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.

This week, a roundup of brief and hopefully amusing nuggets from the history of American Libraries.

Wonderful ads
Beginning in 1948, the Bulletin began accepting advertising. There's not much flash by modern standards, hardly surprising given that things like inexpensive color printing are pretty recent developments. There is a lot of charm, however.

World Book

Compton

A pair of encyclopedias led the way. World Book vividly described the lengths it went to to make its entries accurate boasting on the back cover of the December 1951 issue, for example, how "We anesthetized a snake to make our World Book Diagram accurate!"

Compton Encyclopedia's ads were even better; they consisted of "Compton Comments" written by "L.J.L." on a wide range of topics, always tying them back to an updated entry or some event of the day. Take the irresistable September 1951 missive, which opens: "How would you have felt on the morning after the A.L. A. Conference if you had awakened at 6:15 to find a sky-blue parakeet sitting on your pillow peeking at your nose?"

I don't know if these ads make me any more motivated to buy an encyclopedia (it's not a question that comes up often in my current position), but they sure make me want to read more ads.

The Library in Cartoons

The Bulletin published a series of cartoons in 1936 and 1937 detailing life in various types of libraries or library departments. My favorite is the first one, published in January 1936 (p. 24-26) detailing the duties of a public branch librarian, which include telephoning the Animal Rescue League to call for a basket of kittens deposited on the return desk, calling an ambulence for a passer "who has slipped on a bit of orange peel", and having a talk with a sailor who wants a card (right; click for larger versions).

An unintentional sequel of sorts came in May 1949 (p. 181), with "The Bookmobile Arrives" (left). I'm especially fond of the pilot who's reading as he's about to crash into a tree, although maybe I'm just in a weird mood.

Image
In November 1946 (p. 463), ALA's Public Relations Office put out a call for photos of librarians at work, for use in recruiting materials. On one hand, it's a nice, forward-thinking little project: "Let's declare a moratorium on pictures of empty charging desks, still and deserted bookmobiles, childless children's rooms," wrote PRO Chief Olga Peterson. On the other hand, the call could have perhaps been delivered with a bit more tact. It came under the heading "Good-Looking Librarians, Note!!!" (sic) was addressed "To Photogenic Members" and declared that "good pictures" showing attractive librarians at work "are very scarce."

The 1950s
There is no excuse for this.

Richardson

Clift

Stevenson

Beginning with the April 1953 issue, author photos for the editorial by Ransom Richardson took this format: a disembodied and poorly cut-out head on a line-art suit. Executive Secretary David Clift started getting the same treatment in May. Meanwhile, Grace Stevenson, ALA associate executive secretary, got merely an unclothed disembodied head at the top of her "In the Mill" department. I apologize for any nightmares.

I'm gonna say, "not"
The February 1946 issue (p. 72) related this tale: "At a recent convention of English teachers in Indianapolis, Marian McFadden, city librarian, presented a talk, the notes for which she threw into the wastebasket. Later she was asked for a copy of the talk or of the notes so that they could be sent to a professional periodical for possible publication. That night, when Miss McFadden was walking home some papers were deposited at her feet by the wind. Believe it or note, they were the notes she had thrown into the wastebasket!"

Conference Entertainment
Here's the partial list of social activities on the five days of the 1942 Annual Conference in Milwaukee, as listed in the June issue (p. 398): Dancing, brewery tour, folk dancing, square dancing, square dancing, stunts, and square dancing.

(For those who found the square dancing units in elementary, junior high, and high school gym classes an unpleasant and traumatic experience, some closure can be gained by reading the list in your best Terry Jones-as-a-waitress voice.)

—Greg Landgraf, American Libraries editorial assistant.

1976 was the ALA's centennial and the nation's bicentennial. I have to confess, however, that neither of those facts were in my mind as I picked the year to research for this post. Instead, I was looking to see the headlines from the month I was born.

The first "Great American Libraries" cover, from January 1976, featuring the Redwood Library and Athenaeum in Newport, Rhode Island.

I'll run down some of those: A proposed consolidation of block grants that would eliminate direct federal aid to libraries; a review of proceedings from the Midwinter Meeting, including draft legislation to help large urban public libraries and an organizational meeting for the OCLC Users Group; and a sheepish Page One admission that "Black History Month slipped by unrecognized by American Libraries in February." But it's the ALA's Centennial that really dominated the year.

It begins on the covers, at least the covers from January through May. They feature a series called "Great American Libraries," a series of paintings of notable library buildings.

It's quaint, and I mean that both sincerely and cynically. Sincerely because the paintings are attractive and comforting to look at; cynical because there's really no way that such a cover would be published today, filling the magazine's most valuable real estate without making the necessary statement about what's inside.

Chicago's Grant Park, looking much as it does today, from the January 1976 centennial Annual Conference preview.

The magazine also recognized ALA's centennial with "Centennial Vignettes," an impressive series of nearly-forgotten history that ran monthly from May 1975 through May 1976. Stories in this series included those of Tessa Kelso, the outspoken, innovative, and idealistic librarian at Los Angeles Public Library from 1889 to 1895, who was forced out of her position and librarianship as a whole by a local minister irate over one of the books in her library; James Bertram, the aloof private secretary to Andrew Carnegie who ran Carnegie's library grants program from behind the scenes; and William Howard Brett, who made Cleveland Public Library the first large system with open stacks.

Some were more offbeat, such as the reluctance of Ainsworth R. Spofford, then librarian of Congress, to attend the ALA's first convention in 1876, calling conventions "usually mere wordy outlets for impracticables and pretenders" (He did show up, although only for the conference's last day); and the Bibliosmiles, a group of librarians who held conferences from 1907 through 1910 because they thought it was "high time to formulate a permanent protest against undue solemnity in the profession."

The June 1976 'Who We Are' cover.

The centennial Annual Conference got a special preview in the January issue, with large and striking line-art illlustrations of some of the events and venues. The conference was in Chicago that year, and the landmarks depicted in the drawing are still instantly recognizable.

AL's coverage of the ALA centennial concluded in June 1976 with the dramatic "Who We Are" feature: more than 50 pages of interviews and profiles of 29 unique librarians. I'll cover this in more detail when I look at the librarian image through the years, because that's in part what this is: Busting the librarian stereotype by giving in-depth profiles of a diverse group of individuals.

Art Plotnik

Memories from Art Plotnik, 1974–89 AL editor.

Congratulations centenarian! Today’s 100 is yesterday’s 65—oh, let’s say 30. American Libraries looks positively coltish. Couldn’t score a senior discount if it tried.

It was looking less sanguine, however, when I arrived from New York as the new editor in late 1974: a single staff member was on hand; the rest of the masthead had resigned.

It had to do with an editorial agenda butting up against that of the ALA Washington Office. When management told the AL editor to cool it, an indignant staff bolted. The complicated issue became a policy debate—later resolved with a balanced policy. Meanwhile, there I was: one loyal staffer, no editorial schedule, production nightmares, and a mess of outsourced copy that looked like rejects from Highlights for Children. “Bleak” would be an understatement for the long, dark evenings of my first Chicago winter, as we put the pieces together.

Credit the editors preceding me for a more assertive AL, one that reflected the socially-conscious 60s and early 70s. They made the magazine less house-organy and gave it a moral, if often negative, personality. But now someone had to re-balance the requirements of an “official-organ” (that ghastly term!) with the need to stimulate positive engagement in ALA and the profession; someone had to excite advertisers and keep a staff of imaginative editors and writers happy.

As our new staff came into being, we developed livelier presentations—upbeat design and writing—of official business; the ALA units got into the spirit and gave us better copy. But to win back a somewhat disaffected audience, we needed more than upgraded content; we needed attention.

Some gambits worked, like an occasional dish of library farce—an April Fool’s issue, a comic-strip history of the Dewey Decimal Point. Some backfired; for example, a bit on library jargon illustrated by a newspaper cartoonist whose exaggerated drawings of women—we were too numb to realize—would get us in trouble with ALA’s burgeoning women’s movement and many a reader.

We got wiser in the way of wit; and now, with an energetic staff in place, we took on more ambitious journalistic projects. The editors traveled to the capital to put together a December 1975 special issue, “Washington Library Power: Who Has It, and How It Works for You”—key issues, background, interviews, profiles, photo spreads—the works, and still among my favorite specials.

Another fave: A series (and special issue) entitled “Who We Are.” In the professional journals, most coverage of people had been one-dimensional: appointed to this, awarded that. We sought to create a flesh-and-blood portrait of the contemporary librarian. With compassionate prose and telling photos, we showed librarians as the diverse, many-faceted, never-say-die heroes that most are. Readers thanked us for the showcase—and for a view of themselves to balance the stereotypes and that feeling of being crushed inside compact shelving.

Our approximately 165 covers included all the icons of the period, from librarians-cum-marching activists to libraries as post-modernist architectural paradigms. But most memorable in terms of then-and-now is a cover photo showing a librarian and a bunch of cows inside a library: the theme, “Challenging Sacred Cows” (May 1975). Now, to produce that cover, you'd upload a stock digital image of a library interior and Photoshop some stock cows into it. Then we arranged a library interior and shot it; drove to a muddy farm and photographed cows, but didn’t like the results; photographed pictures of sacred cows in reference books; had prints made to fit the layout; scissored out the cows and pasted them on the library photo; blended the edges by hand; and penciled in shadows. Never mind slaying cows; we did ourselves in with that cover.

Perhaps a decade or two from now, today’s AL editors will have a similar story to tell: How then they had to juggle two primitive forms for each issue, print and digital, instead of the genetically-modified pollen now carrying news to brain-implanted pistils. My prediction, however, is that librarians will still be among the world’s best information pollinators—and that AL will flower into one form or another to help them stay that way.

—Art Plotnik, 1974–89 AL editor.