I've got a few quickies for today. More in-depth postings will return once the crush of deadlines for the June-July issue (incidentally, our official Centennial issue) is past.

More on Rossell
This information comes from Mary Miller of the ALA Archives at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. A circa-1960 biography on Beatrice Sawyer Rossell, the first named editor of the Bulletin of the American Library Assocation, reported that she studied at the New York State Library School and began her library work in Albany, New York. After serving as editor of the Bulletin and head of public relations for the ALA, she became the first official lobbyist for the Illinois Library Association. She also worked for 10 years as a library consultant for Field Enterprises, and as librarian at Way County Library in Petersburg, Ohio. By 1962, she was living in Phoenix, as evidenced by a letter she wrote to Carl Milam, former ALA secretary.

Early Photos

In an earlier post, I noted that I thought a photo of Hot Springs, Arkansas, in the January 1923 issue was the first picture published in the magazine.

Missed it by, well, 14 years.

I've since found pictures from the September 1909 issue. And the auspicious subject of those first photos?

Paper.

See, at the fifth general session of the 1909 Annual Conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, one Cedric Chivers presented a paper titled "The Paper and Binding of Lending Library Books." Accompanying the published report were several photomicrographs of paper.

Two pairs of photomicrographs appear at right. The top set shows the transverse (above) and surface section of a "close, heavy, moderately calendered paper" praised for its close fibers and small air space." The bottom, however, shows the transverse and surface sections of a "thick, bulky, feather-weight antique." So if your paper looks like the one on the bottom, you know you've got problems.

But enough facetiousness; bookbinding was a highly visible issue in the Bulletin's early days, with an ALA Committee on Bookbinding whose reports regularly appeared in the magazine's pages.

Not-so-early photos

Apropos of nothing except historical interest, I'd like to share this photo of current ALA Executive Director Keith Michael Fiels (with Madison, Wisconsin, librarian Faith Miracle) from the November 1985 issue. It was taken at the sixth annual meeting of the White House Conference on Libraries and Information Services Taskforce September 12-14, 1985, in Princeton, N.J.; Fiels was at the time with the New Jersey State Library.

WHCLIS and WHCLIS II were also big events in their day, and their appearances in American Libraries will certainly be the topic of an upcoming post.

Finally...

Happy Bike-to-Work week! The cover of the September 1976 issue featured David P. Jensen, director of library services at Greensboro (N.C.) College, who biked 675 miles to ALA's Centennial Conference Fair in Chicago. I'd hoped to also include a photo of my bike—a delightful alternative to the trains here in Chicago—but a breakdown on Monday and the unlikelihood of being able to repair it before the weekend prevent that. Feh.

—Greg Landgraf, Editorial Assistant, American Libraries