. Library Board Meeting Notes. Monday, March 13, 1939, pages 26–27; Wednesday, April 19, 1939, pages 28–29; and Monday May 8, 1939, pages 30–31. Alexandria Library. Records, 1937‒ [ongoing]. Alexandria Library. Special Collections. Alexandria, Virginia. Box 98B, Folder 16: Alex Lib[rary] Board: Minutes [January] 1938‒October 1947 [Board of Directors, Minutes of the Board of Directors of the Alexandria Library Society]. Library Board Meeting Minutes. Sunday, August 27, 1939, page 34. Alexandria Library. Records, 1937‒ [ongoing]. Alexandria Library. Special Collections. Alexandria, Virginia. Box 98B, Folder 16: Alex Lib[rary] Board: Minutes [January] 1938‒October 1947 [Board of Directors, Minutes of the Board of Directors of the Alexandria Library Society]. Library Board Meeting Minutes. Monday, December 11, 1939, page 40. Alexandria Library. Records, 1937‒ [ongoing]. Alexandria Library. Special Collections. Alexandria, Virginia. Box 98B, Folder 16: Alex Lib Board: Minutes [January] 1938‒October 1947 [Board of Directors. Minutes of the Board of Directors of the Alexandria Library Society]. Library Board Meeting Minutes. Thursday, January 11, 1940, pages 44–45; Monday, January 22, 1940, page 46; Monday, February 12, 1940, pages 47–48; and Monday, March 11, 1940, pages 49–50. Alexandria Library. Records, 1937‒ [ongoing]. Alexandria Library. Special Collections. Alexandria, Virginia. Box 98B, Folder 16: Alex Lib[rary] Board: Minutes [January] 1938‒October 1947 [Board of Directors, Minutes of the Board of Directors of the Alexandria Library Society]. Library Board Meeting Minutes. Sunday, January 22, 1940, page 46. Alexandria Library. Records, 1937‒ [ongoing]. Alexandria Library. Special Collections. Alexandria, Virginia. Box 98B, Folder 16: Alex Lib[rary] Board: Minutes [January] 1938‒October 1947 [Board of Directors. Minutes of the Board of Directors of the Alexandria Library Society]. Meeting Minutes. Monday, February 12, 1940, pages 47–48. Alexandria Library. Records, 1937‒ [ongoing]. Alexandria Library. Special Collections. Alexandria, Virginia. Box 98B, Folder 16: Alex Lib Board: Minutes [January] 1938‒October 1947 [Board of Directors. Minutes of the Board of Directors of the Alexandria Library Society]. Library Board Meeting Minutes. Monday, April 8, 1940, pages 51–52. Alexandria Library. Records, 1937‒ [ongoing]. Alexandria Library. Special Collections. Alexandria, Virginia. Box 98C, Folder 13: Annual Reports — Alex Lib — J[uly 1] 1956‒Ju[ne] 1957; J[uly 1] 1958‒Ju[ne 30] 1959; Annual Report July 1958–June 1959. Alexandria Library. Records, 1937‒ [ongoing]. Alexandria Library. Special Collections. Alexandria, Virginia. Box 98C, Folder 14: Alexandria Library Annual Report. July 1959–June 1960, pages 12–13.

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Alexandria Library. Records, 1937‒ [ongoing]. Alexandria Library. Special Collections. Alexandria, Virginia. Box 98C, Folder 14: Alexandria Library Annual Report. June 1, 1962–June 30, 1963, page one of an unpaginated document. Alexandria Library. Records, 1937‒ [ongoing]. Alexandria Library. Special Collections. Alexandria, Virginia. Box 98J, Folder 2: Alexandria Library — Administration, Correspondence, 1937–1944 [Samuel Tucker — Robinson]. Alexandria Library Company. Records, 1794‒1990. Alexandria Library. Special Collections. Alexandria, Virginia. Box 2M — Alexandria Library Company Minutes — Folder 1931‒1947. Alexandria Library Company. Records, 1794‒1990. Alexandria Library. Special Collections. Alexandria, Virginia. Box 2M — Alexandria Library Company Minutes — Folder 1931‒1947. Alexandria Library Society. Library Board Meeting Notes. Monday, November 2, 1942. Alexandria Library Company. Records, 1794‒1990. Alexandria Library. Special Collections. Alexandria, Virginia. Box 2M — Alexandria Library Company Minutes — Folder 1931‒1947. Library Board Meeting Minutes. Monday, November 6, 1944, pages 192–193. Alexandria Library Company. Records, 1794‒1990. Alexandria Library. Special Collections. Alexandria, Virginia. Box 2M, Folder 17C: History of Alexandria Library Company. Alexandria Library — Special Collections. Alexandria Library Local History. Alexandria Library. Special Collections. Alexandria, Virginia. Vertical File: Biography — Tucker, Samuel W. Ackerman, S[tephen] J., comp. “S. W. Tucker Chronology” (August 15, 2000). Unpublished document. Margold, Nathan R. Preliminary Report to the Joint Committee Supervising the Expenditure of the 1930 Appropriation by the American Fund for Public Service [1931]. Typescript. NAACP Records. Manuscript Division. Library of Congress (070.00.00). [Washington, DC]. Personal communication from Samuel Wilbert Tucker to Katharine H. Scoggin. February 13, 1940. Records, 1937‒ [ongoing]. Alexandria Library. Special Collections. City of Alexandria, Virginia. Box 98J, Folder 2: Alexandria Library — Administration, Correspondence, 1937–1944. “Robert Robinson Memorial Library: Monthly Reports.” Alexandria Library. Records, 1937‒ [ongoing]. Alexandria Library. Special Collections. Alexandria, Virginia. Box 98B‒1, Folder 1: Board: Minutes 1947‒[19]80. Library Board Meeting Minutes. Friday, April 9, 1948, page 3; Library Board Meeting Minutes. Wednesday, June 23, 1948, page 5. Samuel Wilbert Tucker Collection. “1939 Library Sit-in Demonstration.” Manuscript Number B2010.001 — Alexandria Black History Museum Archives. [City of Alexandria, Virginia]. Box 1, Folders 1–11.

Published Primary Sources “5 Arrested at City Library: Colored Youths Ignore Request to Leave; Held by Police.” Alexandria Gazette (August 21, 1939): 1. “5 Arrested for Using City Library in Virginia; Case Puzzles Judge.” Chicago Defender (September 2, 1939): 1 and 2. “5 Youths Face Strike Charge: Denied Use of Library in Virginia, Boys Stage Sit-Down.” New York Amsterdam News (September 9, 1939): 3. “Alexandria Officials Welsh in Library Case: Applicants Still Denied Right to Use Facilities.” Washington Tribune (February 3, 1940): 9. “Attorneys File Briefs in Virginia Library Case.” Chicago Defender (September 23, 1939): 3. “Boys Wanted to Read, but Librarians Had Them Jailed: Judge Continues Case for Week to Study Charges.” New Journal and Guide (September 2, 1939): 1.



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“Colored Resident Denied Writ to Force Library Privileges: Mandamus Denied George Wilson by Court on Technicality; Application Incorrect; Correct Application Would Force Writ Judge Woolls Indicates.” Alexandria Gazette (January 11, 1940): 1. “Court Awaits Written Arguments in Library Case Which Is Pending.” Alexandria Gazette (September 2, 1939): 9. “Decision Is Deferred on Library Case.” Alexandria Gazette (August 22, 1939): 1. “Denied Library Use, Youths Face Trial in Sit-Down Strike.” Pittsburgh Courier (September 7, 1939): 2. “Deny Petition for Writ in Library Case: Decision Handed Down this Afternoon by Judge William P. Woolls; Filed May 8 Last; George Wilson Sought Use of Library through Court Proceedings.” Alexandria Gazette (September 12, 1939): 1. “Earmark $2,500 for Va. Library as Aftermath of Alexandria Court Tilt.” Chicago Defender (January 27, 1940): 1. “Electric Inspector’s Salary Is Approved: Will Have an Assistant; Plans for Library for Colored Set Up; Referred to Library Committee.” Alexandria Gazette (September 12, 1939): 1 and 9 “Five Colored Boys, Refusing to Leave Library, Arrested.” Washington Times-Herald (August 22, 1939): 4 “Five Colored Youths Stage Alexandria Library ‘Sit-Down’: All to Face Court Today on Charge of Disorderly Conduct for Efforts to Compel Extension of Book Privileges.” Washington Post (August 22, 1939): 3. “Five to Face Trial for Sit Strike.” Atlantic Daily World (August 28, 1939): 1. “Fund for Colored Library Is Passed on First Reading.” Alexandria Gazette (January 13, 1940): 1. “Hearing Is Set in Alexandria Library Case: 5 Youths Who Staged ‘Sitdown Strike’ Will Face Court Tuesday.” Washington Tribune (August 21[?], 1939): [?]. “Heroic Conduct.” New Journal and Guide (September 30, 1939): 8. “Judge’s Decision Opens Library in Alexandria.” Washington Tribune (January 13, 1940): 1. “Judicial Red Tape Delays Library Case: Question Validity of the [Fourteenth] and [Fifteenth] Amendments.” Chicago Defender (September 9, 1939): 6. “Librarian Faces Jim Crow Suit.” Chicago Defender (May 20, 1939): 1. “Library Case on Calendar for December: Alexandria Citizen Sues for Right to Borrow Literature.” Chicago Defender (December 2, 1939): 1. Murray, Florence. “Claims Cops Broke Law in Library Case: Says Race Is No Crime Under Ordinance of Trespassing.” Chicago Defender (September 23, 1939): 4 “Opinions Are Asked in Use of Library: Cases of Five Colored Men Again Go Over Following Hearing of Two Today; Crowd at Hearing; Authorities to Be Submitted by Friday to Judge James Reece Duncan.” Alexandria Gazette (August 29, 1939): 1. Poston, Ted, Staff Correspondent. “Alexandria Library Opens This Month; Resulted from Fight on Virginia Bias. Victory First Tangible Result of an Unprecedented Challenge to Southern Practice of Excluding Negroes from Public Institutions.” Pittsburgh Courier (March 16, 1940): 12. “Quintet Arrested for Library ‘Sit-Down.’” Washington Tribune (August 26, 1939): 1 and 2. “Va. Library War in Court Again: Five Youths Arrested for Using Public Institution.” Washington Afro-American (August 26, 1939): 1 and 2. “Way Paved to Open Alexandria Library to Colored: Judge Finds No Legal Bar against Them but Jurist Denies Petition, However, on Technicality.” New Journal and Guide (January 20, 1940): 4.

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Interviews Gladys Howard Davis, in discussion with the author, January 17, 2014, City of Alexandria, Virginia. Ferdinand Day, in discussion with the author, September 25, 2014. City of Alexandria, Virginia. Dorothy Evans Turner, in discussion with the author, April 29, 2014. City of Alexandria, Virginia. Personal interview conducted by Matt Spangler with William Evans. Summer 1998. City of Alexandria, Virginia, for the documentary “Out of Obscurity.” Unpublished transcript quoted with the permission of Matt Spangler. Personal interview conducted by Matt Spangler with Elsie Tucker Thomas. September 30, 1998. City of Alexandria, Virginia, for the documentary “Out of Obscurity.” Unpublished transcript quoted with the permission of Matt Spangler. Personal interview conducted by Matt Spangler with Julia Spaulding Tucker. Summer 1999. City of Richmond, Virginia, for the documentary “Out of Obscurity.” Unpublished transcript quoted with the permission of Matt Spangler.

Secondary Sources Brandt, Beverly Seehorn. “The Alexandria, Virginia, Library: Its History, Present Facilities, and Future Programs.” Unpublished Master’s thesis. Catholic University of America. Washington, DC (April 1950). Du Bois, W[illiam] E[dward] B[urghardt]. “Of the Training of Black Men.” Atlantic Monthly 90 (September 1902): 289–297. Finch, Minnie. The NAACP: Its Fight for Justice. Metuchen: Scarecrow Press, 1981. Fine, Sidney. Sit-Down: The General Motors Strike of 1936–1937. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1969. Gleason, Eliza Atkins. The Southern Negro and the Public Library: A Study of the Government and Administration of Public Library Service to Negroes in the South. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1941. Goldstone, Lawrence. Inherently Unequal: The Betrayal of Equal Rights by the Supreme Court, 1865‒1903. New York: Walker & Company, 2011. Graham, Patterson Toby. “Public Librarians and the Civil Rights Movement: Alabama, 1955–1965.” Library Quarterly 71, no. 1 (2001): 1–27. Klarman, Michael J. From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Malone, Cheryl Knott. “Accommodating Access: ‘Colored’ Carnegie Libraries, 1905–1925.” Ph.D. dissertation. Graduate School of the University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas (1996), UMI 9705902. Meier, August and Elliot Rudwick. Along the Color Line: Explorations in the Black Experience. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002. Meyer, Rachel. “The Rise and Fall of the Sit-Down Strike.” In The Encyclopedia of Strikes in American History, ed. Aaron Brenner, Immanuel Ness, and Benjamin Day, 204–215. Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 2009. Murray, Florence, comp. and ed. The Negro Handbook: A Manual of Current Facts, Statistics and General Information Concerning the Negro in the United States. “Miscellaneous Civil Rights Cases.” “Alexandria Library Case: 1939‒ [19]40.” New York: Wendell Malliet and Company, 1942. 45‒46.



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McNeil, Genna Rae. “Before Brown: Reflections on Historical Context and Vision.” American University Law Review 52 (2002): 1431–1460. (Also available as an electronic document: http:// www.wvu.edu/~lawfac/jscully/Race/documents/McNeil.BeforeBrown.pdf.) McNeil, Genna Rae. Groundwork: Charles Hamilton Houston and the Struggle for Civil Rights. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983. Nelson, Daniel. “Origins of the Sit-Down Era: Worker Militancy and Innovation in the Rubber Industry, 1934–38.” Labor History 23, no. 2 (Spring 1982): 198–225. Robbins, Louise S. Censorship and the American Library: The American Library Association’s Response to Threats to Intellectual Freedom, 1939–1969. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1996. Tushnet, Mark V. The NAACP’s Legal Strategy against Segregated Education, 1925–1950. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987. U.S. Bureau of Education, Statistics of Libraries and Library Legislation in the United States, 1895–1896. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1897.

Audiovisual Sources Samuel Wilbert Tucker interview in “The Road to Brown.” Mykola Kulish, producer, writer, and director. “The Road to Brown.” Distributed by California Newsreel. Sponsored by University of Virginia. [Charlottesville, Virginia]. Videocassette, 1989. Executive producer William A. Elwood. Associate producer Rowena Pon. Black-and-white and color. 57:54 minutes. Samuel Wilbert Tucker interview in “Out of Obscurity.” Matt Spangler, writer. “Out of Obscurity: The Story of the 1939 Alexandria Library Sit-in.” River Road Productions. Virginia African American Heritage Program. Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. [Charlottesville, Virginia]. Videodisc. 1999. Co-produced by Matt Spangler and Beth Ann Schmitt. Co-directed by Matt Spangler and Eddie Becker. Narrated by Julian Bond. Black-and-white and color. 40 minutes.

Primary Sources Published on the Web “Bendix Strike, South Bend, Indiana, 1936.” Walter P. Reuther Library. Wayne State University. Detroit, Michigan (2010). http://www.reuther.wayne.edu/node/5636. “Chrysler Strike, Cadillac Square, Detroit, Michigan, March 24, 1937.” Walter P. Reuther Library. Wayne State University. Detroit, Michigan (2010). http://www.reuther.wayne.edu/node/5646.

Secondary Sources Published on the Web “German-Soviet Pact.” Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. June 20, 2014. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005156. “Modern History Sourcebook: The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, 1939.” August 1997. http://www. fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1939pact.html. Seidman, Joel. Sit-Down. New York: The League for Industrial Democracy, 1937. http://spot.colorado. edu/~wehr/491R8TXT.

Mary Mahoney

The Library as Medicine Cabinet Inventing Bibliotherapy in the Interwar Period In 1932, American Magazine published a profile on Simmons College trained librarian Elizabeth Reed. The piece opens with a description of Reed at work, not at a school or public library but, instead, at Massachusetts General Hospital (Mass General) in Boston. A practitioner of the science known as “bibliotherapy,” Reed is “smiling, sympathetic, and good to look upon, [as] she steps to a bedside . . . to take a patient’s literary pulse.” Though “the patient growls he doesn’t like to read” Reed “is usually able to dispense a book from the array which stands on the shelves of her cart like bright-colored phials of medicine. They are medicine, mental medicine.”1 All readers may have encountered books in their lives that they found particularly therapeutic or healing, but a hospital librarian’s task was to know how to best match a particular book to a patient’s needs. “Selecting the right book is the essence of the hospital librarian’s job,” the article explains. “Miss Reed has found that mystery and detective novels are general favorites; that modern biography is often called for; that anemic patients are keen for red-blooded adventure and stories of outdoors.”2 This description situates Reed as a bibliotherapist whose work prescribing books is both natural and necessary within a modern hospital. Reed, described as “good to look upon,” is also considered a serious professional here. She is the only person with the expertise to prescribe books to supplement the doctor’s care. In publicity photographs from this period, there is no doctor in sight as Reed and her associates, dressed in medical coats, prescribe books at patients’ bedsides and cater to a diverse array of patients in the hospital’s library. Even though Reed’s place at Mass General seems natural, and the work she’s doing seems accepted and valued, bibliotherapy was relatively new in this period, and its place within medical practice was hardly assured. The piece on Reed in American Magazine was part of an attempt to garner publicity for bibliotherapy and to promote its use in hospitals. While librarians felt confident in their power to transform library shelves into medicine cabinets, the creation of bibliotherapy as a “science” with librarians as its chief experts proved challenging throughout the interwar period. Writing an early history of bibliotherapy in 1956, librarian W.B. McDaniel dated the origins of the field to World War I. “Bibliotherapy, the pseudo-quasi-scientific baby we think of today,” he noted, “is unquestionably a war baby. It is a hospital

1 Fairfax Downey, “She Takes Her Patients’ Literary Pulse,” American Magazine, 344 (1932), 71. 2 Ibid. DOI 10.1515/9783110450842-007



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library baby of World War I.”3 Already skeptical about its powers as a “science,” McDaniel noted that bibliotherapy had its start in the Library War Service established by the American Library Association and Library of Congress in World War I to provide troops with books throughout the war. The Service distributed an estimated 7 to 10 million books and magazines and provided library collections to 500 locations, including military hospitals.4 Towards the end of the war, what began as an attempt to provide a source of recreation to troops was quickly reimagined by some librarians in the field as a science with real therapeutic value. As one librarian who had worked in a military hospital overseas put it, “Medical officers and nurses, once skeptical as to the value of this service,” became “as eager as the patients to welcome the librarian to their wards, and more than once expressed the opinion that books actually were of therapeutic as well as of recreational value to their patients.” Even those with invisible maladies, such as shell shock and other neuropsychiatric diseases, could find relief. In one instance, a patient who had been reluctant to speak finally asked for a book on salesmanship, as it was his profession before the war, and the work to which he hoped to return. This interaction led to many fruitful encounters with patients to whom she dispensed works of fiction and nonfiction, calming their minds and furthering their recovery. As she described it: Those of us who had experience with the nervous and mental patients in camp hospitals, and those of us who continued to work among them long enough to see results, realized that a new field of work was before us. Doors were opened to us, which had never been open before, and possibilities for service presented to us that we had not even suspected.5

Thus the war had served as a laboratory of sorts for new technologies and ideas to take shape. Occupational therapy, nutrition and a series of other new medical technologies gained new purchase in hospitals during and after the war. Librarians and physicians saw the success of the library war service as a door open to them to expand the scope of library science, bound only by their ability to articulate the magic they witnessed when a patient encountered a well-prescribed book, and felt healed by it. But this process proved more elusive than most of these professionals could have imagined. In the decades following World War I, articles on bibliotherapy proliferated in professional journals of medicine and library science. These essays strove to document early bibliotherapeutic practices in the interwar period while also grasping at a definition for the field. This research questioned what librarians and physicians 3 Walton B. McDaniel, II. “Bibliotherapy; Some Historical and Contemporary Aspects,” ALA Bulletin, 50 (October 1956), 586. 4 “Library War Service” American Library Association, 2007. Accessed June 1, 2015. http://wikis.ala. org/professionaltips/index.php/Library_War_Service 5 Ruth Bradley Drake, “An Experiment in Library Work in a Hospital for Mental Disease” Mental Hygiene, 5 (1921), 133.

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believed bibliotherapy was, what it might heal, how it would do so, and the tools they would use to establish the legitimacy of the practice within hospitals. Studies in this period envisioned bibliotherapy as a therapeutic treatment for every hospitalized patient. Nowhere is this clearer than in the research that focused on treating the mentally ill, a primary focus for bibliotherapists. Instead of relying purely on experiments grounded in statistical analysis of reading in hospitals, or controlled studies testing the application of different genres to different diseases, the “science” of bibliotherapy reported by self-proclaimed experts in the field was built mostly on language. When Sigmund Freud was attempting to articulate psychoanalysis in its earliest phases, he spoke of a kind of longing for a language to explain the meaning of his new science and its uses.6 Similarly, bibliotherapists reported on their work in hospitals by employing language to describe a process for which there was still no exact science. Mainly, these writings show a great reliance on metaphor and anecdote to authenticate this new therapeutic practice of “matching book to patient.” Metaphor and anecdote provided librarians and physicians with “a way of visualizing the as yet undiscovered phenomena” of the healing power of books.7 This use of language allowed those for whom the healing power of books held real power to imagine this new field into being. Metaphor was a powerful tool for bibliotherapists to use in positioning themselves in hospitals and in investing their work with “real” authority in language that made them credible to both lay and medical professionals. Noting an analogous rise in the field of nutrition, doctors and librarians invested in gaining respect for bibliotherapy within medicine used the language of food to explain the science of bibliotherapy and their role as its experts. In doing so, they built on common elisions of the language of eating to describe the act of reading. The notion of “devouring” a book, for example, was a familiar phrase. In a speech before a conference of the American College of Surgeons, Dr. Gordon Kamman of the University of Minnesota defined bibliotherapy as “a form of psychological dietetics,” and claimed that librarians must be allowed to serve as its chief experts. “To allow patients to read without expert supervision,” he claimed, “is analogous to allowing a diabetic to eat indiscriminately.”8 Just as nutritionists and dieticians were experts on the science of vitamins and the use of food to improve health, so bibliotherapists should be the only hospital experts allowed to monitor and adjust patients’ literary diets. “Unfortunately, in many hospitals, supervision of reading is left to the nurse, occupational therapist, social service worker, physiotherapist, or anybody who has time or inclination to hand a book to a 6 Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer, Studies on Hysteria. Translated by James Strachey and Anna Freud. (New York: Basic Books, 1895), 161. 7 Peter H. Niebyl, “Commentary” in A Celebration of Medical History, ed. By Lloyd G. Stevenson (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), 155. 8 Gordon Kamman, “The Role of Bibliotherapy in the Care of the Patient” Bulletin of the American College of Surgeons, 24 (1939), 183.



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patient,” Dr. Kamman told the conference, describing patient libraries without the benefit of librarians. “This is as unscientific,” he claimed, “as it would be to allow the occupational therapist to do medical social service work, or to ask the physiotherapist to supervise the diet of a patient suffering from renal insufficiency.”9 Kamman built on this metaphor of books as food to lay out a hierarchy of care within hospitals that acknowledged the various new therapies and services jockeying for power in which bibliotherapy was an equal and necessary part. The danger of patients’ unmediated access to books was something that librarians and physicians also explained within the realm of metaphor. If well-chosen books that met a patient’s needs were “medicine,” then poorly chosen books could easily be “poison.” In most hospital library services where bibliotherapy was practiced, librarians would make rounds to patients’ bedsides with their book carts and interview the patient. Based on those interviews and consultations with doctors, librarians would “prescribe” books to calm a patient, providing distractions, escape, or comfort. Lest anyone wonder why patients could not be trusted to select their own reading materials, Dr. G.O. Ireland warned about the dangers such freedom posed to patients in a 1929 article in the Medical Bulletin of the Veterans Administration. Speaking of mentally ill patients, he said, “If the ward surgeon and the librarian cooperate properly we can have the assurance that his interest will be directed along proper channels. As in other forms of therapy the factors of incompatibility and contraindication apply in bibliotherapy. We never allow drugs to be given indiscriminately,” he argued. “No sane man would prescribe strychnine in unlimited doses for insomnia. Then why books?”10 Experts struggled to discern what books made the best medicine, however. Even as doctors and librarians dreamed of a science of bibliotherapy that could be applied to large scale patient populations, they kept reminding each other within the pages of medical and library science journals of the centrality of the individual and his or her needs. As librarian Catherine Ovas Walker explained in a 1932 article in the Journal of Public Health, “The hospital librarians must give individual diagnosis to the reading prescription, and thought, not only to the general symptomology and the causes responsible for it, but also the particular needs, and fancies of each patient, preventing, as does the pharmacist, the indiscriminate use of what might be poison in some instances, yet have therapeutic value in others.”11 It was up to the librarian to “read” individual patients, and understand the unique personality traits and diagnosis that might make detective fiction, for example, medicine to one patient and poison to another. 9 Ibid. 10 G.O. Ireland, “Bibliotherapy – The Use of Books as a Form of Treatment in Neuropsychiatric Hospital” Medical Bulletin of the Veterans Administration 5 (1929), 442. 11 Catherine Povas Walker, “When the Doctor Prescribes Books” American Journal of Public Health, 22 (1932), 177.

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To chart this process and to try to articulate how different genres might affect different patients and conditions, librarians began keeping case files. Early examples show forms designed to mark collaborations between doctors and librarians. One form allowed doctors to instruct librarians on what genres might harm patients with specific conditions. A depressed patient might not be allowed to read sad fiction, for example. Some pioneering bibliotherapists, such as Ruth Tews, published their case files in the hopes of inspiring others to make this a professional standard. Tews’ files noted the books she prescribed along with her patients’ responses to them. These records demonstrate a longing for a language to explain what happens when a reader encounters a book and feels helped by it. Recorded exchanges between patient and therapist in Tews’ case files highlight the struggle to articulate what is most in need of treatment and how specific books prove therapeutic. For example, one of Tews’ patients, a 42-year-old woman with schizophrenia about whom we are only told that she is an art teacher who is “clever with hands. Extrovert. Friendly” reacts positively to a book of poetry by saying “I am meeting all of my old friends again.” Invoking the tried metaphor of book as friend, we might perhaps conclude that for her this reading experience proved therapeutic by making her feel less alone. After being prescribed I Begin Again, a memoir of a woman who went blind as an adult and found renewed purpose in her life, the patient responded, “This is just what I needed. I had been pitying myself a good deal this week.”12 Perhaps the success of this prescription was the perspective or empathy it evoked. Even Tews herself struggled to assign meaning to her patient’s reading choices and experiences. When the patient requested copies of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, for example, Tews noted “patient taking an interest in her appearance.”13 While Tews’ appraisal of her patient’s reading is sincere, it also reflects a grasping for meaning when the choice of magazine could have been inspired by a simple desire to escape, among a series of reasons. It’s also unclear what Tews believes she’s treating with these prescriptions—the patient’s schizophrenia, or the loneliness that seemed apparent as a result of her hospital stay? In publishing these files, Tews did not secure professional standards; rather, she exposed the serious anxieties and insufficiencies of language for what she sought to do with her work. The ambiguity of this practice was not unique to Ruth Tews. In fact, every practicing bibliotherapist, whether physician or librarian, published their experiences in journals throughout the interwar period in an attempt to make a science of this therapeutic practice seemingly built on trial and error. Indeed, this improvised science was not the fruit of lab research or even broad statistical analysis of patients. Anecdote was the chief technology used to develop bibliotherapy, much to the chagrin of some its advocates. Librarians and physicians 12 Ruth Tews, “Case Histories of Patients’ Reading” Library Journal, 69 (1944), 485. 13 Ibid.



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both chiefly employed anecdotes in their published research to describe best practices and express some sense of what bibliotherapy could do. For example, librarians debated whether or not they should prescribe books that spoke to a patient’s disease or personal history. Should prescribed reading foster catharsis through identification with a text or should reading promote escape from the body and the realities of hospital life? One physician weighed in on this debate by describing a “lucky accident” involving a woman hospitalized after a breakdown following a series of personal tragedies. A married mother of three, her husband was killed, her eldest son joined a gang and was imprisoned, her daughter died of tuberculosis and her youngest child was put in a state home after her breakdown. She was unwilling to speak about any of these events. A library aide let her choose Little Women from a collection of what hospital librarians deemed an “innocuous collection.” The physician described what happened next: My call synchronized with the death of Beth from tuberculosis, which proved the breaking point with its flood of tears and the lowering of repressions…. It placed before us the facts that would otherwise probably never have come to the surface and allowed social services to start a program of reconstruction that has led to the reestablishment of a happy, useful, reunited family. Books made that possible. A lucky accident at a proper time!14

In this case, a book which happened to mirror tangentially the personal history of the patient provided her with a means and a language to speak of her own history, allowing her to proceed to the next stage of her recovery. But how to apply this case to other patients? Books that could heal one patient might harm another. An unsanctioned copy of Dracula, warned one librarian, caused a patient to suffer from an “increased temperature and sleeplessness after reading it.”15 A librarian working with patients in a naval hospital argued that biographies were useful in providing patients with positive role models for recovery but warned that a biography of Houdini, “might well be the cause of a rise in temperature for TB patients” and should not be used with neuropsychiatric patients due to “frequent reference to locked cells and straightjackets” and the disappointment caused by descriptions of illusions that did not detail “how he did it.”16 Poetry and novels were lauded for the “comfort” they provided, and mystery novels were some of the most popular books prescribed to patients. However, in some ways the greatest mystery remained how bibliotherapy actually worked, whether its methods could be evaluated objectively and replicated broadly. So much of the research notes the importance of the personality of individual librarians and their ability to “read” patients and “match” the right book to the right patient. But 14 E.D. Clarke, M.D. “The Mental Hygiene of Reading” New York Libraries, 14 (1934), 99. 15 Walker, 176. 16 Isabel DuBois, “Biography and Travel Have Large Place in Naval Hospital Libraries” Hospital Management 29 (1930), 46.

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how could practitioners invest that subjective process with the trappings of a science? By the end of the interwar period, pioneers in the field called for more standardization and experimentation in order to invest their work with greater authority and professionalization. In 1939, librarian and psychologist Alice Bryan published an article in the Library Journal entitled “Can there be a Science of Bibliotherapy?” In this piece, she set the stakes for the importance of the field and presented a broader vision of its future. First, she reimagined the terms and potential beneficiaries of bibliotherapy. For most of the interwar period, professionals spoke of bibliotherapy as a therapeutic practice mainly for use with patient populations in hospitals. Books were “medicine” for the sick. However, Alice Bryan suggested that bibliotherapy might serve instead not as a means of treatment of a preexisting disease, but rather as a preventative measure “to develop emotional maturity and nourish and sustain mental health.” With this redefinition, the field could also be “a preventative agent to keep people well.”17 Bryan considerably broadened the appeal of this burgeoning science by making it accessible to and recommended for every reader who valued his or her health. In order to meet these heightened stakes, Bryan called for greater experimentation and higher standards of research. Simply put, a science built on anecdotes was not viable. “If we are to have a science of bibliotherapy,” she argued, “we must pass beyond the anecdotal stage in formulating principles and proceed to scientific experimentation. Anecdotes drawn from practical experience may serve as illustrations of principles or as suggestions for formulating hypothesis. They cannot be made the basis for valid generalizations.”18 Bryan wanted the research on bibliotherapy to read more like scientific literature and less like storytelling. In her anxiety that bibliotherapy would not receive the respect or acceptance it deserved if it lacked the credibility of methodology, broad testing and double-blind experiments, Bryan echoed Sigmund Freud in his early case studies. Describing his early findings in psychoanalysis, Freud worried his work read more like “short stories” and that they lacked “the serious stamp of science.”19 Despite these and other calls for greater standardization and the scrutiny of more sustained experimentation, bibliotherapists continued to feel hopeful. Some imagined a department of bibliotherapy in every hospital.20 For others, there was no telling what bibliotherapy could not do. As one Veterans Administration librarian wrote to her colleagues, “More things have been done under the guise of bibliotherapy than this world dreams of.” Undaunted by the lack of measurable evidence, she continued, “Whether or not they can yet be measured, things can still exist.”21 While 17 Alice Bryan, “Can There Be a Science of Bibliotherapy?” Library Journal 64 (1939), 774. 18 Bryan, 776. 19 Freud, 161. 20 Helen Allen Forbes, “We Call It Bibliotherapy” Modern Hospital, 9 (1937), 46. 21 Mary Jane Ryan, “Bibliotherapy – Some Constructs” (April 30, 1956), Folder 2. Sadie Peterson Delaney Papers. Tuskegee University Archives, Tuskegee University, Tuskegee.



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still longing for a language to describe their work, and the scientific evidence to guide the process of “matching book to patient,” librarians and physicians in the interwar period remained assured of the value of seeing the library as a medicine cabinet and of empowering librarians to “take a literary pulse.”

References “Library War Service.” American Library Association, 2007. Accessed June 1, 2015. http://wikis.ala. org/professionaltips/index.php/Library_War_Service Bryan, Alice. 1939. “Can There Be a Science of Bibliotherapy?” Library Journal 64: 773–776. Clarke, E.D. M.D. 1934. “The Mental Hygiene of Reading.” New York Libraries 14: 98–101. Downey, Fairfax. 1932. “She Takes Her Patients’ Literary Pulse.” American Magazine 344: 71–72. Drake, Ruth Bradley. 1921. “An Experiment in Library Work in a Hospital for Mental Disease.” Mental Hygiene 5: 130–138. DuBois, Isabel. 1930. “Biography and Travel Have Large Place in Naval Hospital Libraries.” Hospital Management 29: 45–48. Forbes, Helen Allen. 1937. “We Call It Bibliotherapy.” Modern Hospital 9: 45–46. Freud, Sigmund and Josef Breuer. 1895. Studies on Hysteria. Translated by James Strachey and Anna Freud. New York: Basic Books. Ireland, G.O. 1929. “Bibliotherapy – The Use of Books as a Form of Treatment in Neuropsychiatric Hospital.” Medical Bulletin of the Veterans Administration 5: 440–445. Kamman, Gordon. 1939. “The Role of Bibliotherapy in the Care of the Patient.” Bulletin of the American College of Surgeons. 24: 183–184. McDaniel, Walton B., II. “Bibliotherapy; Some Historical and Contemporary Aspects,” ALA Bulletin, 50: 584–589, Oct. 1956. Niebyl, Peter H. 1982. “Commentary.” In A Celebration of Medical History, edited by Lloyd G. Stevenson, 154–156. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Ryan, Mary Jane. April 30, 1956. Bibliotherapy-Some Constructs. Folder 2. Sadie Peterson Delaney Papers. Tuskegee University Archives, Tuskegee University, Tuskegee. Tews, Ruth. 1944. “Case Histories of Patients’ Reading.” Library Journal 69: 484–487. Walker, Catherine Povas. 1932. “When the Doctor Prescribes Books.” American Journal of Public Health. 22: 174–178.

Margaret A. (Megan) Browndorf

World War II and the Building of the Ukrainian Library In September 1943, Evgeny Sno, the head librarian of a small academic library in Kyiv, surveyed the destruction the German occupation had wrought on his library. Eight thousand volumes remained from what had been a hundred thousand volume collection. “They took almost all Russian and Ukrainian literature, they took the catalog – I have lost the work of fifteen years! For the most part, all that is left is foreign literature. Everything needs to be started over.”1 Thousands of librarians across thousands of libraries throughout occupied Ukraine told the same story. Two months later in November 1943, the Red Army arrived to liberate Kyiv and the enormous task of rebuilding these devastated libraries soon began in earnest. During this process, a story parallel to that of reconstruction developed. While some libraries rebuilt, many libraries and the system as a whole, built libraries as they had never before existed, under the guise of rebuilding. In 2007 the Library History Seminar met to explore what times of war mean for libraries. In an article introducing the collected output of that conference, Rayward and Jenkins offer that “The destruction or loss of libraries can act as a formidable symbol around which to mobilize opinion and support, not merely for the reconstitution of the libraries but also in affirming the value of the cultural heritage and national identity that these depredations had seemed to threaten.”2 In Ukraine reconstitution of libraries was not only affirmation of cultural heritage and national identity, but also its creation. It was part of larger Soviet-led efforts to create a Ukrainian state out of disparate territory knit together by claims of Ukrainian integrity. This paper argues that the official response to rebuilding public libraries after the war significantly changed the system for the long-term. The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (Ukrainian SSR) centralized the libraries in a system for more efficient control and redeveloped collections to reflect those linguistic, cultural, and ideological values that Stalin and Soviet power identified for the new state. Post-war library recovery in Ukraine was not a matter of cultural affirmation, but rather of cultural design under the guise of returning to the way libraries had been before.

1 Liubov Andreevna Dubrovina and Oleksii Semenovych Onishchenko, Istoriia natsional’noi biblioteky ukrainy imeni V.I. Vernads’koho: 1941–1964 (Kyiv: Naukova Dumka, 2003): 65. 2 W. Boyd Rayward and Christine Jenkins, “Libraries in Times of War, Revolution, and Social Change,” Library Trends 55, no.3 (2007): 363. DOI 10.1515/9783110450842-008



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Short History of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic Like many countries in Eastern Europe formed out of the aftermath of World War I, the first half of the twentieth century was difficult and eventful for Ukraine. Widespread ethnic and linguistic diversity and geography have long made the region politically complex. Leading up to the 20th century territory of what would become the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (Ukrainian SSR) was divided. The Russian Empire held most of East Ukraine, which abutted the West Ukrainian territories of Galicia and Bukovina in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After WWI, Ukraine had a short-lived period of independence in 1918 before Western Ukraine was subsumed into the Polish and Romanian states while Eastern Ukraine became one of the four founding republics of the Soviet Union in 1922 – the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Despite its position as a founding republic, the relationship of the Ukrainian SSR with the Soviet Union as a whole was complex. From 1932 to 1933 Stalin initiated what is widely considered a man-made famine through violent collectivization efforts. In the mid-to-late 1930s significant numbers of Ukrainians, professionals, supposed kulaks, and Communist Party members fell victim to Stalin’s purges. In 1939 Hitler and Stalin signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement which partitioned Poland in exchange for a non-aggression pact and brought Western Ukraine from Poland into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. On June 22, 1941 Hitler violated this agreement and quickly swept through Ukraine and established an occupied state for two years. As the Red Army retreated, the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, executed hundreds of thousands of political prisoners to prevent them falling into German hands and initiated a “scorched earth policy” in which they destroyed shelters and farmland throughout Ukrainian territory. These experiences make it unsurprising that many Ukrainians initially welcomed the Germans as liberators. However, harsh German policies of population and territorial control quickly changed much of the national opinion and when the Germans retreated in 1943 they left a similar “scorched earth” trail for the Red Army. The period following the war became one of relative stability for Ukraine compared to the preceding twenty years of border change and political complexity. This is the period in which I argue the roots of a Ukrainian library system are finally able to take hold.3

3 For a good general history of Ukraine see Serhy Yekelchyk, Ukraine: Birth of a Modern Nation (London: Oxford University Press, 2007). For a history of Ukraine in the first half of the 20th century under the Soviet Union and Nazis see Karel C. Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 2004) or Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (New York: Basic Books, 2010).

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Libraries and Literacy in the Soviet Union before the War In 1911 Lenin praised the access and efficiency of the New York Public Library in a heavily sarcastic piece in Rabochaya Pravda. Having himself done research in the NYPL, Lenin lauded that the library provided access not just to scholars, but also to the masses, while “Holy Mother Russia” protected her collections from the “hoi polloi.”4 In November 1917, less than a month after the Bolshevik seizure of power, Lenin wrote “It takes knowledge to participate in the revolution with intelligence, purpose and success” in a document outlining efforts to increase public access to the public library in what is now St. Petersburg. Library reform would be accomplished through “principles long practiced in the West” including free interlibrary loan, reading rooms open to the public between 8 AM and 11 PM daily, and significant increases in personnel.5 Vladimir Lenin and his wife, the professional librarian Nadezhda Krupskaia, almost immediately looked to libraries as a way to re-educate the populace. Libraries were to be a part of the efforts to grow literacy throughout the Soviet Union in order to give the peasants and proletariat the tools to understand the social expectations for their new society. Krupskaia, in turn, argued that the library was “the most economical and the most expedient method of bringing the book to the masses.”6 The library was a tool by which one could quickly and efficiently increase not only general literacy, but class consciousness.7 Furthermore, literacy could improve agricultural productivity by connecting farmers to the newest techniques and practices.8 In Russia, the efforts of the Cheka likbez (Extraordinary Commission for the Liquidation of Illiteracy) instituted reading rooms in villages as a base for adult literacy education and stocked these spaces with agricultural and peasant-oriented news sources and state-approved fiction.9 Although popularly supported in principle, the village reading rooms had difficulty keeping newspapers, books, and reading materials available throughout the 1920s, often going so far as to (successfully) appeal to Krupskaia herself, by then head of Glavpolitprosvet (the central cultural education body).10

4 Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, “What can be done for public education,” in Lenin and Library Organization, ed. N.S. Karthashov, et. al. (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1983): 29–31. 5 Lenin, “The Tasks of the Public Library in Petrograd,” in Lenin and Library Organization: 38. 6 Quoted in: Boris Raymond, Krupskaia and Soviet Russian Librarianship, 1917–1939 (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1979): 46. 7 Raymond, Krupskaia and Soviet Russian Librarianship: 168. 8 Charles E. Clark, Uprooting Otherness: The Literacy Campaign in NEP-Era Russia (Selinsgrove: Susquehenna University Press, 2000): 34. 9 Clark, Uprooting Otherness: 117. 10 Clark, Uprooting Otherness: 125–126.



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In Ukraine, the situation of libraries and literacy was further complicated in the 1920s by extensive campaigns of Ukrainization, an effort to affect the role of Ukrainian language in the culture and political life of Ukraine. The Soviet part of Ukraine in this period was linguistically mixed with a primarily Ukrainian-speaking, illiterate, rural population and an Russian-speaking, urban elite. The practice of Ukrainization was intended to further literacy among the rural population, endear the new Soviet leadership to the peasantry, and to ease the transition of workers coming from the rural environments into the industrial city centers.11 During this period, the Main Politburo of Education in Ukraine published a provision for a single unified library network in order to ensure greater centralization and control in 1922.12 As in Russia, libraries and reading rooms were to be a part of the efforts to expand the communication channels of the central Soviet will. In 1923 the Russian Communist Party published a circular demanding tightened party control over all Soviet libraries and established a library commission.13 The State Political Department of the Ukrainian Socialist Republic14 circulated a list of materials which did not “correspond to the foundational requirements of Soviet power” and over a two-year period, from 1925 – 1927, librarians gradually moved over 77,000 politically questionable volumes from public access in regional libraries into special collections (spetskhran) at oblast’15 level libraries.16 As the Communist cultural commissions gained increased control over collections, they simultaneously called on libraries to actively work toward “the cultural growth of the worker and farmer and [toward] addressing the question of socialist reconstruction of the economy.”17 In response to a detailed plan to “rationalize” all libraries under the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, including some public libraries, the numbers of libraries, book collections, and patrons rose dramatically by 1930.18 In the 1930s Ukrainization efforts reversed sharply as Russian became the predominant culture and language and collecting changed to fit new demands. The successes of collectivization in rural areas rendered unnecessary past concessions 11 Terry Martin, Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001): 88. And Matthew Pauly, Breaking the Tongue (Toronto: University of Toronto, 2015): 5. 12 L.A. Dubrovina and O.S. Onyshchenko, Bibliotechna sprava v Ukraini v XX stolitti (Kyiv: NAN Ukrainy, 2009): 119. 13 “Tsirkuliar TsK RKP(b) ‘Ob Usilenii partiinogo vliianiia na rabotu bibliotek,” October 5, 1923, in Kniga i Knizhnoe delo: 95. 14 Derzhavne politychne upravlinnia (DPU) USSR 15 The oblast’ was the largest administrative unit within Soviet republics and remains so in many post-Soviet countries. It is approximately analogous to a province. 16 Dubrovina and Onyshchenko,Bibliotehcna sprava v Ukraini v XX stolitti: 124. 17 “Postanovlenie TsK VKP(b) ‘Ob uluchshenii bibliotechnoi raboty,” October 30, 1929, in Kniga i Knizhnoe Delo 1917–1941: 257–258. 18 “Statisticheskie svedeniia narkomprosa USSR o dinamike bibliotechnoi seti politprosveta I profsoiuzov za 1921/1922 – 1929/1930 gg.,” June 8, 1931, in Kniga i Knizhnoe Delo 1917–1941: 314.

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to Ukrainian culture that the Communist Party had made in the 1920s to earn rural loyalty. Stalin purged many individuals in Ukraine that had supported the policy of Ukrainization and instead Russian became the favored language of intellectual culture and policy.19 It is during this period that library “rationalization” began in full force, tightening central control of the collections and the ways that librarians were to aid patron interaction with these collections.20 When the Nazis invaded in 1941 the central Ukrainian communist cultural organs had developed the roots of a centralized library system and a set of expectations for library work. But neither had complete execution. Even as late as October 1937, the Committee on Enlightenment still lamented the work remaining to better align libraries to the state’s political needs and modernize processing. Out of apparent frustration, they made it a goal for 1938 that “in all town and city libraries not one uninventoried book shall remain” and that there would be working public catalogs throughout.21 This particular document on the “Improvement of Work and Management of Libraries” outlined expectations for literary evenings, patron consultations, and librarian education. Despite the instrumentalization of libraries in political and cultural control in Ukraine, inadequate resourcing and constantly changing expectations, leadership, and policy stymied the growth of a centralized, “rationalized” library system before the war.

The Effects of the War on Ukrainian Libraries Into this environment, the Ukrainian SSR incorporated Western Ukraine in 1939 under the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Libraries quickly became part of the strategy to integrate these territories into the Soviet Union. The Rivne district’s Communist Party, for example, outlined directives for repairs, staffing, and library construction and to create a centralized structure with smaller local affiliates in the Soviet model. 22 The L’viv Communist Party required 137 public libraries be built and that all 1,382 known private libraries be collectivized.23 The Central Soviet Committee on Cultural-Enlight-

19 George Shevelov, The Ukrainian Language in the First Half of the Twentieth Century (1900–1941): Its State and Status (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1989: 141–145. 20 For an example, see: “Iz Plana ratsionalizatsii bibliotechnogo dela v VUAN,” November 14, 1930, in Kniga i knizhnoe delo 1917–1941: 289–292. 21 “Iz prikaza narkomprosa USSR ‘Ob uluchshenii raboty bibliotek I rukovodstva imi,” October 15 1937, in Kniga i Knizhnoe Delo 1917–1941: 391–393. 22 “Iz postanovleniia biuro rovenskogo obkoma KP(b)U ob organizatsii bibliotek v oblasti,” February 3 1940, in Kniga i knizhnoe delo 1917 – 1941: 408–409. 23 “Iz otcheta l’vovskogo obkoma KP(b)U na pervoi oblastnoi partkonferentsii – o rabote bibliotek,” April 23 1940, in Kniga i knizhnoe delo 1917 – 1941: 409.



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enment mandated that Eastern Ukraine and Russia send politically and linguistically appropriate material to build up these libraries’ collections.24 Integration was in process by June 22, 1941 when Hitler invaded Ukraine in violation of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The devastation of the ensuing two-year occupation on Ukrainian libraries was severe. The Nazis systematically and consciously undid twenty years of Soviet policy that developed Marxist-Leninist, heavily Russian-language and Ukrainian-language collections. Whereas libraries during the early Soviet period served to educate a largely illiterate populace on the tenants of Marxism-Leninism, for Hitler Ukrainian literacy was undesirable and likely to lead to a “semi-educated” populace, who would be difficult to control.25 The Reich Minister for the Eastern Occupied Territories, Alfred Rosenberg, sent detailed lists of instructions for Ukrainian collections. Valuable materials would be sent to Germany, while non-valuable, Western European language literature could remain. Marxist, “Bolshevist,” Jewish, and agitprop volumes would be destroyed along with most Ukrainian and Russian language Soviet imprints.26 In 1943 the Kharkiv library system took count of materials lost through looting, active destruction, and general war-time damage. They estimated 1.5 million books, journals, newspapers, and pieces of sheet music had been taken or destroyed with the majority of the material being Soviet editions. Furthermore, the Germans destroyed the systemic catalog consisting of 100,000,000 cards in 805 drawers, thus making the finding and use of those materials which survived all but impossible.27 The buildings, too, were in desperate need of repair. In 1941 60% of the stacks had been destroyed.28 The facilities were ruined – 75% of the steam heating, 90% of the sewage, and 50% of the lighting. In 1943 heavy bombing compromised the structural integrity of reading halls and roofs and destroyed nearly 400 pieces of furniture.29 And these documents represented specifics in just one library system in one city. In Kyiv the situation was similar. While libraries evacuated some materials from the National Library to the Ukrainian capital in exile in Ufa, not all materials could be 24 “Iz spravki komiteta po delam kul’turno-prosvetitel’nykh uchrezhdenii pri sovete ministrov USSR o rabote kul’turno-prosvetitel’nykh uchrezhdenii v zapadnykh oblastiakh USSR – o rabote bibliotek,” December 9, 1949, in Kniga i Knizhnoe Delo 1941–1984: 96. 25 Karel Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine Under Nazi Rule (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2008): 35. 26 “Rozporiadzhennia Shtandortkomendatruy Kharkova Shhodo ‘chistki bibliotek’ robochoiu hrupoiu pid kerivyntstvom shtabu Rozenberha,” September 10, 1942, in Bibliotechni fondi Kharkova v roki druhoi svitovoi viiny: dolia kul’turnyx skarbiv ukrainy pid chas druhoi svitovoi viiny arkhivy, biblioteky, muzei: (Kyiv: Povernuti imena, 1997): 46–47. 27 “Akt Kharkivs’koi derzhavnoi biblioteky im. Korolenka pro vtraty knyzhkovoho fondu ta inshi zbytky, zavdani bilbiotetsi pid chas okupatsii Kharkova nimets’koiu armiieiu z 24 zhovtnia 1941 po 23 serpnia 1943 r.,” August 26, 1943, in Bibliotechni fondi Kharkova: 91–92. 28 Ibid. 29 “Iz akta Kharkivs’koi derzhavnoi naukovoi biblioteky im. Korolenka pro zbytky, zapodiiani nimets’koiu armiieiu,” December 6, 1943, in Bibliotechni fondi Kharkova: 94–95.

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moved before the Germans arrived in Kyiv. 30 Estimates vary, but the number of materials (periodicals, microfilm, manuscripts, etc) destroyed in all of the Kyiv libraries, or sent to Germany, numbered up to 4 million.31 While the destruction in Kyiv and Kharkiv was some of the worst due to their statuses as cultural and political capitals of the Ukrainian SSR, the destruction there was representative of what was happening throughout the territory. Since L’viv had only just been incorporated into the Ukrainian SSR under Molotov-Ribbentrop, the destruction of the collections was not as complete. However, they still lost hundreds of thousands of volumes.32 Much of what was lost was the political and Russian-language literature which librarians had recently acquired over the preceding 18 months. All told, the Committee on Cultural-Enlightenment in the Ukrainian SSR recorded that the war destroyed about half of all libraries and more than 70% of all collections in the country.33

Building Soviet Collections Recovery began almost immediately upon the Red Army’s liberation of Ukraine in 1943. Librarians and Soviet officials took stock of the material and operational losses of the proceeding two years. Some of these lists existed for internal record-keeping, but many were be sent to Moscow to enumerate needs to the Soviet capital. The communist party’s overall response to the library destruction deliberately changed the constitution and operation of libraries in the Ukrainian territory. The changes made in Ukrainian library policy after World War II did not return them to a pre-war state, but rather brought changed collections, particularly in the West, and enforced innovations in training and cataloging. While Ukrainian party officials made some decisions in Kyiv, most of the collection rebuilding was centralized in Moscow. Hundreds of train-wagons full of materials deemed to be of value and looted by the Germans came back to the Soviet Union and into the Gosfond for centralized redistribution.34 The Ukrainian Communist Party 30 Dubrovina and Onishchenko, Istoriia natsional’noi biblioteky ukraini imeni V. I. Vernads’koho: 1941–1964: 64. 31 “Iz soobshheniia chrezychainoi gosudarstvennoi komissii po ustanovleniiu I rassledovaniiu zlodeianii nemetsko-fashistskikh zakhvatchikov I ikh soobshhnikov ‘o razrusheniiakh I zverstvakh, sovershennykh nemetsko-fashistskimi zakhvatchikami v. g. Kieve’ – o razgrablenii bibliotek,” in Kniga i kniznoe delo 1941–1984: 26. 32 O.S. Onyschenko, “Bibliotechnyi fond Ukrainy:” 21. 33 “Iz otchta komiteta po delam kul’turno-prosvetitel’nykh uchrezhdenii USSR orabote kul’turno-prosvetitel’nykh uchrezhdenii v 1939–1948 gg. – o deiatel’nosti bibliotek,” 1949, in Kniga i knizhnoe delo 1941–1984: 97–98. 34 O.S. Onyschenko, “Bibliotechnyi fond ukrainy v konteksti druhoi svitovoi viiny ta ii naslidkiv,” in Biblioteky Kyieva v period natsysts’koi okupatsii (1941–1943): Doslidzhennia. Anotovanyi pokazhchyk. Publikatsii dokumentiv (Kyiv: NAN, 2004): 27–28.



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sought that libraries would receive all “required examples of book production” from the Gosfond, if not the exact copy that had been taken from that library originally. Since much of the material lacked ownership stamps, it was difficult to return the exact looted books back to their exact libraries through the Gosfond, if they returned to Ukraine at all.35 Particularly important among the 2.4 million repatriated books were, to quote a 1947 statement from the Committee on Cultural Enlightenment on libraries, “classics of Marxism-Leninism and Soviet belles lettres, extremely necessary to the reconstruction of Ukrainian libraries.” 36 In addition to these repatriated materials in Russian and Ukrainian, during the post-war years Russian libraries and publishers sent Ukraine millions of books published in Russia and in Russian. The first responses to Ukrainian requests for materials came from unaffected territories within Russia, with special attention paid to materials with ideological content. In September of 1943 the Chkalkovsk region, collected materials from party members, the intelligentsia, and their own library to send Voroshilovgrad, what is now Luhansk, 60,000 volumes to rebuild their libraries.37 The next year the party libraries from several cities in Russia sent 15,000 volumes to the party libraries in Kyiv.38 By 1948, libraries and publishers in Russia had sent Ukrainian libraries 4.5 million volumes.39 The Soviet Union took the redevelopment of collections as an opportunity to exert linguistic-cultural influence to create a new Ukrainian SSR. In the 1920s, education and written culture in Eastern Ukraine underwent extensive Ukrainization during which the availability of reading material in Ukrainian was of paramount importance.40 The policy reversal in the 1930s, based on fears of Ukrainian anti-Soviet sentiment and Ukrainian nationalism, lead to de-Ukrainization and eventually Russification in Eastern Ukraine with a particular focus on intellectual and written culture.41 Due to this policy, the number of books published in Ukrainian dwindled by 30% from 6,394 in 1930 to 1,895 in 1939.42 The collections in Eastern Ukraine leading up to the war became a mix of Ukrainian and Russian language materials. So while

35 L.A. Dubrovina and O.S. Onishchenko, Istoriia natsional’noi biblioteky ukraini imeni V. I. Vernads’koho: 1941–1964: 61. 36 “Iz Spravki komiteta po delam kul’turno-prosvetitel’nykh uchrezhdenii USSR – O Rabote bibliotek,” November 27, 1947, in Kniga i Knizhnoe Delo 1941–1984: 71. 37 “Postanovleniie chkalovskogo obkoma VKP(b) o sbore knig dlia voroshilovgradskoi oblasti,” September 18, 1943, in Kniga i Knizhnoe Delo 1941–1984: 12. 38 “Reshenie leningradskogo gorkoma VKP(b) o vydelenii literatury dlia partiinykh bibliotek g. Kieva,” October 28, 1944, Kniga i Knizhnoe Delo 1941–1984: 23. 39 “Iz otcheta komiteta” 99. 40 Pauly, Breaking the Tongue: 3–14. 41 Martin, Affirmative Action Empire: 352–367. 42 George Shevelov, The Ukrainian Language in the First Half of the Twentieth Century (1900–1941): Its State and Status (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1989): 152.

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Russian-language materials arriving from the Russian Soviet Republic effected collections, they did not heavily alter their linguistic make-up. This is not true in Western Ukraine. In the newly incorporated Western Ukrainian territory, collections that Soviet Ukraine built bore far less resemblance to those that existed before the war. The libraries played a role in quick and full incorporation of Western Ukraine into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.43 In 1946 meeting notes from the Ukrainian Cultural-Enlightenment Committee summarized some of the work done to rebuild. They wrote that they would send over half a million books from Eastern Ukraine to Western Ukraine where they claimed no Soviet literature “remained.”44 Despite efforts to change collection during the Molotov-Ribbentrop period, those 18 months had not been sufficient to widely effect collections. In addition to scrutiny on the ideological make-up of the collections, the influx of Russian-language and Ukrainian-language reflected overarching efforts to integrate Western Ukraine into the Ukrainian SSR. The lands that became Western Ukraine had significant non-Ukrainian populations before World War II. In formerly Romanian lands and Polish lands, especially, Romanianization and Polonization efforts during the interwar period had been largely successful.45 The once Romanian city of Chernivtsi, for example, built a primarily Romanian language collection in their university between the First and Second World Wars.46 L’viv, in the West, had been a center of Polish intellectual culture for hundreds of years and its diverse population was only 16% Ukrainian at the end of the war47 and was 26.4% Ukrainian, 5.5% Russian, and 68.1% “other” in 1944.48 The Committee on Cultural-Enlightenment claimed that many cities in Western Ukraine—such as Ternopil, Chernivtsi, and Rivne—lacked the appropriate numbers of Ukrainian-language materials, Russian classics, and classics of Marxism-Leninism post-war and implied further that the Nazis bore responsibility for those gaps.49 Enumerating much of the devastation, the committee on cultural-enlightenment in Ukraine wrote that the lack of Ukrainian-language materials, classic, and contemporary Ukrainian writing was felt “especially strongly in the western regions of

43 Maria Haigh, “Making Ukrainians in the Library: Language, Libraries, and National Identity,” The Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science 33, no. 3/4: 151. 44 “Dokladnaia Zapiska Upravleniia bibliotek komiteta po delam kul’turno-prosvetitel’nykh uchrezhdenii USSR TsK KP(b)U o vosstanovlenii seti massovykh bibliotek I ikh knizhnykh fondov,”: 42. 45 Shevelov: 175–199. 46 Haigh: 151. 47 William Jay Risch, The Ukrainian West: Culture and the Fate of Empire in Soviet Lviv (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2011): 31. 48 Ibid.: 42. 49 “Dokladnaia Zapiska Upravleniia bibliotek komiteta po delam kul’turno-prosvetitel’nykh uchrezhdenii USSR TsK KP(b)U o vosstanovlenii seti massovykh bibliotek i ikh knizhnykh fondov,”: 42.



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the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.”50 Incorporating the new Western parts of Ukraine meant making them Ukrainian in the ways that the Communist Party defined “Ukrainian.” During the Molotov-Ribbentrop period, this meant deportation of Poles that had long lived in in what was now Western Ukraine.51 Taking L’viv again as an example, by 1951 the once 68% proportion of ethnically non-Ukrainian or Russian “others” had dipped to 26.4%.52 For library collections, the development of a culturally appropriate Ukrainian state meant ensuring that collections included not only Soviet literature and Russian language materials, but also Ukrainian-language literature. While Russification and the concept of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) as “first among equals” had become the predominant ethnic policy during the mid-to-late 1930s, in Western Ukraine Ukrainization served as a concession to the Ukrainian population in return for coping with the larger issues of the Poles, Romanians, and others.53 In both the case of the post-war deportations and the building up of new library collections in Western Ukraine, a rhetoric of shock set in toward perceived foreign influence as the Ukrainian SSR returned to a pre-World War II state that had never actually existed.54

Building Infrastructure While Moscow and the Ukrainian Central Committees on Education and Cultural-Enlightenment took important roles in sending appropriate materials into Ukrainian libraries, they also concentrated on rebuilding the infrastructure to move materials and ease centralized control. Throughout the country, thousands of libraries were completely destroyed. In 1940 there were 44,000 libraries registered centrally. By 1946 the number was less than a quarter of that.55 This, for the Soviet Union, was an opportunity to rebuild libraries as they wanted them and where they wanted them. They significantly increased the number of libraries throughout the country, emphasizing the losses to collective farm libraries, which had long been centers of adult literacy efforts.56 They strengthened the hierarchy 50 “Iz dokladnoi zapiski komiteta po delam kul’turno-prosvetitel’nykh uchrezhdenii USSR TsK KP(b) U – o rabote biblliotek,” April 17, 1947, in Kniga i Knizhnoe Delo: 66. 51 Serhy Yekelchyk, Ukraine: Birth of a Modern Nation (London: Oxford University Press, 2007): 133–134. 52 Risch, Lviv and the Soviet West: 42. 53 George Liber, Soviet Nationality Policy, Urban Growth, and Identity Change in the Ukrainian SSR 1923–1934 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1992): 178. 54 David Marples, Stalinism in Ukraine in the 1940s: 62. 55 “Iz dokladnoi zapiski komiteta po delam kul’turno-prosvetitel’nykh uchrezhdenii USSR TsK KP(b) U – o rabote biblliotek,” April 17, 1947, in Kniga i Knizhnoe Delo: 65. 56 “Iz postanovleniia plenum TsK KP(b)U ‘O sostoianii I merakh uluchsheniia massovo-politicheskoi raboty sredi gorodskogo I sel’skogo naseleniia’ – o rabote massovykh bibliotek,” May 9–12, 1949, in

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which made village libraries subservient to district libraries, which were under oblast’ library control and ultimately subservient to the National Library in Kyiv.57 A central city library would control numerous affiliated branches within the city and surrounding area. The Committee on Cultural-Enlightenment set norms for how many libraries each population center should have by the size of the population. They also gave these libraries quotas for materials, events, staff, and educated librarians.58 Most libraries in 1947 consisted of one room and no space for the patrons to read or for children’s departments and did not have adequate furniture and had been this way long before the war.59 The Committee decreed that all libraries in the library system would be required to have no fewer than 3–4 rooms in district libraries and larger and no fewer than 2–3 rooms in smaller village libraries.60 All regions would need libraries with children’s departments or affiliated children’s libraries.61 While many of the libraries were not fully renovated until the mid-to-late 1960s,62 these aspirations illustrate that the period after the war established a systemic approach to library design at a time when many libraries had just regained physical spaces in which to operate. The only way to accomplish control of library spaces would be through central control of all libraries. The establishment of thousands of new libraries and a structure for how village, district, and oblast’ libraries should relate to each other, made normalizing the make-up of collections and technical services practice easier. Early on, throughout Russia and Ukraine, bookmobiles became a method to quickly and with minimal expense offer access to those materials which remained in rural communities affected by the war.63 Furthermore, during this period, libraries strengthened the interlibrary loan system and the Communist Party passed a law making mailing of books free for

Kniga i Knizhnoe Delo 1941–1984: 91. And “Iz Spravki komiteta po delam kul’turno-prosvetitel’nykh uchrezhddenii pri sovete ministrov USSR o rabote kul’turno-prosvetitel’nykh uchrezhdenii v spadnykh oblastiakh USSR – o rabote bibliotek,” Decmeber 9, 1949:65–67. See: Pauly, Breaking the Tongue for more on the collective farm and reading room as a place of literacy development. 57 “Postanovlenie soveta ministrov USSR ‘O gosudarstvennoi publichnoi biblioteke ukrainskoi SSR,” August 7, 1948, in Kniga i Knizhnoe Delo 1941–1984: 80–81. Also see: “Iz rezoliutsii respublikanskogo soveshhaniia bibliochnykh rabotnikov ukrainy ‘o sostoianii I zadachnakh bibliotechnoi raboty v USSR,” December 1, 1948, in Kniga i Knizhnoe Delo 1941–1984: 83. 58 “Prikaz komiteta po delam kul’turno-prosvetitel’nykh uchrezhdenii USSR o vypolnenii postanovleniia soveta ministrov USSR ‘omerakh po ukrepleniiu raionykh I sel’skykh bibliotek,” March 22 1947, in Kniga i Knizhnoe Delo 1941–1984: 60–65. 59 “Iz dokladnoi zapiski,” April 17, 1947: 67. 60 “Iz postanovleniia soveta ministrov USSR,” March 5, 1947: 52. 61 “Prikaz komiteta po delam kul’tuno-prosvetitel’nykh uchrezhdenii USSR,” March 22, 1947: 62. 62 “Spravka TsSU USSR Sovetu Ministrov USSR o rabote bibliotek respubliki” in knig I knizh delo, p. 241 63 Divnogortsev, A.L., ed. Bibliotechnoe Delo v Rossiiskoi Federatsii v poslevoennoi period (iiuon 1945 – mart 1953): dokumenty i materialy v 2 ch. (Moscow: Pashkov don, 2005), 36–40, 43, 78.



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interlibrary loan and distance libraries, which sent books out into rural communities by mail.64 Inventory, cataloging, and merely keeping track of materials became paramount if libraries were to send books out into communities and share them with each other. The Nazis purposefully targeted catalogs in the libraries that they looted.65 This meant that even if a library might have retained some of its collection, librarians may have had no means of accessing that collection. The solution to the access issue was to standardize cataloging systems and speed processing. In 1939 the Library-Bibliographic System (known as BBK) was published as a Soviet adaptation of the Dewey Decimal System. Predictably, the socialist ideological lens heavily influenced the structure of the BBK, as did a bias toward Russian culture. 66 After the war, this system became mandated in Ukraine. Up to this point, most cataloging systems had been local inventions or at the very least local decisions. The Soviet Union realized the benefits of a single cataloging system for sharing and processing materials.67 And by publishing the BBK only in Russian, the Soviet Union ensured the cultural hegemony of Russian in cataloging practice. Going into the war without a unified catalog system, there were no records for many of the materials lost, particularly in smaller village libraries. The Committee on Cultural-Enlightenment identified poor librarian training as one reason these records did not exist and librarian education became a priority after the war.68 Before, librarian education had been minimal. Most had no higher education and many had not even completed secondary education.69 During the war, the Nazis often enlisted librarians to withdraw and destroy their own collections.70 When the Red Army arrived thousands of individuals who had any contact with the Germans in Ukraine came under suspicion for collaboration. One librarian from Kharkiv, who had been working in the library since 1927, described in an interview how she maintained her position until 1943 by “staying out of trouble” and “being useful.” Since she was not a party member, she was left behind with colleagues to maintain the library. Under the occupation the Germans provided her autonomy – they would give her a key in the morning, she would do her work, and then return 64 “Iz spravki komiteta po delam kul’turno-prosvetitel’nykh uchrezhdenii USSR,” November 27, 1947 in Kniga i Knizhnoe Delo 1941–1984: 75. And “Iz rezoliutsii respublikanskogo soveshhaniia bibliotechnykh rabotnikov ukrainy ‘o sostoianii I zadachakh bibliotechnoi raboty v USSR’”: 85. 65 Oshishchenko, “Bibliotechnyi fond ukrainy:” 20. 66 Haigh, “Making Ukrainians in the Library”: 149. 67 Tetyana Taroshenko and Iryna Bankovska. “Libraries and Catalogs in Ukraine: The Way to Understand the Past and Build the Future.” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, 53:3–4 (2014), pp 430–452. 68 “Iz postanovleniia soveta ministrov USSR ‘o merakh po ukrepleniiu raionnykh I sel’skykh bibliotek,’” March 5, 1947, in Kniga i Knizhnoe Delo 1941–1984:52–56. 69 Maria Haigh, “Escaping Lenin’s library: Library and information science education in independent Ukraine,” The International Information & Library Review no. 39 (2007):72–79. 70 Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair: 158.

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home. She followed their orders in terms of the collection. When the Red Army arrived she was confronted by an NKVD officer who had been on staff in the library about her collaboration and made the decision to leave with the Germans and emigrate.71 This was the attitude toward most individuals that stayed behind during the occupation. Regardless of the circumstances, any cooperation could signify a dangerous Anti-Soviet sympathy toward the Germans. One solution that the Committee on Cultural Enlightenment offered, in order to prevent defection and further non-cooperation with Soviet needs, was to ensure librarians a proper education. The “fascist occupants” had perpetrated “beastly and criminal”72 acts against libraries and completely destroyed collections. But, by not properly stewarding the collections, librarians had colluded.73 And the librarians in Western Ukraine, who had only just been incorporated, had not even had the opportunity to be properly trained in Marxism-Leninism and socialist ideology.74 Never mind that many were only too happy to rid themselves of Russian interference in their collections. For these reasons, the Soviet Union expanded the library school in Kharkiv and required that each library employ librarians with specific educational credentials.75 The infrastructure developed in this period served to form pieces of four separate states into a single library system. These changes allowed for books to move quickly and efficiently across the country through significant cataloging efforts and training for librarians. The general structure of how libraries came to relate to each other, the physical spaces they came to operate in, and expectations for librarian education over the next fifty years developed from the foundations set in this post-war state-building period.

Conclusion The post-war period, from approximately 1943 to Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953, continued some reforms started before the war. But it also centralized the libraries, and created strictures intended to better control the running of the libraries and to inte71 Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System, Schedule A, Vol. 31, Case 306/(NY)1106, http://nrs. harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL:962276, accessed June 14, 2016. 72 “Iz akta o zverstvakh I prestpupleniiakj fashistskikh okupantov v g. Khar’kove – o razgrablenii bibliotek,” March 9, 1943, in Kniga i Knizhnoe Delo 1941–1984: 11–12. 73 “Prikaz komiteta po delam kul’turno-prosvetitel’nykh uchrezhdenii pri sovnarkome USSR,” May 16, 1945, in Kniga i Kniznoe Delo 1941–1984: 31. 74 “Iz spravki komiteta po delam kul’turno-prosvetitel’nykh uchrezhdenii pri sovete ministrov USSR o rabote kul’turno-prosvetitel’nykh uchrezhdenii v zapadnykh oblastiakh USSR – o rabote bibliotek,” December 9, 1949, in Kniga i Knizhnoe Delo 1941–1984: 96. 75 “Iz postanovlenniia soveta ministrov USSR ‘o vosstanovlenii gosudarstvennogo bibliotechnogo instituta v g. Kharkove,’” May 26, 1947, in Kniga i Knizhnoe Delo 1941–1984: 68–69.



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grate the Western half of Ukraine into a new Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. All changes occurred under the guise of bringing the libraries back to the form that they were in before the Nazis. The need to rebuild the libraries in Ukraine after World War II was absolutely real. The Nazis decimated collections, destroyed entire catalogs, and ruined thousands of buildings. But the Communist Cultural Committees created a new library system to fit the post-war needs of Ukrainian state-building, while continually making claims of rebuilding. They took this as an opportunity to define what cultural education and cultural heritage would mean in the Ukrainian library of a new Ukrainian SSR. In the post-war period the Soviet Union needed not merely to educate the population by providing appropriate materials and access to cultural heritage, but to assert cultural influence toward creating a unified Ukrainian SSR.76 Libraries become a significant, budgeted part of the post-war recovery effort due to their long accepted role in the Soviet state as centers of cultural and ideological education. In its overarching five-year plan for economic growth in the Soviet Union from 1946, the central committee included libraries.77 Consistently committee notes and official documents present a story in which libraries are not simply important educational institutions. Rather the success of libraries was imperative to the economic health of the Soviet Union and its constituent republics. For all intents and purposes the efforts to develop the system between 1939 and 1953 were extremely successful. For example, in Stalino (Now Donetsk) in 1952 we see a district decision about “measures for the improvement of public libraries in the oblast’” which mentions building more Marxist-Leninist collections and bettering librarian education, but does not have the same urgency for materials, processing, or infrastructure that we see in similar documents from directly following the end of the occupation. 78 While laws regarding restricted materials relaxed and tightened many times leading up to 1991, the structural way that libraries related to each other and to centralized control remained consistent following this period of post-WWII state-building and through the Soviet Period. While the specifics have changed radically, contemporary traditions of access and use in Ukrainian libraries can be traced to these post-WWII efforts and the changes that came in their wake.79 Understanding the way that the Soviet Union built a unified 76 Haigh, Maria. “Making Ukrainians in the Library: Language, Libraries, and National Identity.” The Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science. 151. 77 “Pro p’iatyrichnyi plan vidbudovy I rozvytku nardnogo gospodarstva SRSR na 1946–1950 rr.,” March 18, 1946, in Kulturn’e Budivnytstvo v Ukrainskii RSR: Vazhlyvishi rishennia komunistychnoi partii I radians’koho uriadu: 1917–1959rr.: zbirnyk dokumentiv v dvokh tomakh, vol. 2 (Kyiv: Derzhavne vydavnytstvo poliychnoi literatury URSR, 1959): 94. 78 “Reshenie stalinskogo oblispolkoma ‘o merakh po uluchsheniiu raboty massovykh bibliotek v oblasti,’” May 23, 1952, in Kniga i Knizhnoe Delo 1941–1984: 115–119. 79 Maria Haigh, “Escaping Lenin’s library: Library and information science education in independent Ukraine,” The International Information & Library Review no. 39 (2007):72–79.

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library system in Ukraine is imperative to understanding the traditions upon which even today’s Ukrainian libraries operate. Packaged as rebuilding, the Soviet Union built a new Ukrainian library system for a new Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

References Berkhoff, Karel. Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine Under Nazi Rule. Boston: Harvard University Press, 2008. Bibliotechni fondi Kharkova v roki druhoi svitovoi viiny: dolia kul’turnyx skarbiv ukrainy pid chas druhoi svitovoi viiny arkhivy, biblioteky, muzei. Kyiv: Povernuti imena, 1997. Clark, Charles E. Uprooting Otherness: The Literacy Campaign in NEP-Era Russia. Selinsgrove: Susquehenna University Press, 2000. Divnogortsev, A.L., ed. Bibliotechnoe Delo v Rossiiskoi Federatsii v poslevoennoi period (iiuon 1945 – mart 1953): dokumenty i materialy v 2 ch. Moscow: Pashkov dom, 2005.  Dubrovina, Liubov Andreevna and Oleksii Semenovych Onishchenko. Istoriia natsional’noi biblioteky Ukrainy imeni V.I. Vernads’koho: 1941–1964. Kyiv: Naukova Dumka, 2003. Dubrovina, Liubov Andreevna and Oleksii Semenovych Onyshchenko. Bibliotechna sprava v Ukraini v XX stolitti. Kyiv: NAN Ukrainy, 2009. Haigh, Maria. “Escaping Lenin’s library: Library and information science education in independent Ukraine.” The International Information & Library Review no. 39 (2007):72–79. Haigh, Maria. “Making Ukrainians in the Library: Language, Libraries, and National Identity.” The Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science 33, no. 3/4 (2009): 141–158. Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System. Schedule A, Vol. 31, Case 306/(NY)1106. http://nrs. harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL:962276. Accessed June 14, 2016. Kniga i Knizhnoe Delo v Ukrainskoi SSR: Sbornik dokumentov i materialov 1917–1941. Kyiv: Naukova Dumka, 1985. Kniga i Knizhnoe Delo v Ukrainskoi SSR: Sbornik dokumentov i materialov 1941–1984. Kyiv: Naukova Dumka, 1986. Kul’turne Budivnytstvo v Ukrainskii RSR: Vazhlyvishi rishennia komunistychnoi partii i radians’koho uriadu. Edited by Ministerstvo Kul’tury Ukrains’koi RSR. 2 vols. Kyiv: Derzhavne vydavnytstvo politychnoi literatury URSR, 1959. Lenin and Library Organization. Edited by N.S. Kartashov, et. al. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1983. Liber, George. Soviet Nationality Policy, Urban Growth, and Identity Change in the Ukrainian SSR 1923–1934. London: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Martin, Terry. Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001. Marples, David R. Stalinism in Ukraine in the 1940s. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1992. Onyschenko, O.S. “Bibliotechnyi fond Ukrainy v konteksti druhoi svitovoi viiny ta ii naslidkiv.” In Biblioteky Kyieva v period natsysts’koi okupatsii (1941–1943): Doslidzhennia. Anotovanyi pokazhchyk. Publikatsii dokumentiv, 13–35. Kyiv: NAN, 2004. Pauly, Matthew. Breaking the Tongue: Language, Education, and Power in Soviet Ukraine, 1923-1934. Toronto: University of Toronto, 2015. Rayward, W. Boyd & Christine Jenkins. “Libraries in Times of War, Revolution, and Social Change.” Library Trends 55, no. 3 (2007): 361–369. Raymond, Boris. Krupskaia and Soviet Russian Librarianship, 1917–1939. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1979.



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Risch, William Jay. The Ukrainian West: Culture and the Fate of Empire in Soviet Lviv. Boston: Harvard University Press, 2011. Shevelov, George. The Ukrainian Language in the First Half of the Twentieth Century (1900–1941): Its State and Status. Boston: Harvard University Press, 1989. Snyder, Timothy. Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin. New York: Basic Books, 2010. Taroshenko, Tetyana and Iryna Bankovska. “Libraries and Catalogs in Ukraine: The Way to Understand the Past and Build the Future” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, 53:3–4 (2014). Yekelchyk, Serhy. Ukraine: Birth of a Modern Nation. London: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Alistair Black

Libraries of Light Public Library Design in Britain in the Long 1960s In recent years, against the backdrops of transformative digital technologies and significantly reduced expenditure on public services, libraries in Britain have striven to reposition themselves as social places, potentially more attractive to a wider range of users, many of whom are embedded in communities as much of the virtual as the material kind.1 Particularly, perhaps, in response to the social atomism that has accompanied the neo-liberalist revival of the past three to four decades, twenty-first-century librarians have attempted to re-invigorate the “shared resource” philosophy of the public library by adopting new descriptors for library buildings that are evocative of communal purpose and activities. Public libraries have variously become: hives (whose members, like bees, contribute to the common good); hubs (to which people gravitate to associate); living-rooms in the city (where, like members of a family, citizens congregate informally); civic public squares (wherein freedom of thought and expression thrive); and idea stores (in which individuals transfer their commonly held skills as consumers to the consumption of cultural goods).2 Serving as an umbrella concept for all these new terms is the proposition that the public library is first and foremost a place of social interaction and intellectual exchange. More specifically, it has been rebranded an informal “third place” (one that is not the home and not work) where, either online or physically, people can connect to knowledge or “network” with others.3 In the immediate post-war decades the need to defend both the future of the public library and its public nature was nowhere near as keenly sensed as it is today. 1 Regarding expenditure cuts, between 2008 and 2013, the number of items borrowed from Britain’s public libraries decreased from 307 million to 162 million, the number of service points shrunk from 4540 to 4191 (the figure slipped below 4,000 in 2015), total staff declined from 25,768 to 20,302 (and are now outnumbered by volunteers), and, perhaps most worryingly, the professional establishment collapsed from 5298 to 3557: Library and Information Statistics Unit, University of Loughborough, Trends in UK library and publishing statistics (2015), retrieved 12 August 2015 from http://www.lboro. ac.uk/microsites/infosci/lisu/lisu-statistics/lisu-statistics-trends.html; Chartered Institute for Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA), Latest public library statistics released (2015), retrieved 12 August 2015 from http://www.cipfastats.net/news/newsstory.asp?content=16056) 2 Other ‘rebrandings’ operating today include: media lounge; library café; learning zone; discovery centre; learning pod; resource centre; and simply the highly postmodern ‘explore’, as in the renaming of the York Central Library, ‘York Explore’ (here ‘signifier’ and ‘signified’ appear highly disconnected). 3 J.E. Buschman & G.J. Leckie (eds.), The library as place: history, community, and culture (Westport, Connecticut and London: Libraries Unlimited, 2007); R. Oldenburg, Celebrating the third place: inspiring stories about the ‘great good places’ at the heart of our communities (New York: Marlow and Co., 2001). DOI 10.1515/9783110450842-009



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In these years, as part of the quest for a “new” Britain, a “new” (in many respects) public library was fashioned. The most visible manifestation of the post-war reconstruction of the public library was the revolution that occurred in its built form. For the first hundred years of their history, public libraries in Britain were draped in garb of the past.4 Until the 1960s (this being the abbreviated form used in this chapter to signify the long 1960s, the period from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s) the architectural treatment of Britain’s municipal public libraries, institutions which first appeared in the 1850s,5 was dominated by an eclecticism of revivalist styles, from Gothic, Classical and Georgian to Queen Anne, Renaissance and “Tudorbethan,” and sometimes free-style permutations of these. Victorian and Edwardian — even much inter-war — architecture, including that of libraries, was addicted to the production of period pieces dressed in historical costumes.6 After the war, however, architectural modernism became ubiquitous. Approaches that were retardataire were banished, the revolutionary spirit summed up in Nikolas Pevsner’s concise observation: “No columns, no pillars, no arches, no ornament, no contrived monumentality”.7 Postwar modernism was symptomatic of the age’s spirit of renewal. Post-war Britain was not only re-built, it was also re-designed.8 The optimism of the period was based in part on the growth of a strong welfare state which provided the financial and moral patronage for the large-scale provision of a range of new public buildings, including libraries, fashioned in a modernist style which in unison constituted a potent “social 4 A. Black, S. Pepper & K. Bagshaw, Books, buildings, and social engineering: early public libraries in Britain 1850–1939 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009). 5 T. Kelly, A history of public libraries in Britain, 1845–1975 (London: Library Association, 1977); A. Black, A new history of the English public library: social and intellectual contexts 1850–1914 (London: Leicester University Press, 1996); A. Black, The public library in Britain, 1914–2000 (London: The British Library, 2000). 6 Some libraries were treated in styles, such as Art Nouveau and Art Deco, that represented a transition between revivalism and modernism but these were few in number. In the 1930s, there was a sprinkling of libraries in the Art Moderne style as well as some in highly simplified historical forms. 7 N. Pevsner, A history of building types (London: Thames and Hudson, 1976), 110. 8 A. Marwick, Culture in Britain since 1945 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 50–55. See, also: J. Grindrod, Concretopia: a journey around the rebuilding of postwar Britain (Brecon: Old Street Publishing, 2013); M. Swenarton, T. Avermaete, & D. van den Heuvel (eds.), Architecture and the welfare state (London: Routledge, 2015); A. Clement, Brutalism: post-war British architecture (Ramsbury: Crowood Press, 2011); M. Webb, Architecture in Britain today (Feltham: Hamlyn Publishing, 1969); M. Fraser, Architecture and the ‘special relationship’: the American influence on post-war British architecture (London: Routledge, 2007); R. Elwall, Building a better tomorrow: architecture in Britain in the 1950s (Chichester: Wiley Academy, 2000); N. Bullock, Building the post-war world: modern architecture and reconstruction in Britain (London: Routledge, 2002); A. Powers, A. Modern: the modern movement in Britain (London: Merrel, 2005); A. Powers, Britain: modern architectures in history (London: Reaktion Books, 2007); Darling, E. Re-forming Britain: narratives of modernity before reconstruction (London: Routledge, 2007); A. Higgott, Mediating modernism: architectural cultures in Britain (London: Routledge, 2007); O. Hatherley, Militant modernism (Winchester: O Books, 2008); C. Beanland, Concrete concepts: brutish buildings around the world (London: Frances Lincoln Publishers, 2016).

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architecture” — an architecture sanctioned by “big government” that was emblematic of a desire to redistribute opportunity and wealth.9 For public librarians and their clientele, therefore, the application of modernism to libraries did not come as a shock. By the time post-war library development got fully underway, the public had already been widely exposed to modernism. In the era of post-war austerity “life-chance” buildings like hospitals, houses and schools were naturally first in line to be built and thus to receive modernist treatment; but modernist public libraries soon followed suit, and in large numbers.

Modernism The architectural modernism that characterized post-war public library buildings is not easy to define.10 Nevertheless, it is possible to identify certain of modernism’s core characteristics.11 The rise of modernism in the early-twentieth century was made possible by technological advances in construction materials: rolled structural steel, reinforced concrete, plate-glass, laminated wood, plastics and artificial lighting. These modern, mass-produced materials were used in association with new, “industrial” methods of construction. Modernism dovetailed with the spread of scientific management, sharing its ethos and adapting its methods. In the tradition of Taylor

9 A. Saint, Towards a social architecture: the role of school-building in post-war England (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1987). 10 Unless stated otherwise, the terms “modernist” and “modernism” are used in this chapter in an architectural context. They are preferred to the term “modern” — as in “modern architecture” — because of its connotation of something that is simply “existing now,” “new,” “improved,” “up-to-date,” or “of recent origin.” On the definition and history of “modern,” see R. Williams, Keywords: a vocabulary of culture and society (London: Flamingo, 1983), 208–209. 11 On the rise, characteristics, and decline of modernism, see: E. Relph, The modern urban landscape (Beckenham: Croom Helm, 1987); C. Norberg-Schulz, Principals of modern architecture (London: Andreas Papadakis, 2000); Weston, R. Modernism (London: Phaidon Books, 1996): N. Pevsner, Pioneers of the modern movement (London: Faber and Faber, 1936); M.F. Guillén, The Taylorized beauty of the mechanical: scientific management and the rise of modernist architecture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006); A. Colquhoun, Modern architecture: a critical history (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); J.M. Richards, Introduction to modern architecture (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1940); W. Pehnt, Encyclopedia of modern architecture (London: Thames & Hudson, 1963); M. Trachtenberg, Modern architecture, in M. Trachtenberg & I. Hyman, Architecture: from pre-history to postmodernism/ the western tradition (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall; & New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1986), 430–485; P. Blake, Form follows fiasco: why modern architecture hasn’t worked (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press and Little, Brown and Company, 1977); M. MacEwen, Architecture in crisis (London: RIBA, 1974); R. Banham, The new brutalism: ethic or aesthetic (London: The Architectural Press, 1966).



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and Ford, modernist architects came to conceptualize buildings as “machines” by which human behavior could be controlled.12 In post-war modernism — what some term the era of “high modernism” — frivolity and elaboration were avoided. Buildings were denuded of ornament. Surfaces were largely undecorated. Like nature, modernist buildings generally sought to be “honest,” meaning materials and structures, such as steel columns, were not hidden behind sham decoration. Design was ordered through regularity and repetition rather than symmetry. There was an emphasis on volume as opposed to mass. Space was enclosed by thin planes, such as glass “daylight,” or “curtain,” walls. Clean lines and edges dominated. “Form follows function” and “Less is more” became the new orthodoxies. “Minimalism” entered the design lexicon, many modernist structures and spaces displaying “lightness,” stripped surfaces and transparency. In the imagination, some strains of modernist structures assumed the ability to float. The “streamlined” aesthetic became prominent: for example, The Festival of Britain (1951), a design exhibition which formally introduced the British public to the modernist aesthetic, is seen to have provided a potent “streamlined vision of the future.”13 Considerable use was made of the open plan, sometimes called the free plan or fluid plan. The clutter of the Victorian interior was banished, as seen in the emergence of the “open office” with floor space broken up by fabric-covered screens, desks, filing cabinets, plants and other “barrier” devices. Layout was defined by the desired flow of people and activities through a building rather than by rigidly defined hierarchies. Heavy, “boxy” furniture was replaced by designs with light, elongated lines; in the home, free-standing, easily-moveable, and sometimes double-sided, units with shelves and cupboards were used to divide space, such as that between the kitchen and living room. Modernism embraced nature and healthy living, claiming to offer “clinical” solutions to the grime of urban life. The centrality of nature to modernism came to be expressed in its vision of interior sun-receptive spaces interfacing seamlessly with the exterior environment (the bringing of the outside inside). Modernism’s concern for health and nature showed that it was as much a moral as an aesthetic movement. It was bound up with the search for improved justice and equality, “a new architectural style for a new social order”.14 Modernism’s adherents claimed it was an architecture of liberation, participation and egalitarianism. Better buildings were part of the dream of achieving substantial improvements to people’s lives. In keeping with its “scientific management” credentials, standardization and prefabrication became major features of modernism. The use of standardized elements 12 Mauro F. Guillén, The Taylorized beauty of the mechanical: scientific management and the rise of modernist architecture. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008). 13 H. Goodden, The lion and the unicorn: symbolic architecture for the Festival of Britain 1951 (Norwich: Unicorn Press, 2011), 49. 14 Relph, The modern urban landscape, 98.

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— industrialized building — became common, its efficacy championed in Britain, amongst others, by the Modular Society, established in 1953.15 “Systems building” used standardized parts almost entirely. “Methods building” combined the use of some standardized elements with traditional construction techniques. The popularity of modernism in Britain was never universal. Dissent, such as that voiced by the conservationist Victorian Society (established 1958) and anti-redevelopment figures like the poet John Betjeman, was never far away. One of the things that bred dissent outside a cultural elite concerned with questions of aesthetics was the growing unpopularity of large-scale public housing projects – what Robert Goodman called the “architecture of repression.”16 The issue of multi-story housing (especially the tower block) became contentious, with opinion polarized between tenants on the one hand and architects and local-government planners on the other. Rather than providing harmonious and communal “streets in the sky,” high-rise existence eventually became synonymous with “battery living,” exclusion, anti-social behaviour, and crime.17 The reaction against modernism — people’s belief that modernist buildings were alien and cold, austere and ugly, the whimsical creations of out-of-touch and sometimes corrupt architects, planners and developers — should not, however, hide the fact that, despite the revival of an interest in preservation and in pre-modern styles, its influence continued into the so-called post-modern era.

A New Look for New Times Not surprisingly, these multiple characteristics gave rise to a wide variety of styles. The movement that ostensibly set out to abolish style ultimately creating a great many.18 Reflecting this, modernist libraries were stylistically eclectic but a rudimentary classification is nonetheless possible.19 What was referred to as “Scandinavian light” — as deployed, for example, in the central libraries in Holborn, London (1960) (Figure 1) and Luton (1962) — was a continuation of a tradition established by the Festival of Britain. A great many branch libraries were fashioned in a utility style, in the tradition of the temporary, demountable single-level building which had 15 The Modular Society, led by Mark Hartland Thomas and Bruce Martin, was a private organization that campaigned for a Fordist-Taylorist and operations-research coordination of construction components: see C. Wall, An architecture of parts: architects, building workers and industrialization in Britain 1940–1970 (London: Routledge, 2013). 16 Title of Chapter 4 of R. Goodman, After the planners (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), 132–153. 17 F.J.C. Amos, High hopes and low life, in Institution of Structural Engineers, Tall buildings and people (London, 1974), 56–60. In its early incarnation, however, high-rise public housing was extremely popular: Hatherley, Militant modernism. 18 J.S. Curl, Oxford dictionary of architecture and landscape architecture, 2nd edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 496. 19 O. Hopkins, Architectural styles: a visual guide (London: Laurence King Publishing, 2014).



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grown out of the austerity of the immediate post-war years (for example, Blackhall Library, Edinburgh, 1966). Flat-roofed, glass “box” libraries, some with exposed steel frames — such as the “Miesian” Stockton-upon-Tees District Library (1969) and, on a larger scale, the eight-floor Bradford Central Library (1968) — became commonplace. Expressionist styles (though not the highly sculptured shapes that featured in early modernism) which denied the stereotypical view of modernist buildings as unilinear were also in evidence — witness Basil Spence’s obloid-shaped Hampstead Central Library (1964).20 Finally, there were libraries in the category “Brutalist” (a term that many have used, incorrectly, to describe all modernist styles), of which the Roehampton Branch Library, Wandsworth (1963) and the Birmingham Central Library (1974) (Figure 2) were a prime examples.21

Figure 1: Holborn Central Library (opened 1960). Sydney Cook’s undecorated, modernist design set the tone for new public library buildings in Britain over the next decade. Photo: Alistair Black (2010).

20 A. Black, The design of Hampstead Public Library (1964), Camden History Review, Vol. 38 (2014), 10–1 21 A. Clawley, Library story: Birmingham Central Library 1974–2015 (Birmingham: The Author, forthcoming).

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Figure 2: Birmingham Central Library (opened 1974). By John Madin, this was a library of two main parts. The reference services were housed in the controversial inverted concrete ziggurat (left); while the steel-and-glass, lower mass (right) accommodated the more popular departments. In the foreground is the memorial celebrating the major author of Birminghan’s civic gospel and development in the second half of the nineteenth century, Joseph Chamberlain. Photo: Alistair Black (2013).

The new look for public libraries was ushered in alongside considerable social transformations and technological and economic developments which impacted public library development generally.22 Hopes for economic modernization rested on a belief in the possibilities of technological innovation and in new methods of “scientific,” technocratic planning. At times it appeared that plans for economic and technological renewal might have some substance. Keynesian demand management pumped money into the economy, funding public services like public libraries as well as the education sector and the libraries associated with that. A national economic plan was launched in 1965.23 Growth in the national economy was historically good (though not quite as good as that of many international rivals).24 One success story was that for nearly twenty years after the war Britain led the world in aircraft R&D and manufacturing.25 A communications revolution got underway. Television, overlaying earlier technologies of film and the photograph, became a potent rival, as Marshall McLuhan

22 A. Black, The public library in Britain, 1914–2000 (London: The British Library, 2000), 111–140. 23 Department of Economic Affairs, The national plan. Command Paper 2764 (1965). 24 R. Pope, The British economy since 1914: a study in decline (London: Longman, 1998). 25 J. Hamilton-Peterson, Empire of the clouds: when Britain’s aircraft ruled the world (London: Faber, 2010).



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put it, “to the insatiable cultural conquest of the phonetic alphabet”.26 One the most iconic technologies of the 1960s was a building: the six-hundred-foot tall Post Office Tower in London (opened in 1965), the “centerpiece of Britain’s brand new communications network and an uncompromising statement of technological modernism”.27 Modernist buildings of all kinds, in fact, added to a sense of advancing technological and economic modernity. On the surface these changes appeared revolutionary. In reality they flattered to deceive. Although the British economy performed well by its own standards, when measured against the economic performance of rivals it was lackluster. Productivity increases remained poor, the economy moved forward in a stop-go fashion, balance-of-payments difficulties were never overcome and in 1967 the pound was devalued. If an authentic economic and technological revolution proved elusive, the opposite can be said about society and culture. As “austerity Britain” faded, a cluster of attitudinal and social “dam bursts” were registered, whereby “the respectable and the traditional were subjected to a rising clamour of criticism and challenge”.28 For Marwick, the 1960s witnessed a full-scale cultural revolution. It was a revolution formed by the confluence of numerous profound changes and developments, from the formation of new sub-cultures and movements, a growing intense concern for social rights (regarding such matters as abortion, homosexuality and equal pay for women) and the emergence of a multicultural society, to a general opening up of social mores, increased sexual permissiveness, emancipatory fashion, a decline in deference to the professions and to authority generally, and the rise of a vibrant youth culture spearheaded by an innovative “pop” music tsunami.29 Professional librarianship responded in some ways to this cultural revolution. Its censorial tendencies were to a degree relaxed. Its view of the new communications revolution, such as attitudes to television, became more welcoming. Yet, as we shall see below, its crusade for an extension of culture was slanted more towards the traditional than the popular. More progressively, public librarians fell in line with many of the technocratic advances of the time (for example, computers for catalogues and circulation) and the shift in the direction of a service, brain-not-brawn economy (reference and information departments became saturated with all manner of students and researchers). They also began to speak much more clearly the language of customer-focused service and good publicity and public relations. These developments in society, culture, technology, the economy, and the library profession — these “new times” — provided the “mood music” for the new library 26 M. McLuhan, Counterblast (London: Rapp and Whiting, 1969), 80. 27 D. Sandbrook, White heat: A story of Britain in the swinging sixties (London: Abacus, 2006), 44. 28 P. Hennessy, Having it so good: Britain in the fifties (London: Penguin, 2007), 5. 29 This list was assembled from A. Marwick, Culture in Britain since 1945 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 69; and A. Marwick, The Sixties: cultural revolution in Britain, France, Italy and the United States c.1958–c.1974 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 16–20.

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look and the marked escalation in library construction. They do not, however, as we shall see, fully explain the “meanings” attached to 1960s modernist public libraries by the librarians and planners who championed them.

The Library Building Program The post-war revolution in the physical infrastructure of the British public library system was one of not only style but also scope. In the 1960s Britain witnessed a boom in the planning and construction of new public libraries. This twenty-year period was a golden age for the public library, an age as notable, if not more so, as the era of Carnegie library philanthropy in the decade and a half immediately preceding World War I. The 1960s was also one of momentous change in British society generally. It commenced at the end of what Peter Hennessy has termed the “short post-war”,30 when post-war austerity began to recede, when architectural modernism was beginning to make its mark, and when a raft of mores left over from the Victorian age came under scrutiny. It culminated with the deep economic crisis of 1974–1975, when hitherto relatively generous spending on public services was severely curtailed and when criticism of architectural modernism was becoming rife.31 The boom in public library construction was both paralleled and fueled by significant developments in Britain’s public library system. A series of post-war enquiries demonstrated a renewed interest in public libraries on the part of government,32 30 P. Hennessy, Having it so good, 2. 31 In the wake of the quadrupling of oil prices in the fall of 1973, across the developed economies, the post-war boom — advanced capitalism’s golden age — faltered. Britain was hit especially hard, however, with growth in GDP falling away from a historically impressive 7.4% in 1973, to a decline of 1.5 in 1974 and a meagre rise of 0.8% in 1975. Economic malfunction naturally placed pressure on public expenditure, public services like libraries suffering accordingly. Inflation, averaged 16% between 1973 and 1979. The mid-1970s brought an end to post-war economic optimism and the notion that mass unemployment had been defeated. For basic data on growth rates and coverage of economic development, see A. Marwick, A history of the modern British Isles 1914–1999: circumstances, events and outcomes (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 20, 163, 275; and Pope, The British economy since 1914. Regarding architecture, Powers, Britain: modern architectures in history has neatly characterised the period in question as being bounded by ‘White Heat and Burnout’ (title of Chapter 4). It was in the period 1950–1973, Eric Hobsbawm argues, that the world became post-industrial, post-imperial, post-Marxist, and post-modern. This period saw ‘the greatest and most dramatic, rapid and universal social transformation in human history’; in short, by the mid-1970s it had become a ‘just-in-time’ as opposed to a ‘just-in-case’ world: E. Hobsbawm, The age of extremes: the short twentieth century, 1914–1991 (London: Abacus, 1995), 288, 404. 32 Ministry of Education, The structure of the public library service in England and Wales [Roberts Report] (1959). Ministry of Education, Standards of public library service in England and Wales [Bourdillon Report] (1962). Ministry of Education, Inter-library co-operation in England and Wales [Baker Report] (1962).



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culminating in fresh legislation for public libraries in 1964. The new Public Libraries Act of that year compelled — rather than simply allowed, as had been the case since the first Public Libraries Act in 1850 — local authorities to provide what was termed in the legislation a ‘comprehensive and efficient’ library service. The Act also formally permitted public libraries to provide non-book formats and services. Here, then, was a cultural embodiment of the universalism that characterized Britain’s welfare state. In addition, the long-standing criticism of a system that was formed of too many small library authorities, inefficient in their operations because of their size – something Lionel McColvin had highlighted in his famous wartime survey33 – was nullified by local government reform (in London in 1965; completed in the rest of the country by 1975) which radically reduced the number of local authorities, and thus library authorities also, and increased the size of both.34 The net result of reorganization in England and Wales, for example, reduced the number of library authorities from 385 to 121.35 These new administrative arrangements, including the anticipation of them, gave confidence to those involved in planning new library building (although it has to be stressed that the initial planning of new libraries from around 1955 onwards was not undertaken with knowledge of the timetable, or inevitability indeed, of the local government reforms that would give a new lease of life to Britain’s public library system). Due to the war and the austerity measures that followed it, the task of replenishing Britain’s stock of public library buildings had by the mid-1950s became enormous. The war had inflicted a large amount of physical damage on libraries. After the war, beyond the renovation of damaged libraries and the replacement of libraries completely destroyed, two types of building work were required. Firstly, a number of libraries had been planned or started before hostilities broke out, and these needed to be completed. Secondly, a much larger group was formed by libraries that had been identified before the war as utterly inadequate in their ability to offer a modern, mid-twentieth century service, and these needed to be replaced.36 Thus, to a large degree the post-war public library service in Britain was unfavourably conditioned by an inherited stock of ageing buildings dating from before World War II, including many erected before World War I. In 1959 the Library Association stated that around three-quarters of Britain’s public libraries were over 50 years old. They had been built, moreover, to house far fewer books as well as cater for far

33 L. McColvin, The public library system of Great Britain: a report on its present condition with proposals for post-war reorganization (London: The Library Association, 1942). 34 G. Stoker, The politics of local government (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan Educational, 1988), 8–19. 35 L. Paulin, Recent developments in the provision of public library services in the United Kingdom, Library Quarterly, 48/4 (1978), 513–4. 36 McColvin, The public library system of Great Britain, 215, 217.

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fewer readers. In 1960 it was estimated that some six to eight hundred new libraries would be needed over the course of the next ten years.37 It is true that by the end of the 1950s over 200 new service points had appeared since the war, but the vast majority of these were re-builds’ or renovations.38 Severe restrictions had been placed on the building of libraries because, understandably, the building of houses, schools and hospitals took priority. As post-war austerity faded (rationing came to an end in 1954), however, the breaks on new public library construction came off.39 After 1960 the pace of construction quickened markedly, over 350 new service points opening in the five years between 1960 and 1964.40 Despite a slight slowing of construction in the wake of the economic problems surrounding devaluation in 1967, a good pace was maintained until the economic crisis of 1974–1975. Around 250 new library buildings were opened between 1965 and 1969.41 Around the same number were opened between 1970 and 1975. Between 1975 and 1980, however, far fewer building were erected than in any of the previous three quinquennia.42 In the late-1950s the Library Association began work on detailing public library building standards and requirement.43 These were eventually published in 1960 in a glossy booklet entitled Public Library Buildings: The Way Ahead.44 Momentum on the issue of library design was maintained throughout the 1960s with assistance from a stream of reviews of new public library buildings in the library press, more extensive even than those appearing in the architectural journals.45 Especially influential 37 E.A. Clough, Library buildings for the 1960s, Librarian and Book World, XLIX/1 (January 1960), 1. 38 M. Dewe, Built to last, in M. Kinnell and P. Sturges (eds.), Continuity and innovation in the public library: the development of a social institution (London: Library Association Publishing, 1996), 95. 39 On the shift away from austerity, see: V. Bogdanor & R. Skidelsky, The age of affluence, 1951–1964 (London: Macmillan, 1970). 40 S.G. Berriman and K.C. Harrison, British public library buildings (London: Andre Deutsch, 1966), 18. 41 This figure is based on Harrison’s estimate that the period 1960–1969 saw a total of six hundred new libraries: K.C. Harrison, Central public library buildings, in H.A. Whatley (ed.), British librarianship and information science 1966–1970 (London: Library Association, 1972), 192. From this total the figure of two hundred and fifty for 1960–64 is subtracted. 42 G. Thompson, Buildings, equipment and conservation, in L.J. Taylor (ed.), British librarianship and information work 1976–1980. Volume 1. (London: Library Association, 1983), 25. 43 Library Association Executive Committee Minutes (May 1959). 44 Public library buildings: the way ahead (Library Association, 1960). 45 E.g., in date order: Three new central libraries, Library Association Record, 62/11 (November 1960), 369–374; Library Association, Public library buildings: the way ahead (London, 1960); London & Home Counties Branch of the Library Association, Design in the library (London, 1960); S.G. Berriman & K.C. Harrison, British public library buildings (London: Andre Deutsch, 1966); J.D. Reynolds (ed.), Library buildings 1965 (London: Library Association, 1966); London & Home Counties Branch of the Library Association, Library buildings: design and fulfilment. London, 1969), S.G. Berriman, Library buildings 1967–1968 (London: Library Association, 1969); London & Home Counties Branch of the Library Association, New London Libraries (London, 1969); H. Ward (ed.), Better library buildings: architect/librarian co-operation in their design (London: Library Association London & Home Counties Branch,



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at the time were the developments in library design occurring in Scandinavia. These attracted considerable interest from British librarians who, to their credit, were very active in liaising with international colleagues to discover the latest developments in library design (Lionel McColvin, for example, helped prepare international standards on public library buildings for IFLA in the 1950s).46 ‘I have never visited cleaner, brighter, tidier and more pleasant buildings anywhere’, wrote McColvin after returning from Scandinavia in 1951.47 In 1957 the librarian R.G.C. Desmond wrote: ‘There is not a single library in this country that can stand comparison with the best in Scandinavia and on the continent’.48 In 1959 K.C. Harrison stated that Scandinavia had ‘much to show and teach us, with their adventurous architecture and the colourful, yet studied, informality of their interiors’.49 The following year saw the opening of the Scandinavian-inspired Holborn Central Library, the first of the new wave of authentically modernist libraries that was to break over Britain’s urban landscapes in the decades that followed.

Light-Drenched Libraries for a Sun-Drenched Decade Even taking into account their technical deficiencies, Sixties library buildings were on balance a tremendous success. They were truly ‘libraries of light’, being lightdrenched figuratively and literally. Their great symbolic achievement was in the value of the message they conveyed regarding the deep post-war desire to build a New Jerusalem — to modernize Britain and embed and extend its infant welfare state. Out of the cauldron of war was forged a widespread hope for a ‘new Britain’. This entailed a literal re-building of Britain as well as the reconstruction of its economy and its social and cultural institutions, including, eventually, its public libraries. Modernist library architecture was emblematic of the progressive zeitgeist of the 1960s, representing, as

1969); A. Longworth, British public library buildings, in H.A Whatley (ed.), British librarianship and information science 1966–1970 (London: Library Association, 1972), 204–212; H. Ward & S. Odd (eds.), Library buildings: 1972 issue (London Library Association, 1973); H. Ward (ed.), New library buildings: 1976 issue: years 1973–1974 (London: Library Association, 1976). Individual library designs were naturally covered in architectural journals from time to time. The first extensive coverage of post-war library planning aimed at the architectural profession appeared in a series of supplements in the Architects’ Journal in 1965, and exercise that was repeated three years later: Library spaces, fixtures and equipment, Architects’ Journal (17 February 1965), 425–446; and see a series of supplements on library buildings commencing 21 February 1968. 46 Library Association Executive Committee Minutes (26 November 1959). 47 L. R. McColvin, Scandinavian visit, Library Association Record, 53/12 (December 1951), 394. 48 R.G.C. Desmond, Some unquiet thoughts on public library architecture, Library Association Record, 59/3 (March 1957), 87. 49 K.C.Harrison, Travel notes of a librarian, The Times (26 June 1960).

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Ken Worpole has put it, “some of the brightest, unalloyed hopes of modernism,”50 in a decade that many have viewed as “sun-drenched.” More specifically, public libraries reflected the spirit of the age by being the physical embodiment of: firstly, a determination not to return to the ‘gloom’ of a pre-war society marked by unemployment, poverty and cultural insularity;51 secondly, the triumph that the war had represented for freedom of thought over the dark, menacing forces of authoritarianism;52 thirdly, a range of bright and hopeful modernizing aspirations, on both the economic and social front;53 and fourthly, the project of building a better, more equal Britain which, in the context of the public library, often found expression in the term National Health Service for reading. The 1960s brought libraries – mythically places of subdued illumination – into the light in the literal sense also. Aside from the brutalised variety, Sixties libraries often appeared “physically” light in the sense of exhibiting a less “weighty” architecture than the “heavy,” solid-masonry styles of yesteryear. They were also, even brutalist compositions, light in respect of their open, bright and luminous interiors which were lit by new artificial-lighting technologies, glass walls, innovative and strategically placed skylights and generous window apertures (the lending department of Holborn Public Library, 1960, is a fine example of this new kind of interior) (Figure 3). Bright interiors were also delivered by new modes of decoration, with furniture, fittings, and floor coverings that were “featherweight” in substance and tone, and sometimes vibrantly colourful (colour was also delivered by the retention of jackets on books protected by transparent plastic coverings). Sixties “libraries of light” thus drove a large nail into the coffin of the solemnly veiled and obscure “temple” library,54 thereby constituting a sharp break with library designers’ past preoccupation with the past, with backward-looking, historic compositions that for many Sixties observers conveyed an inappropriate and incongruous conservative image of the purpose of the public library because they were based on the model of the baroque library — “splendid, flowing, spatially voluptuous”55 — that was fixed in the public imagination as the

50 K. Worpole, Contemporary library architecture: a planning and design guide (London: Routledge, 2013), 188. 51 S. Constantine, Social conditions in Britain, 1918–1939 (London: Methuen, 1983). 52 In his wartime report on the condition and future of the public library system in Britain, Lionel McColvin’s promoted libraries as “a great instrument and bulwark of democracy.” Civilisation and free access to books, both of which the Axis powers had abandoned, were, in McColvin’s view, closely intertwined. Books and libraries, said McColvin, were essential to the “real democratic conditions of living”; they were “the tools and the symbols of true freedom”: L.R. McColvin, The public library system of Great Britain: a report on its present condition with proposals for post-war reorganization. London: The Library Association, 1942), 1, 5, 195. 53 Marwick, The Sixties. 54 Preface, “Destination library,” special issue of the journal Volume, 15 (April 2008), 2. 55 M. Brawne, Off the shelf, Architectural Review (July 1971), 51.



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quintessential library form.56 Whereas the libraries of the Baroque, and indeed the Enlightenment, despite their openness compared with the medieval library,57 enveloped, overpowered and overwhelmed the user by virtue of their ornate treatment and wide expanses of high wall shelving, libraries of the 1960s claimed true lucidity, this word being used here both literally, in terms of the brightness of interior spaces and the transparency of buildings, and metaphorically, in terms of the fact that due to their simplicity buildings were easy to understand.

Figure 3: Lending Department, Holborn Central Library (opened 1960). In a Scandinavian-inspired interior, large, high-set windows provided abundant and efficient natural light, while preserving precious wall space for books in demand from a large daytime clientele mostly comprising office workers commuting into central London. Photo: Alistair Black (2010).

The elegant ensemble of new public libraries designed in the 1960s was truly a breath of fresh air, a leap into a future, the path of which had been brightly illuminated, or at least predicted, by Britain’s politicians, professionals, planners and technologists. Optimistic supporters of the new library look — majority opinion appeared heartened by it, with hesitancy, in places, creeping in only later in the period under consideration — included not only library providers (librarians, civic planners and architects) but also, if popular reports in newspapers are anything to go by, the general public. The overall feeling was that people were experiencing a great advance in the library built form. 56 Jeffrey Garrett, The legacy of the Baroque in virtual representations of library space, Library Quarterly, 74/1 (2004), 42–62, argues that our notion of a library’s physical form is very much based on the grand, elaborate reading halls of the Baroque and the Enlightenment. 57 K. Skelton, The malleable early modern reader: display and discipline in the open reading room, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 73/2 (June 2014), 183–203.

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The 1960s was a time when, in a number of ways, British librarianship also experienced an advance. But we should be wary of coupling these two developments together too securely. We should avoid jumping to the conclusion that it was a progressive library profession that was largely responsible for the fresh, contemporary look of the buildings it helped create. It is all too easy to look back nostalgically on Sixties public libraries and see them as the product of librarians’ empathy with the pop-culture revolution of the day; for the evidence suggests that the new look for libraries was as much a reflection of traditionalism and conservatism in British librarianship as any desire that existed to rejuvenate or re-orientate the profession and its purpose. In a nutshell, like many of the new buildings they celebrated, Sixties librarians were more square than hip. Three arguments are important here. They revolve around style, space, and siting, and the way each of these intersect with the ethos of public librarianship in the 1960s.

Style: The Library as Machine, Factory and Modular Office Firstly, Sixties libraries, with their steel-glass-and concrete industrial styles, clean lines, lack of fuss and open-plan interiors chimed precisely with the traditional, technocratic nature of the librarian. When approaching the matter of library design, librarians immersed themselves in what Guillén, as we have seen, termed the “Taylorised beauty of the mechanical,”58 or what Michael Harris imaginatively termed “the dream of the physics of librarianship.”59 Of relevance here is the image of the librarian as a gatekeeper of positivist knowledge. The modern, Enlightenment view of knowledge encompasses the belief that it is arrived at scientifically, through the efforts of detached, neutral experts, and that in order for it to be accessed it must equally be scientifically organized by meta-scientists like librarians. Like the “scientific” process itself, therefore, librarians are depicted as rule-governed, emotionless, cold, disconnected and mechanistic.60 58 Guillén, The Taylorized beauty. 59 M. Harris, State, class and cultural reproduction: towards a theory of library service in the United States, in W. Simonton (ed.), Advances in Librarianship, 14 (New York: Academic Press, 1986), 217. 60 G.P. Radford, Positivism, Foucault, and the fantasia of the library: conceptions of knowledge and the modern library experience, Library Quarterly, 62/4 (October 1992), 408–424. Irrespective of whether or not this image of bureaucratic detachment is more fictional stereotype than reality, it is important to point out that its historiography has been infused by the issue of gender. In the context of the US, a more feminine, emotional image has been offered by Garrison, although it needs to be pointed out that her position has been convincingly challenged by a number of scholars, including Hildenbrand, Passet, and McDowell. In the UK, the dragooning of female library staff has been discussed by Kerslake, who sees women’s poor lot in librarianship historically as a function of a labor market that



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Such characteristics were eventually grafted onto perceptions of modernist architecture, including that of libraries. Many modernist library designs resonated with the notion of library as “Fordist factory,” one of the enduring technological symbols of modernity (even when library design did depart from this mechanistic metaphor in order to address culture, another materialist metaphor often sprang to mind: that of the supermarket, wherein low-brow culture, mainly popular literature, was, like the Model T, piled high and “sold” cheap). There were also similarities with the Fordist corporate office, with its streamlined clerical administration in open spaces flexibly divided by moveable barriers of various kinds. The factory, office, and machine models of the library, including the concept of the interchangeability of standardized parts, were enhanced by the influence of the mid-century modularization movement. At the heart of this movement was the pursuit of flexibility as well as openness in library interiors. Thoughts about the openplan library were infused with the promotional crusade of Angus Snead Macdonald, who had joined the book stack manufacturing firm of Snead and Company in 1905.61 In the 1930s Macdonald launched a campaign against library buildings which he castigated for having wallowed in what he called “regal display,” created at the expense of utility. Macdonald denounced the “tyranny of tradition in library architecture;” for him, a library should be a “working laboratory” not a “monumental reading place … for bookworms.”62 Macdonald’s newly styled efficient, open library required flexibility in internal arrangements. He devised the divisional-unit, or flexible-unit, plan. In 1945, in his article “New Possibilities in Library Planning,” he renamed this the “modular system of construction.” Macdonald asked: “Should we not also consider that readers’ tastes and habits are constantly changing and that a building must change with them or awarded higher pay to men and of a culture of ‘othering’ displayed by a predominantly male presence in the upper reaches of the profession. On these perspectives, see: D. Garrison, Apostles of culture: the public librarian and American society, 1876–1920 (Madison, WI: university of Wisconsin Press, 1979); S. Hildenbrand, Some theoretical considerations on women in library history, Journal of Library History, 18:4 (1983), pp. 382–90; J.E. Passet, Cultural crusaders: women librarians in the American West, 1900–1917 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994); K. McDowell, Surveying the field: the research model of women in librarianship 1882–1898, Library Quarterly, 79: 3 (July 2009), 279– 300; E. Kerslake, No more the hero: Lionel McColvin, women library workers and impacts of othering, Library History, 17:3 (November 2001), 181–188. Regarding the senior librarians involved in Sixties library planning, the vast majority were men who, moreover, had undertaken their initial training either before or just after the war when a traditional, inward-looking, bureaucratic ethos was very much a feature of professional librarianship, as is explained by G. Bramley, A history of library education (London: Clive Bingley, 1969), especially pp. 46–60. A detailed division of labour, the essence of Fordism, remained endemic in librarianship after the war: the ‘army system of delegated responsibility works well in a library’, wrote Lionel McColvin: L.R. McColvin, Library staffs (London, 1939), 118. 61 C.H. Baumann, The influence of Angus Snead Macdonald and the Snead bookstack on library architecture (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1972). 62 A.S. Macdonald, A library of the future. Part 1, Library Journal, 58 (1 December 1933), 974.

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become obsolete.” He explained that in his modular system rooms would not be frozen either in size or appearance because interiors would be: divided into equal, rectangular prisms of space, bordered on top and bottom by floors and ceilings and on the vertical edges by structural columns. Aside from the columns there should be nothing to interfere with the free use of the space except for such things as main stairways, elevators and lavatories.63

A flexible interior permitted the easy interchange of stock, reader and staff areas, making for lively, changing and interesting vistas. Modular construction, he pointed out, had been in use for a long time in other building types — he was thinking of warehouses, textile mills and the first department stores — and was well suited, he believed, to libraries. To save space in the library building overall, Macdonald’s modular system required that ceilings be kept low over a large floor space. What made possible Macdonald’s low-ceiling/large-footprint plan, in which many users would find themselves far from windows and thus deprived of natural light and ventilation, were post-war improvements in artificial (especially flourescent) lighting and in air conditioning. In Britain, the modular concept had become a reality as early as the late 1930s, in the form of the planning and construction of the Manor Park Branch Library Sheffield (although the war prevented its completion and opening until 1953). The layout was arranged according to the divisional-unit plan, internal pillars generating uniform, flexible spaces, some separated from each other by glass screens, as in the case of the children library. In the Manor Branch Library each module was 13 ft. 6 in. square. Glass screens and plate-glass doors were used between all public departments. It was deemed desirable that, although the departments were kept separate, readers could see in an instant each department’s existence and functions. It was judged that as practically the whole building could be seen from any one point, the onlooker had a sense of the buildings “spaciousness and dignity.”64 Library modularisation, and the “ordered” yet “uncluttered” and “shifting” aesthetic that went with it, was not adopted everywhere. It was not suitable for small libraries, obviously, but even in these, modules, or “pods”, of activity, were created in open spaces through a flexible arrangement of furniture, shelving and temporary barriers. In an era of rapidly increasing use, it became apparent to librarians that buildings had to have “expandable and divisible spaces” (EDSs), as in a factory or large department store.65

63 A.S. Macdonald, New possibilities in library planning, Library Journal, 70/22 (15 December 1945), 1170, 1171. 64 Sheffield City Libraries, Manor Branch Library: official opening (1953), 2. 65 F. Gardner, Architect/librarian co-operation, in Herbert Ward (ed.), Better library buildings: Architect/librarian co-operation in their design (London: Library Association London and Home Counties Branch, 1969), 14.



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The influence of the modularization movement reflected a recurrent theme in post-war writings on library design: that ‘scientific’ spatial solutions could be found to the problem of increasing efficiency in services.66 These solutions dovetailed with sentiments regarding aesthetics in library buildings. Viewing the library, in all its aspects, as a “system” which could be planned according by the application of systems-engineering, operations research, user-traffic flow charts and space-function relationship diagrams not only contributed to the re-styling of interiors but also resonated with libraries’ new exterior forms. For example, many libraries arose from “systems methods of construction.” For those local authorities planning a series of libraries, standardization, using common “kit” components, was economically attractive.67 Many library authorities developed a standard plan for their small libraries that could be modified in extent rather than in layout according to the size of the community being served.68 In some places, therefore, a homogeneity of style was evident. Yet multiple differences existed between library systems as well as in systems that did not opt for standardized, “kit libraries.” The styling of modernist public libraries was ultimately heterogeneous. This said, there were certain things that Sixties libraries often had in common: firstly, open, uncluttered, well-lit, flexible interiors, frequently Scandinavian inspired, with changing views engineered by modular arrangements, easily moveable furniture and demountable solid or plate-glass partitions; and secondly, structures fashioned from new materials — such as structural steel, hard woods, and reinforced concrete — that were generally celebrated and displayed rather than concealed and “suppressed.”

Space: The Middle-Class Cultural Centre Secondly, although “supermarket-style” leisure and culture was made available in new library buildings, librarians continued, as they had done for over a century, to ride another horse: that which sported the colors of “solid,” intellectual culture. Hence, the 1960s saw the rise of the public library as “cultural center,” a brand that revitalized the earlier image of “palace of culture.” In the 1960s UK librarians, follow66 M.M. Flood, The systems approach to library planning, Library Quarterly, 34/4 (October 1964), 326–338; L.J. Anthony, Library planning, in W. Ashworth (ed.), Handbook of special librarianship and information work, 3rd edn. (London: Aslib, 1967), 309–364; G. Thompson, Planning and design of library buildings (London: The Architectural Press, 1974), 58–60 emphasized that, in keeping with operations research, which had arisen in the war as a means of managing large-scale military operations, librarians needed to establish the ‘pattern of operation’ in any library design. 67 Thompson, Planning and design of library buildings, 61. 68 C. Ray, County libraries, in P.H. Sewell (ed.), Five year’s work in librarianship 1961–1965 (London: Library Association, 1968), 239.

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ing in the footsteps of developments in patron-focused service in the United States, appeared to become more progressive in their attitudes to their users, re-positioning libraries as democratic cultural centers and making a better fist of public relations. Librarians, especially those more senior in years and thus in rank also, were not, however, entirely at ease with the new popular culture, and certainly not the counter-culture, of the age. Most of the cultural spaces that were designed into new buildings — such as theatres, lecture halls, exhibition spaces, gramophone libraries, meeting rooms, television viewing salons, and craft studios — did not arise from any great enthusiasm on the part of librarians for culture that was highly commercialized, youth-orientated or alternative. They emerged, rather, to invoke the language of Pierre Bourdieu, from librarians’ investment in elite “cultural capital” and from their self-positioning in a highbrow “cultural habitus,” even if few librarians could claim to belong to any “cultural nobility.”69 Librarians’ cultural elitism was given sustenance by the fact that the post-war Left — and public librarians, it should be emphasized, were broadly progressive in their politics — was, counter-intuitively, conservative in cultural matters. The consistent theme of post-war British cultural policy was the continuation of its exclusivity, involving, firstly, the backing (financially and intellectually) of traditional art forms and; secondly, a tendency to be hostile towards culture that might be seen as “popular.” So, “Where the distributive state was meant to take from the rich and give to the poor, in the arts it did the opposite.”70 Effectively, Left culturalism amplified the ideology of welfare-capitalism announced in the 1940s: that everyone should have opportunity to share the good things that the upper classes had customarily enjoyed. These included economic security, education, health-care, decent housing — and “good” culture.71 Welcomed by some, the social revolution of the 1960s engendered anxiety in others. The “culture and civilization” tradition, which had originated in the nineteenth century with fears surrounding the rise of mass culture, remained strong into the middle of the twentieth century, carried forward by figures like F.R. Leavis and Richard Hoggart.72 Writing in the early 1960s, Raymond Williams observed that even 69 P. Bourdieu, Distinction: a social critique of the judgement of taste (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984); C. Barker, Cultural capital, in The Sage Dictionary of Cultural Studies (London: Sage, 2004), 37; L. Hussey, Social capital, symbolic violence and fields of cultural production: Pierre Bourdieu and library and information science, in G. Leckie, L. Given and J. Buschman (eds.), Critical theory for library and information science (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2010), 41–51; D. Reed-Danahay, Locating Bourdieu (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2005), 47. 70 L. Black, The political culture of the Left in affluent Britain, 1951–1964: old Labour, new Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); G. Mulgan, Culture, in D. Marquand and A. Seldon (eds.), The ideas that shaped post-war Britain (London: Fontana, 1996), 201. 71 A. Sinfield, Literature, politics and culture in post-war Britain (London: Athlone Press, 1997), 243. 72 G. Turner, British cultural studies: an introduction (New York and London: Routledge, 1992), 42–43; F.R. Leavis and D. Thompson, Culture and environment: the training of cultural awareness (London:



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in the midst of the pop-culture revolution, the defense of high culture had not disappeared but was stubbornly residual.73 Pointing out that “a majority culture is not necessarily low in taste,”74 Williams argued for a common culture — an “ordinary culture” — based on socialist principles. In terms of cultural activity, he distinguished this culture from elite, conventional, traditional arts, music and literature.75 Librarians paid mere lip-service to Williams’ “ordinary culture.” A continuing, implicit objective of the Sixties public library was, as one library educator asserted in 1974, “to put readers on the road to ‘high culture’, in the tradition of Leavis and the Third Programme [a BBC radio station which played mostly classical music], rather than positively to encourage the emergent plural culture.”76 In truth, Sixties librarians seemed more interested in Beethoven than in the Beatles. The age of the community librarian, a professional who sought to respond to alternative culture and sub-cultures and who pursued a redistribution of power, wealth and opportunity through libraries, lay in the future.77 An example of this highbrow trajectory is the film-show program offered by Stepney Public Libraries in 1956–57 (Stepney was, and remains, one of the poorest areas of London). An average audience of ninety-five people watched several so-called “Continental” films and, to promote the gramophone library, film biographies of Chopin, Strauss and Caruso (their music was played before performances).78 Perhaps tinged by guilt that they were not keyed into the cultural revolution of the time, some librarians came to admit that the cultural services they were offering were “class partial.” Alexander Wilson acknowledged that: “If you are in charge of an arts centre and someone wants a group of hippies down to perpetrate a happening, then the avante garde is a big problem for the librarian who runs these [cultural] activities, and is a problem for any administrator whose money comes from public funds’. J.C. Phillpot confirmed that public library arts provision was not really for the avante garde, adding, tellingly, that it was “for the middle aged and middle class, by the middle class.” “You can’t have institutionalized anarchism,” trumpeted another librarian. It was such anti-plebeian sentiments that forged the cultural spaces in the new cultural-center libraries of the 1960s.

Chatto and Windus, 1933); R. Hoggart, The uses of literacy: changing patterns in English mass culture (Fair Lawn, NJ: Essential Books, 1958). 73 R. Williams, Communications (London: Chatto and Windus, [1962] 1966), 10, 34, 105, 124–132, 183. 74 R. Williams, Culture and society 1780–1950 (London: Chatto and Windus, 1958), 263, 309, 310. Williams discusses Leavis, 252–264. 75 Black, The political culture of the Left in affluent Britain, 82. 76 K.H. Jones, Towards a re-interpretation of public library purpose, New Library World, 73/855 (September 1971), 77. 77 A. Black & D. Muddiman, Understanding community librarianship: the public library in post-modern Britain (Aldershot: Avebury, 1997). 78 Metropolitan Borough of Stepney, Annual report of the borough librarian (1956–1957), 12–13.

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In some areas of design, however, internal spatial arrangements reflected a democratic impulse. This was certainly true in many ways of the open-plan revolution. It was also true, conversely, of the move in some larger libraries to the “partitioning” of library spaces and functions. The 1960s saw the emergence of subject departmentalization, whereby the library was divided into specialized zones according to subject rather than operational requirements involving modes of access (subject departmentalization had been pioneered in the Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore, 1933). Subject departments thus did away with the traditional division between lending and reference departments and organized materials into groups of broadly related interests. These groups found physical expression in the spaces designed to house them.79 The idea had been imported from the United States where, for example, Brooklyn Public Library had been completely departmentalised in 1941. In Britain, the kind of subject divisions that were employed included arts and humanities; social sciences; sciences; music and gramophone; business, commerce and technology (though these had appeared as reference-only units in the First World War). To these divisions were added traditional stand-alone units like those for popular reading and children. Each of the divisions required support from professional expert staff “dedicated” to various areas of knowledge and culture.80 Having witnessed its appearance in some large new Sixties buildings, it would have been easy for the contemporary observer to leap to the conclusion that the large public reference department had had its day. However, the traditional reference library, originally fashioned in the Victorian era, was to prove more resilient than promoters of subject specialisation predicted, not least because of its appeal as a place simply of study to the increasing numbers of youngsters staying on at school to the age of eighteen and of students attending colleges and universities.

Siting: The Geographical Preference for Big Library Projects Thirdly, although the status of, and respect for, public libraries undoubtedly increased in the 1960s, the confidence of the library profession was never entirely secure. This was reflected in librarians’ tendency to celebrate the appearance of central and larger district libraries, as opposed to branch libraries which, although built in large numbers, were constantly criticized by senior librarians as ‘uneconomical’ and thus potentially unfit to be part of the library system. It was the flagship library, visibly contributing to a prestigious borough- or city-regeneration project, which was seen by librarians as important in raising their professional status. Community library devel79 M.A. Overington, The subject departmentalised public library (London: Library Association, 1969). 80 J.L. Gardner, Some thoughts on subject departments in a large public library, Library Association Record, 57/7 (July 1955), 254–260.



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opment brought less kudos for the library profession, unlike for the crusading local politician who would gain credibility (and votes) from helping to provide a new local library. New library buildings — the prestigious, grander ones at least — were thus less about reinventing librarianship than about reinventing the librarian. The library establishment consistently pointed to an overproduction of small branch libraries. Small facilities were seen as costly to run and inefficient. It was difficult to maintain a good choice of books and to offer suitable levels of staffing, it was argued. The number of books issued in small branches was relatively low and overall productivity was poor. Mostly, no information service was possible. “Let us dispose of the moribund little libraries which are eating out our hearts mostly in wastelands,” said the librarian Ralph Malbon.81 The trouble was that closing small branches was politically and socially difficult. One solution, supported by many leading librarians, was to compensate for the absence of small branches by boosting the profile of central and district libraries; for larger libraries, Malbon argued, could provide “a communal roof for all local educational and cultural societies, which are the backbone … of culture in our towns today.”82 Branch libraries in working-class districts were seen to be more uneconomic than those in middle-class neighborhoods, because issues per head of population were normally much lower, reading being a less popular pastime among the poorer classes.83 Yet the poor, with a low rate of car ownership, often living in neighborhoods with inadequate transport links and faced with high transport costs relative to their incomes, were in most need of truly “local” libraries. In library planning the received wisdom was that ideally the farthest one should have to travel to a service point in an urban area was one mile. But for leading strategists and top librarians this “gold standard” for siting produced too many branch libraries. There was a tension, therefore, between, on the one hand, the desire for fewer branches, and, on the other, the need, especially in low-income neighborhoods and to assist the elderly, the young and anyone challenged by “distance,” to site libraries no more than a mile’s walk away — that is, within pram-pushing distance.84 The central library was also prioritized in Britain’s post-war New Towns, entirely new urban developments built on mostly “green field” sites outside of the country’s existing large conurbations.85 In New Towns, the problem of selecting between central and branch facilities was acute. The geography of early new towns was prob81 R. Malbon, Productivity in branch libraries today and in the future (London: Branch & Mobile Libraries Group of the Library Association, 1971), 1. 82 Ibid, 12. 83 E.A. Clough, Library buildings for the 1960s, Librarian and Book World, XLIX/1 (January 1960), 2. 84 Department of Education & Science, Public libraries and their use (London: HMSO, 1973), 61. 85 On library development in New Towns, see: D. Tonks, The library services in the new towns of North-East England (Unpublished Fellowship of the Library Association thesis); B. Hall, Libraries in new towns, in H.A. Whatley (ed.), British librarianship and information science 1966–70 (London: Library Association, 1972), 464–479.

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lematic for library planners. The layout of New Towns, on a pattern inherited from the 50-year-old garden-city model, with separate neighborhood units scattered around a central civic and shopping area at perhaps one or two miles distance, meant that ideally small branches, and certainly mobile services, were required. The alternative was to provide a sturdy town-centre service. Leisure and cultural facilities were slow to develop in New Towns.86 If a library could beat other facilities — sports centres, dance halls, theatres, cinemas — to it, they had a better chance of attracting readers with little else to do, many of whom, moreover, were new to library use.87

Figure 4: Stevenage New Town Central Library (1961): pure steel-concrete-and-glass-box modernism. Photo: Courtesy of the Stevenage Museum.

Generally speaking, in Britain’s New Towns libraries were relatively late in being developed. This was unfortunate, given the self-contained nature of the New Town urban environment. On the plus side, libraries were often ahead of the development of other cultural and leisure facilities and were sometimes the only covered and heated social gathering place in a New Town for months or even years. In most New Towns the aim appears to have been to prioritize central-library provision, placing 86 A. Saint, New towns, in B. Ford (ed.), The Cambridge guide to the arts in Britain. Volume 9: since the Second World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 149. 87 F.W.S. Baguley, Some county library problems (3): library provision in a new town and on a new estate, in Proceedings of the 1958 Library Association Annual Conference (London: Library Association, 1958), 71.



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them close to central civic and shopping zones, as in the case of Stevenage (1961), an uncompromisingly modernist steel-concrete-and-glass-box design (Figure 4). Eventually, central library buildings in New Towns became successful service points, amongst the best in the country. They certainly boosted the reputation of the central library, something which appealed to the library establishment.

Conclusion In the long 1960s (between the mid-1950s and the mid-1970s) the built-form of the public library in Britain underwent a renaissance, in parallel with changes in the governance of libraries and in the profession that served them. However, contrary to what might be expect, librarians’ support for a large-scale building program, their adoption of light-rich architectural modernism and the new internal spaces they fashioned were less a reflection of a progressive turn in librarianship than an embodiment of certain of its traditional and conservative traits.  Given criticisms of its introspective nature, it is important to make the argument that the real value of library history is less about its ability to throw light on past libraries and librarianship than on past the past societies in which these have existed. To this end, Sixties libraries have much to say about the 1960s per se. Although there is general agreement that the 1960s was a period of immense change, the effects of that change are contentious. For decades a battle has been fought over the ownership of the 1960s.88 Is it the property of socialists and libertarians who regard it as a watershed, a golden age, a time when utopia was within grasp but was eventually vanquished by reactionary forces; or was it a decade of mayhem and disorder, of wasteful hedonism, overspending by big government and greedy labor unions, which forged a society that conservatives had to later rescue? The neo-liberal revival of the late-1970s and the 1980s engineered a negative view of the 1960s. The construction of the welfare state, it was argued, represented an appeasement of the working-class by their superiors, thereby undermining Britain’s competitiveness and status, rendering Britain, in the opinion of one historian, little more than ‘Italy with rockets’.89 The values of the swinging Sixties were “out,” Victorian values were “in.”90 Unsurprisingly, this negative perspective prompted a reaction from those who rejected the thesis of a failed Sixties Britain. Although it is important that the 1960s not be perceived as a sacred zone, viewed through rose88 G. DeGroot, The 60s unplugged: a kaleidoscopic history of a disorderly decade (London: Macmillan, 2008). 89 A. Roberts, Eminent Churchillians (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1994), 3. 90 J. Walvin, Victorian values (London: Cardinal, 1988); G. Marsden, Victorian values: personalities and perspectives in nineteenth-century society (London: Longman, 1990); G. Himmelfarb, The de-moralization of society: from Victorian virtues to modern values (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995).

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tinted glasses that produce a reductive image of “sweetness and light,” it is appropriate, some argue, that in recent years the decade has begun to receive a better press.91 Part of the rehabilitation of the 1960s has been the movement to reclaim architectural modernism, which wasn’t, it is argued, as ‘brutish’ as some had claimed.92 Modernism was certainly a revolt, and delivered, as a result, a shock to the system. Its “spare undecorated functionalism”93 was internalized by some as inhumane. Its raw, concrete brutalist strain appeared to owe its existence to daunting, rugged forms occurring in the natural landscape or to the monuments of irrational, ancient pasts, both of which were in conflict with modernity’s claim to be able to mobilize reason to control nature. Modernism became vilified for its aggression and for its insensitivity towards the human condition. These characteristics were “assumed,” however, as a result of a misreading modernism’s confidence which some mistook for arrogance and authority. This is not to say modernism was not an architecture of confidence; it emphatically was, but it drew its power in this regard from the tradition of the Enlightenment creed of progress. Unlike revivalist styles, which championed tradition, architectural modernism, in keeping with the socio-economic change of the times, proclaimed ‘the new’ and the prospect of further renewal. No sooner had the 1960s passed, the decade’s libraries began to encounter stereotypical criticism for exhibiting a dull, flat-roof, box-like, concrete-steel-and-glass conformity. However, just as the Victorian and Edwardian public library built-form can be rehabilitated,94 by stressing the rationality and inventiveness of pioneer librarians, library architects and library planners (they understood a good deal about function, for example, even though they might refer to a building’s “convenience” or “useful arrangements” called it),95 then scepticism about Sixties library buildings can also be challenged. Libraries in the 1960s, like the decade itself, are wrongly viewed from our vantage point half a century later as a “mistake.” Though not a primary feature of post-war, welfare-state Britain, and all that entailed regarding the construction of a better society, Sixties public library design was nonetheless a potent allegory of Britain’s efforts to modernise. It ushered in an imaginative change from a forbidding

91 Marwick, The Sixties; Sandbrook, White heat. 92 C. Beanland, Concrete concepts: brutish buildings around the world (London: Frances Lincoln Publishers, 2016); J. Meades, Bunkers, brutalism and bloodymindedness: concrete poetry, broadcast by the BBC, February 20, 2014, retrieved January 10, 2016 from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03vrphc; J. Meades, The incredible hulks: Jonathan Meades’ A–Z of brutalism, The Guardian (February 13, 2014), retrieved January 10, 2015 from: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/feb/13/ jonathan-meades-brutalism-a-z; Hatherley, Militant modernism; Grindrod, Concretopia; Elwall, Building a better tomorrow. 93 P. Thane, Cassell’s companion to twentieth-century Britain (London: Cassell, 2001), 269. 94 Black, Pepper, & Bagshaw, Books, buildings and social engineering. 95 The new library at Plaistow, in East London (opened 1903) was said to be not only “beautifully fitted” but also “usefully-arranged”: A millionaire [Andrew Carnegie] in the East, South Essex Mail (16 May 1903).



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tradition that had largely framed the library as a fortress. It projected the library as a democratic conduit for a new age of audio-visual communication and computer processing. Notwithstanding the professional traditionalism that informed them, Sixties public library buildings are to be seen in this progressive light, as “libraries of light” — libraries whose enlightened, forward-looking progressive purpose was underlined by their revolutionary physical lucidity.

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Biographies Authors Alistair Black is a full professor in the School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. He is author of A New History of the English Public Library (1996); and The Public Library in Britain 1914–2000 (2000). He is co-author of Understanding Community Librarianship (1997); The Early Information Society in Britain, 1900–1960 (2007); and Books, Buildings and Social Engineering (2009), a socio-architectural history of early public libraries in Britain. His most recent book - Libraries of Light (2016) - continues this history of library design into the post-WWII period. With Peter Hoare, he edited Volume III (covering the period 1850–2000) of the Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland (2006). He was Chair of the Library History Group of the Library Association, 1992–9; and of the IFLA Section on Library History, 2003–7. He was editor of the international journal Library History, 2004–8; and the North American editor of Library and Information History, 2009–2013. Between 2009 and 2016 he served as general editor of Library Trends. Margaret (Megan) Browndorf is the East European Studies Liaison and Reference Librarian at Georgetown University.  She graduated in 2012 from Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana with a Master of Arts in Russian and East European Studies and a Master of Library Science. She has published in the Journal of Library Administration, Association of College and Research Library’s (ACRL) Critical Pedagogy Handbook and presented research at the ACRL, American Library Association, and LOEX conferences.  Jonathan Cope is a Reference/Instruction Librarian at the College of Staten Island (CSI), City University of New York. His research is focused on the ways in which library work is situated within specific social, cultural, economic, and disciplinary contexts. In his free time he enjoys plucking at his mandolin, reading science fiction, and running.   Marija Dalbello is an associate professor of information science at the School of Communication and Information, Rutgers University. Her current research, teaching and publications focus on visual genres and epistemologies of the senses, the history and theory of knowledge and history and technologies of the book. She co-edited Print Culture in Croatia: The Canon and the Borderlands (2006) with Tinka Katić, Visible Writings: Cultures, Forms, Readings (2011) with Mary Shaw, and A History of Modern Librarianship: Constructing the Heritage of Western Cultures with Wayne Wiegand and Pamela Spence Richards (2015).  For her article “A Genealogy of Digital Humanities,” published in The Journal of Documentation she received 2012 Literati Network Highly Commended Award. She co-directed the Rutgers Seminar in the History of the Book 2006–2012.  Don Hamerly is Associate Professor in the School of Information Studies at Dominican University and directs the School Library Media Program and Informatics Bachelor of Science Program. He teaches school library management, informatics and technology integration, web design, research methods, and writing in the academy. His research activities focus on library professionalism and staffing as well as on the relevance in the modern world for a 10th-century Andalusian library. Mary Mahoney is a Ph.D. Candidate in History at the University of Connecticut. Her research focuses on the history of bibliotherapy, or the use of books as medicine. She is currently completing her dissertation which asks how physicians, librarians, and readers imagined books could heal, what books made the best medicine, and who decided. Her case studies focus on the role of books in DOI 10.1515/9783110450842-010

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moral treatment in nineteenth-century asylums, the restriction of reading as a part of the rest cure for neurasthenia, the use of books by early Freudians to “read” the unconscious, and the emergence of what is now called bibliotherapy during World War I and the interwar period. Her broader research and teaching interests include histories of reading, medicine, and American culture.  Brenda Mitchell-Powell earned her doctoral degree from the Simmons College School of Library and Information Science in May 2015 as an American Library Association Spectrum Fellow. She was the founding and creative Editor-in-Chief of MultiCultural Review and the Editor-in-Chief of Small Press. She served on four panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, delivered five keynote addresses, served as Senior International Correspondent for African Link, and was Children’s Literature Editor for Social Studies & the Young Learner. She worked as Senior Library Assistant at Gibbs College (Norwalk, CT) and as a Librarian at the Norwalk Public Library (Norwalk, CT). She is currently at work on a book version of her dissertation on the 1939 Alexandria, Virginia, public library sit-in demonstration. Jordan S. Sly is the Psychology and Special Populations librarian at the University of Maryland. Jordan received his Bachelor of Arts in European History from the University of Maryland and his Master of Science from Simmons College and is currently pursuing advanced degrees in the traditional and digital humanities. His current research interests include the history of libraries and reading, Medieval and Early Modern children’s literature, and digital humanities. Additionally, Sly investigates the impact of libraries on diverse populations and student success. Previous research and publications have focused on alternative library pedagogy, assessment, and library marketing. 

Editors Melanie A. Kimball is an associate professor and Director of the School Library Teacher Program at the School of Library and Information Science, Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Her areas of research include the history of public library services to children in early twentieth century U.S. libraries, public libraries as social and cultural institutions, storytelling, and literature for youth. She has published in Library Trends, Teacher-Librarian, and Public Libraries. She is the North American Editor of the international journal Library and Information History and was Co-chair of the Library History Seminar XIII: Libraries: Traditions and Innovations. Katherine M. Wisser is an associate professor at the School of Library and Information Science at Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts. She serves as co-director of the Dual Degree program in Archives and History and director of the post-Masters Archives Certificate program. Her areas of research include archival descriptive standards, metadata quality and the history of American libraries. She has published in the American Archivist, Archival Science and the Journal of Library Metadata, among others. She was a member of the Planning and Program Committees for the Library History Seminar XIII: Libraries: Traditions and Innovations.