Part of my job with American Libraries is to help compile the list of annual ALA award-winners, published each September. If you've perused the list, you've seen that many of the 200 or so are named in honor of librarians from the Association's early years.

Not surprisingly, these librarians also appear in early years of the Bulletin. Throughout this year, I'd like to review some of them.

My first subject is John Cotton Dana. Today, a Library Administration and Management Association award for public relations bears his name. And certainly, the Bulletin does contain several examples of Dana's work in library promotion, such as coverage of his chairmanship of a committee to produce a library exhibit at the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco.

But it's Dana's fiery final appearances in the Bulletin that initially attracted my attention. His obituary in the September 1929 issue noted that "He was like a gadfly to stodgy conservatism. He was always calling for a reassessment of old traditions and standards in library work."

In his last years, ALA activities were frequent targets. A lengthy letter read to Council at the Midwinter Meeting December 29–31, 1927, and published in the January 1928 issue, expressed his opposition to a number of ALA activities:

• The appointment of a board of examiners of library schools. ("My charge is that they did not use their brains; but dumbly submitted to the dictates of current fashion in attempting to introduce the goose-step into a flourishing private enterprise.");
• The then-new term "Adult Education." ("Our Adult Education Committee has inflated this new name for an activity half a century old, at a cost of $50,000; and has so pleased us with the notion that we are doing something new and grand as to make us forget that we have always been busy at that same thing.");
• ALA Library Extension efforts. ("If intelligent and alert adults in large numbers could be persuaded to read the publications on which the Library Extension Committee has spent about $16,000, the steady growth of libraries would perhaps have been quite notably increased.... We await proof that any access of growth has been due to the expenditure by the A. L. A. in the last four years of a quarter of a million dollars.");
• A survey of members. ("I insisted that its thousands of questions on thousands of questionnaires would bring no results of value; that we already had ample information on our administrative methods; and that, if we had money for a survey, we should spend it not on a survey of a dead past, but on an inquiry into the relation of recent vast economic and educational changes to library methods."); and
• A Curriculum Study, which produced two textbooks "that [the authors'] native talents and forms of experience and education would have impelled and permitted them to write had they never heard of $30,000 worth of questions and answers acquired via a curriculum study."

Council did formally consider Dana's concerns, appointing the "Special Committee to Consider Communication of Mr. John Cotton Dana," which made its report at Annual in 1928 and generally defended the value of the projects that Dana had attacked. A couple of proposals related to Dana's concerns (one to publish full financial statements in the Bulletin; the other to require a report of the estimated cost and detailed description of any policy proposal brought before Council) were introduced, but Council voted both down.

Dana wrote a couple more letters to the Bulletin, which were covered but not published. I get a sense that by that time, receiving a communication from Mr. Dana was not an occasion for celebration at ALA headquarters.

For example, a January 1929 treatment: "Mr. Dana criticized in his usual vigorous manner three activities of the Association.... We are unable to publish the whole letter, and, as it does not lend itself to abstracting, we shall be glad to send a mimeographed copy of it to any member of the Association who cares to write to Headquarters for it." (Emphasis added.)

Earlier Years
Dana was an active member of the association and made numerous appearances in the Bulletin's pages. I don't want to give the impression that all of his work was controversial or confrontational. But he did have his rabble-rousing moments in his earlier years. For example, at the Midwinter meeting January 1-2, 1914, he argued via a letter to Council that "It is a great mistake for a quasi-literary institution of 2,500 members, like our association, to devote a good slice of its income to the preparation and issuance of [Booklist] that would probably be welcomed by the reading public of this country, and then, in effect, to conceal it from that public"; that papers presented at Annual should be directed more towards the public, and that the association should "extract it from the Almighty Library Aggregation of piffle and technique which we must annually produce... and let our friends see it and even dare them to read it"; that Headquarters should move from Chicago to New York City; and that conferences should be held in major cities rather than on "distant prairies and mountain fastnesses."

All of this came after excoriating attendees for feeling the need to meet in person rather than communicating by print. (His exact words: "No, you must feel your own reading limitations; that you are unable to get out of print what the writer of print wishes to convey; that you are all grievously ear-minded, and have never so devoted yourselves to acquiring skill in that use of print, to the promotion of which you devote your lives, that you can understand it clearly when you see it.")

The letter went over poorly.

Councilor F.P. Hill said "The only objection I have to Mr. Dana's letter is that he does not make any plans for building up the structure which he is always so ready to tear down." Henry Legler, chair of the publishing board, reported that he had often heard from Dana about Booklist: "Often before he has wanted to have the Booklist changed; to have the matter changed; the form changed and the character changed, in fact everything about the Booklist changed except perhaps the quality of the paper. In other words that Mr. Dana did not want an A. L. A. Booklist published; what he wants is a library journal for the public."

—Greg Landgraf, Editorial Assistant, American Libraries

At the 1922 Annual Conference in Detroit, about 100 librarians attended the first annual meeting of the Work with Negroes Round Table, chaired by Ernestine Rose of the New York Public Library.

The reports on the Round Table's meetings published in the ALA Bulletin are a bizarre mix of overt racism, progressive ideas, and overt racism masquerading as progressive ideas. They make for lively, if often unsettling, reading.

At the 1922 meeting (p. 361-366), for example, Marion P. Watson of the New York Public Library's 135th Street branch presented the results of a survey on work with black patrons that she had sent to 122 libraries around the country. Some of those results include:

• A snapshot of segregation in libraries. "Hagerstown, Md., and Wheeling, W. Va., are the only southern libraries reporting unrestricted access for Negroes. Paducah, Ky., reports: 'privilege to draw books from library, but not allowed access to shelves or reading room.' The public library of Jacksonville, Fla., ... has 'a small library building and one of its largest rooms set apart for colored people.'" At least 16 other public libraries reported segregated branches.

  There's some remarkable (and cringe-inducing) verbal gymnastics to spin this segregation as a positive, with lines like "The following public libraries which are not open to Negroes do grant them special privileges through separate branches."

• Data on black staff members. The survey reported that "all the libraries with separate branches for Negroes have entire colored staffs," while several non-segregated systems also had black staff members, "presumably for work with colored patrons."

• Information on African American representation on governing boards. The short answer is, not much, although Charlotte, North Carolina, reported that "The Negroes have their own board of trustees composed entirely of Negroes... I have nothing to do with their library in an official way, but always assist them in any way possible. They take pride in having their own schools and library."

  On the other hand, Atlanta reported "We tried having an advisory committee from the colored people, but as they did not confine their activities to advice, we disposed of them."

The 1923 meeting (p. 274-279) at Hot Springs, Arkansas, appears more positive in tone. While George T. Settle, chair of the round table and librarian at Louisville (Ky.) Free Public Library declared his belief that both segregated and integrated libraries were valid service models, he also recognized the real value in providing library service to all and called for improved service to African Americans throughout the country.

Ernestine Rose did not attend, but she contributed a paper that reported on a black woman attending the Carnegie Library School at Pittsburgh, "the second colored student in one year to enroll in the regular classes at accredited library schools."

Rose's paper also provided an enlightened summary of the complexity of the issue of providing service to all. She wrote: "The average white person in the North does not know the negro at all. His ideas are preconceived and colored by sentimentality. He sees colored people still as ex-slaves, pitiful objects grateful for his helping hand. When he learns that they are intelligent, struggling, resentful, and aggressive participants in the industrial and social battle of life, his sensibilities are shocked and his illusions destroyed. In this direction the last year has taken a long step forward."

Her words and the other papers presented inspired a lengthy debate. Henry Gill of New Orleans argued that northerners like Rose could not understand the "problem" of serving African Americans, since almost 90% of black Americans lived in the South. Sally Akin of Marietta, Georgia argued that "The southerner loved the negro individually and the northerner collectively," and suggested that allowing African Americans to have full access to separate branches was a better option than granting them only partial access to integrated ones.

The round table voted to ask the ALA president for a place on the program at the 1924 conference. (The precise words used to summarize the decision: "Several remarked that if the negro is a problem in the public library South and he is coming North it might be well for the North to know something of the problems and be prepared to meet them.")

It didn't happen. In fact, the Bulletin makes no further mention of the round table. Ann Allen Shockley's 1960 work A History of Public Library Services to Negroes in the South, 1900-1955, reports (p. 9) that "This particular Work With Negroes Round Table ended disastrously when it developed into an inter-sectional and inter-racial feud."

—Greg Landgraf, Editorial Assistant, American Libraries

Something a bit lighter today: A sampling of some of the amusing and interesting photos that have run in American Libraries. Enjoy!

—Greg Landgraf, American Libraries editorial assistant.

The cover of the January 1923 issue of the ALA Bulletin, featuring what I believe to be the magazine's first photograph: a landscape of Hot Springs, Arkansas, site of that year's Annual Conference.	Alice McKinley of DuPage at the Illinois Library Association's Bicentennial Ball December 5, 1975. From the January 1976 issue, pg. 16.
Library staff at Cameron University in Lawton, Oklahoma, during Renaissance Open House Week in 1991. From the December 1991 issue, pg. 1,059.	Barbara Toohey, reference librarian and "hug therapist" at Los Angeles Valley College. From the June 1980 issue, pg. 382.
The punchline of this cartoon published in the March, 1928, issue (pg. 52) is a play on the popular "Reading with a Purpose" series of educational books that ALA published at the time. It's not the first cartoon published in the magazine, but it's of modern interest because variants on the punchline still get submitted pretty regularly.	Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors, at the kickoff ceremonies for the 1987 Year of the Reader in Illinois, held during Midwinter in Chicago. Her book picks: Bloodline and In Cold Blood. From the March 1987 issue, pg. 217.
My favorite cover so far, this ranch made with wires and a CD illustrated the "Automation Mavericks" theme of the April 1987 issue. I hope to steal the idea.	Barney the Dinosaur receives a Library Hero plaque from District of Columbia Public Library Director and ALA President Hardy Franklin and two-year-old patron Alexys Wright on April 20, 1994. (Barney-hating remains a valid hobby, however.) From the June 1994 issue, pg. 482.
The staff of American Libraries in old-timey newsroom attire, from the June 1976 "Who We Are" issue, pg. 387. From left: Mary Jane McKinven, Edith McCormick, John Wilkins, Art Plotnik, Barbara Jacobs, and Liz Mitchell.