Wednesday, Oct. 06, 2004 - 10:32 a.m.

I'm losing count

...The library and its librarian have changed enormously since the 1870�s. When the ALA (American Library Association) was founded in 1876, there were 209 librarians in the United States, and 99 of those were in Massachusetts and New York. By the time, the first great public librarian, Justin Winsor, also the first president of the ALA, died in 1897, there were 434 member librarians in the ALA alone, and by 1931, when Melvil Dewey of Dewey Decimal system, died, the ALA numbered 3,225. In the course of those fifty-five years, a great revolution had occurred in the world of libraries.
...In earlier times, libraries were repositories of knowledge, guarded by men dedicated to preserving that knowledge, but the last half of the 19th century changed everything a library was. Public libraries were a new concept in a new land, and no longer was knowledge reserved for the intellectually elite. Dee Garrison, Assistant Professor of History, at Rutgers University, in New Jersey, shares the events of this social and cultural revolution in the book Apostles of Culture: The Public Librarian and American Society 1876-1920. Much of her documentation was from long hidden library history archives, and in one instance, Garrison states she was granted access on the condition she would not identify her source.
...Garrison�s avowed intent is to provide an alternative view of library history. She feels library history consists of the view that liberal, idealistic, middle-class leaders with humanitarian and democratic reasons gave America a counterpart to public education that offered economic opportunity, social reform and moral uplift to the common people.
...Instead the author would like to put forth four considerations for a different version of library history. Multiple social forces were at work, institutions always attempt social control, library leadership of the time favored mass culture and the loss of Victorian morality, and the library was in a war between elevation of public thought or meeting public demand,-----censorship versus consumership. These comprise the history of the American library, according to Garrison.
...In the hands of a different author, Garrison�s research could have resulted in a red-hot best-seller complete with secret liasons hidden under the disguise of respectability, corrupt leaders who used influence for monetary gain, and a magnetic man whose scandalous actions influenced adoring women who followed him and encouraged the tearing down of a nation�s morals with results even Hollywood would envy, plus the added caveat of the indomitable forward progress of the women�s rights movement. But, alas, that book must await another author because Dee Garrison is a historian with strong librarian leanings and the desire to gather all the facts up and keep them safe. She deals with all the material for sexy expose�, but refuses to be drawn into the logical inferences of a make-believe historical world that might have been. What she does delineate for us is absorbing and thought-provoking enough, but it is like mining for gold. Amazing nuggets of information are hidden in all the tons of common dates, events and statistics in library history.
...The first few chapters of the book deal with the nature of 19th century librarians and how the career moved from the hands of men into the hands of women. Even she recognizes that most of the advanced library positions are still filled by males, but anyone can see it is the female librarian who is the creator and nurturer of today�s library. Many of the gendered choices of the past were determined by society and the library world was no exception. Male children of business-class America who didn�t choose to go into the family business were left with the church, law or teaching. In the middle of the 19th century, most male librarians had tried those professions in their 20�s and had entered the library in their 30�s. Only 25% had started out with the first career choice of librarian. Those entering in their 20�s were predominantly at the extreme ends of the social scale. Since libraries had left the control of rich patrons who could adequately pay a library historian, public libraries more and more often started filling positions from the female half, once females were allowed to educate themselves. Previous to the mid-century, the library had been closed to the impressionable female mind who had no vote and whose only place was in a home with husband or father, but in 1857, the first female library clerk was hired in Boston. When library salaries were around $55 a month, and average room and board costs were $45 a month, it is easy to see why single females still living at home became the majority of library workers. By 1878, two-thirds of all Boston�s librarians were feminine, and by 1910, 78.5% of all positions in the library were filled by women. That figure rose to 90% by 1920. As stated before, these were not the advanced library positions with better salaries. Those were filled, almost without exception, by men, but the day-to-day life of a library was in the hands of a woman.
...This trend perfectly fit the advancing wave of women who were entering college enmasse for the first time. By 1900, forty percent of all undergraduates were women, and librarianship was one of the few professions open to them, along with social work and teaching. It was felt to be a very good fit for womanly abilities and a safe environment for them outside the home. More and more women filled the position in libraries and this fit perfectly with the social upheavals that were taking place.
...The ALA offered this poem in recognition of the preponderance of women in library positions:
......The ALA-dies sailed one day,
......To voyage up the Saguenay.
......Gay and grim, stout and slim,
......Twenty-five hers to every him.
...At the same time that women were filling positions at the library, a different kind of book was appearing, also. Reading for pleasure was becoming accepted, and that was the kind the public wanted. Initially, the library tried to maintain its historic position of safeguarding knowledge. Books were usually stored according to acquisition and only librarians were allowed in the stacks. But publicly funded institutions meant public access, and slowly libraries changed to please the masses.
...Since most librarians, male and female, were from the educated, genteel elite, attempts were made to keep library materials that would uplift and educate, but the public was having none of that. Competition among libraries was also an influencing factor in allowing more entertainment on the shelves, along with more access. It was futile to forbid certain types of literature to be made available, when the library in the next town had several copies. Libraries, too, fell to America�s market-driven economy. The library wanted to supplement the local school, so it developed children�s programs. At the time only one-third of school children even used the library, and the other two-thirds, if they read outside of school at all, read �penny dreadfuls� or the dime novels so prevalent. The librarians also hoped to raise the standards of immigrants flocking to America, so books and classes were provided to educate working adults. By the turn of the century, libraries no longer attempted to impose a certain culture level upon patrons and Carolyn Wells submitted this poem to the ALA journal:
......�Should we rare ones who inhabit the superior realms of thought
......Dictate to the Unenlightened what they oughtn�t or they ought?
......Or shall we abandon flatly this whole altruistic fight
......With the philosophic dictum that �Whatever is, is right�?
......Let us stop our futile task of pointing to the open door.
......Let the Enlightened cease enlightening and the Cultured cult no more.�
...Providing quality as well as popularity to patrons is an issue with which libraries still struggle. The days of allowing only one fiction book checked out for every four non-fiction books are long gone. Instead of the strict censorship imposed in the 19th century, the library tries to provide uncensored access to all patrons. It is very evident from Garrison�s book that libraries have had as much influence on American society as any other major institution in our country. I suspect library influence on the 19th century was as great as TV�s influence on the 20th.

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More homework and more bonuses due. I shall probably have to give the above report orally on Friday over the microwave. I don't know how that is going to work out. The reasoning for oral reports is so we can all have the benefit of the books. I could recommend the other students skip this one. It was the slowest book I read in a long time. Lots and lots of small print on big pages and I had read forever before I even got to #25. I finally slogged through it. It was more interesting for what it didn't say than for what it did say, and the footnotes were fascinating. I'm going to look up the author on the Web and see what later transpired since the book is a couple of decades old. I couldn't help feeling there might be a hidden agenda somewhere.

It will be my 63rd birthday Friday, 2d wants to take me out for lunch before class and 2s wants to bring the girls over after class. I'd better try out a new recipe I found for pumpking brownies that I saw in the paper. Then Saturday, the Geology class has a field trip to Stoneville, and Aliceson Mount. I've been to both before but never knew what kind of rocks were there. 2s brought me over a whole stack of rock books, and a tub of identified rocks when I told him how much trouble I was having. He took a geology class a while back when gold fever struck. He has lots of knowledge and interest in rocks, but not enough anymore to give up life for the gold trail. He says he's happy just like he is without becoming a gold millionare, but I think he has some pretty good ideas about where to start if that ever were his goal. Going around the West with 800 on various jobs gave all the boys a lot of familiarity with the ground, and they did alot of networking with locals in the long evenings after work.

His youngest, s, fell out of a pickup in the school parking lot on her head last week. I didn't find out about it until he came over a few days ago. She had a huge lump that they thought might be swelling, and can't remember anything from the accident. 2s said he didn't tell me to save me from worrying, but to save himself stress. I imagine there was alot of stress since his brother died of a head injury. 2s himself had 2 fairly serious head injuries the year before he married. Once he was hit on top of the head with a jack hammer while sanding a bridge, and then while recovering from that, a jack slipped off a tractor tire, hitting him in almost the same place, and throwing him back about 6 feet. He and s both have hard heads in more ways than one.
The girls were at a football game unsupervised, and while k at 16 and of a different temperment might be ok, s at 14 needs some guidance. 2s is somewhat ticked at the blb.

He was one of the most accident-prone children we had, mostly because he usually knew no fear, and s is much the same way. Fear is a very healthy emotion that helps us make better decisions once in a while.

EE's devotional

newAutumn Leaves

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