Admittedly belatedly, I'd like to offer this article from the December issue of American Libraries as the culmination and conclusion to this blog and historical research project celebrating AL's hundredth year. Thanks for reading!

A Centennial Journey
“This first number of a Bulletin of the American Library Association marks, it is hoped, the beginning of a closer connection between the Association and its members.” Those words, penned by ALA Publishing Board Chairman William Coolidge Lane, opened the first issue of the Bulletin of the American Library Association, precursor to AmericanLibraries, in January 1907.

In its early years, the Bulletin carried three basic types of information. The regular issues comprised short news updates—the Association’s growth to 1,844 members, the headquarters committee’s experiment in acquiring space for the Association in Boston, and an invitation to the New Jersey Library Association’s annual meeting, to borrow from that first issue. One issue per year consisted of the Handbook of Organization. (In 1907, it filled 65 pages, of which 39 were devoted to the list of members. This year’s Handbook, by comparison, is 246 pages.) But by far the biggest issue of each year was the conference proceedings. These behemoths give the impression that few words uttered at Annual went unrecorded: The published proceedings include full transcripts of each address made at the conference, including the remarks introducing the speakers, and detailed committee reports. At only nine pages, the minutes of the Council and Executive Board meetings seem downright skimpy by comparison.

The conference issue gradually took a bit less importance, as addresses began to be used as features in other issues and, eventually, what we’d consider features today made their appearance.

A big chunk of that happened in 1932. The Bulletin got its first fulltime editor, Beatrice Sawyer Rossell (who had previously held responsibility for the Bulletin as part of her duties as ALA publicity assistant). It also got some of the magazine-like accoutrements we take for granted today—a cover, feature articles, and departments.

The Bulletin did not receive a new name that year, despite lobbying within its
pages (a facetious August 1931 article cited unread Bulletins through history as the cause of such things as German spies not receiving codes in World War I and the Biblical destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah). Concerns over the cost of recataloging kept the name as-is—until 1939, when it was shortened to ALA Bulletin, and again in 1970, when it became American Libraries.

Rossell was there for the first name change—but for not long after. She resigned from the Bulletin and the Association with some acrimony in 1940 over what she considered the board’s inappropriate stance on the impending war. “Compulsory military training in peace time will rob millions of these young people of their freedom and violate both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence,” Rossell wrote in her resignation letter. “But the A.L.A. Executive Board accepts conscription even before it has been passed by Congress, and urges libraries, both public and college, to help with military training.”

Color and personality
Art Plotnik, the longest-serving chief editor (1974–89) in AL’s history, also left an indelible mark. He is the editor most responsible for AL’s transformation into a modern magazine. Things like “color,” “feature photos,” and “design,” which were relatively unfamiliar concepts at the beginning of his tenure, had become integral parts of AL’s makeup by the end.

Plotnik introduced quick sidebars to liven up the news section with statistical reports, personality profiles, lists, and offbeat information. More significantly, he was the impetus behind some notable theme issues, including 1975’s “Washington Library Power” issue and 1976’s exceedingly popular “Who We Are” issue, a collection of 29 profiles of librarians, each filling a different niche.

Of course, every era has its own personality. Usually it’s overt, but some of the most interesting discoveries are the more curious markers that nevertheless define time periods in the magazine’s history. The now-cringeworthy term “information superhighway” splatters its way through the headlines of 1994. The early 1947 Bulletin heralded the Atomic Age with dire articles on nuclear weapons and energy. The ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s included, in most years, host-city–specific fashion advice for Annual attendees, occasionally in verse.

In these back issues, award namesakes and other major figures from librarianship show up as contemporaries, rather than history. These appearances give glimpses of their personalities that tend to get lost in mere lists of achievements.

Charlemae Rollins, 1957–58 president of ALA’s Children’s Services Division, had “an uncanny way of getting the wrong address, time, or date for her appointments” and relied on her son Joseph to make sure she kept her schedule, according to a 1955 profile.

John Cotton Dana, 1895–96 ALA president, was a frequent and often fiery figure in the Bulletin’s pages, enough that the editor seemed to grow weary of his correspondence. The January 1929 issue noted that Dana had sent another letter criticizing, “in his usual vigorous manner,” certain ALA activities, and explained that the Bulletin would not publish the letter, saying, “We should be glad to send a mimeographed copy of it to any member of the Association who cares to write to Headquarters for it.”

Jesse Shera, automation pioneer and dean of the library school at Western Reserve University in Cleveland from 1952–70, was a prolific contributor, but prone to overwrought metaphor: His 1962 article “Automation without Fear” works in references to Karl Marx, Frankenstein, the development of the lever, Pandora’s box, Gulliver’s Travels, Rolls Royce, the Amazon rain forest, and Leo Tolstoy.

Gratia Countryman, director of Minneapolis Public Library from 1904 to 1936, claimed “sleeping out of doors” as a hobby—and sang the practice’s praises in a session at the 1910 Annual Conference.

The details may not always be ennobling, but they are humanizing. And that humanity is probably the most striking thing I’ve taken away from a year of researching the magazine’s history. In this Association of 65,000 members and 270 employees that frequently seems to be an impenetrable monolith, it’s comforting to be reminded that there are, indeed, people behind every aspect.

The development of Resource Description and Access, the planned replacement for Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, Second Edition anticipated for a 2009 release, has not been without controversy, as AL Associate Editor Dan Kraus detailed in an October 2007 report (p. 66-67). It's perhaps not surprising that the adoption of AACR2 wasn't without its strains as well.

Before AACR2's publication, the Library of Congress had announced a January 1980 date to adopt it. The controversy first hit AL's pages in the May 1978 issue, in in a brief before-the-table-of-contents wrap-up. The "Page One" department reported that OCLC Director Fred Kilgour had announced resistance (p. 254). "There have been enough statements... to suggest that adoption of AACR2 may increase library costs without an increase in benefits to library patrons. If such should turn out to be the case, OCLC would have to oppose adoption," Kilgour explained, in a quote from the Chronicle of Higher Education.

He wasn't the only one with concerns. At an August 3 summit at ALA Headquarters (Sept., p. 450), 21 representatives of several library organizations (including the Association of Research Libraries, the Council on Computerized Library Networks, the Council on Library Resources, and the National Library of Medicine) unanimously passed a resolution urging LC to delay AACR2's adoption by a year—an action LC did, indeed, take.

Not that that needed to end anything. AACR2 co-editor Michael Gorman published a November article (p. 620-621) scolding the delay and the "proposals for another set of shabby compromises" that came after it. The only way to achieve efficiency, progress, and reader service, he argued, was to "by starting new catalogs based on a single standard of descriptive cataloging (AACR2) and upon a rational system of subject headings."

Despite the delay, Gorman predicted ultimate victory: "Historians of cataloging in the 20th century will see that the reactionaries always win the battles and the progressives always win the wars," he wrote.

Gorman's article was rebutted in the December issue by Susan K. Martin, who praised the delay: "The year's delay in adoption of AACR2 is hardly capricious; haste could create a financial and bibliographic monster." (p. 689-691.)

She also, however, called for active preparation for the switch. "We cannot sit on our hands bewailing our plight. We must attempt within our own libraries and within the profession to assess the tasks to be performed and devise techniques to yield more information so that we can make intelligent decisions."

—Greg Landgraf, American Libraries editorial assistant.

Coming in the November 2007 issue, we've got a piece from consumer advocate Ralph Nader. To preview, his article is a remembrance piece, recollections of the role of books and libraries in his childhood.

Nader returns to AL's pages after a 34-year absence (apart from a couple news briefs and incidental mentions within other stories, and a 2003 1-page story introducing his D.C. Library Renaissance Project). In 1973, "Ralph Nader called up and invited himself to the wake for libraries at ALA's midwinter meeting in Washington," as the introduction to his May 1973 (p. 275–278) article explains.

Ralph Nader and an unnamed delegate at the 1973 Midwinter Meeting

His speech and article addressed the federal budget, which threatened to zero out the Library Services and Construction Act for 1974 and cut other education programs that provided library funding. But much of his text could have easily been written today.

Take, for example, Nader's explanation of why LSCA was in danger. "The cutting in this area is not a reflection of any reflection. It's a reflection of the belief that there will be no real yelling as a result... Politicians were the first to realize that: they will cut in those areas where they will get the least defiance and the fewest repercussions." Indeed, concerns over the librarian image—and calls to change it—are nothing new.

More chillingly familiar are Nader's comments on the growth of presidential power, echoing modern-day concerns about the Patriot act, National Security Letters, wiretapping, and presidential powers generally. "Building on his predecessors' more modest usurpations, the President can now do the following things in contradiction of the fact that these powers belong to Congress: the President can make war; the President can impound or refuse to spend funds appropriated by the Congress; the President can reorganize the Executive Branch very fundamentally without obtaining the approval of the Congress; the President can unilaterally change the tax system particularly in areas such as depreciation ranges for corporations; the President can sweep up the powers of the Cabinet secretaries, put them in the hands of presidential assistants, who are neither confirmed by the Senate nor subject to hearings and interrogations by the Senate or the House because of the doctrine of executive privilege; and the President can make foreign commitments without seeking the advice and consent of the Senate by calling his treaties 'executive agreements.' "

—Greg Landgraf, American Libraries editorial assistant.

I was a bit overexcited when I opened the September 1944 issue of the ALA Bulletin and found an article on Montclair (N.J.) Public Library's use of International Business Machines to analyze library usage statistics. In my head, IBM equals computers, and computers equal cool. (This is despite knowing the former statement to be untrue. I'll stand by the latter.)

In any event, the inspiringly-titled "Business Machine—Tool of Library Progress" (Sep. 1944, p. 291-294) wasn't about a computer by the modern (electronic and programmable) definition; IBM didn't introduce its first model until that year, although a few other machines had been built by then. While there's no explicit model or even machine type listed, it looks like Montclair was using a punchcard-based tabulating machine. (Author Felix E. Hirsch referred to the "Ten minutes of sorting time, which is sufficient for a considerable run of cards" needed to find the answer to a demographic question.)

Despite starring only a computer precursor, the article seems to have the energy and excitement of the herald of a new, computerized, era. No doubt they'll arrive on the scene shortly, right?

Well... not quite. There were, perhaps, a few nods in that direction in the coming years: an address at the 1946 Annual Conference reprinted in the September issue of that year (p. 261) by Tennessee Valley Authority Director David Lilienthal asked the now-age-old question "Is the machine good, or is it evil?", while a September 1956 article by Frank Anderson of East Chicago Public Library mused on what libraries would be like in 2006. (Among his predictions: Carnegie libraries would be razed to make space for heliports; physical books will all be filmed and then shredded and sold for waste paper, which would be used in boxes to pack nuclear device components; and an automated "electronic book plucker" that could search circulation records kept on IBM punchcards.)

I'd say the computer age didn't really reach the Bulletin until the March 1959 issue, in which ALA Associate Executive Director Richard B. Harwell announced the Library Technology Project, a grant-funded program at ALA with a full-time staff of five. Even that's not quite accurate: While the Project soon turned its attention to the use of computers in libraries, its initial charge was to develop standards for library supplies, to contribute to the development of new or redesigned library equipment (including an inexpensive microfilm reader, scuff-free paperclips, and a permanent ink), and to maintain a clearinghouse of information on library technology.

Even if the Library Technology Project wasn't instantly focused on computer technology, others were. In October 1961, Jesse H. Shera (former bigwig in the Junior Members Round Table and then dean of the School of Library Science at Western Reserve University) published "Automation Without Fear." (p. 787-794) This article identifies three sources of fear of computers: psychological, technological, and economic; it describes potential uses of computers in reference work—the examples, while specific, appear to be hypothetical rather than based on actual uses at the time; and it ruminated on the question of whether or not computers can "think." (It also represents what I believe to be the first time the Bulletin used the word "computer" to refer to the machines so familiar to us today.)

The Library Technology Project joined the computer game by 1963. The project's director, Frazer Poole, reported on the four-day Conference on Libraries and Automation in the July-August issue of that year (p. 658-659).

About 100 people attended the conference, a meeting of two worlds: librarians and computer experts. Despite high-level support—Librarian of Congress L. Quincy Mumford opened the first session—the conference was rough going. "It was obvious to even the casual observer that the computer experts and the librarians were not always talking the same language," Poole wrote. He noted the skepticism held by many of the attending librarians that computers could improve processes at all, and observed a basic failure to communicate. "In too many instances, librarians were saying, in effect: Tell us what your machines can do and we will tell you whether we can use them. The machine men, on the other hand, stated again and again their basic tenet: Tell us your requirements and we will tell you what machines can do to help libraries."

But the Library Technology Project did, finally, lead to concrete computer applications, reported in 1964 and 1965 in a series of seven articles by engineer-librarian Joseph Becker. He covered: MEDLARS, the Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System at the National Library of Medicine; the University of California at San Diego's experiments with using computers to maintain serial holdings records for 1,500 titles (with 3,500 more promised); Los Angeles County Public Library's use of computers to automatically generate a printed catalog of its 223,000 titles; a remote-retrieval system demonstrated at the New York World's Fair; the IBM Research Library's computer-based circulation record updating and maintenance; Pennsylvania State University Library's systems analysis project; and a case study of Florida Atlantic University, which was established in 1964 and whose library was the first in the United States to use computer-based data processing from its founding.

Sure, the programs aren't sophisticated by today's standards; it would be absurd to expect them to be. (If we accept Moore's law as an estimate, computing power has doubled 28 times since then, so we've got about 268 million times more juice to work with.) MEDLARS, for example, required a typist to prepare catalog entries on a special typewriter, which converted letters to punched holes on a paper tape, which could be spliced together, and run through a machine to transfer that information to magnetic tape. That tape was read by a computer, which could: Compare subject headings with a master list to detect errors; generate full citations and create cross-references; sort citations alphabetically; and "look for logical errors in the citations themselves and print out exactly where they occur," although the article doesn't specify how.

Still, it's a start. Welcome, computer era.