Each issue of American Libraries, like any magazine, is a product of its time. Even if you took out easy identification clues like dates and page design, with a bit of examination you could still group issues together by their time period.

Some years are easier than others, however. 1994's issues, for example, are striking for their use of the term "Information Superhighway" or close variants. ("N.Y. librarians fight to direct traffic on the info highway"; "Pac Bell's $100K gift paves the info highway on-ramp in Calif."; "At Senate hearing, librarians seek their place on the information highway"; "First bumper sticker on the Infobahn?"; etc.)

Ah, the nostalgia of it: the Mosaic web browser had just been released, popularizing the the World Wide Web amongst a still-technophobic public. To ease the transition, someone comes up with a catchy metaphor: "It's like a superhighway. For information." Before long, someone comes up with the quip, "I feel like roadkill on the information superhighway," and the term joins '80s hair on the list of embarrassing things that seemed to make sense at the time.

More dramatic (and dire) are the issues from the first half of 1947. That was the year that the Bulletin heralded, with great trepidation, the Atomic Age.

The tone was dark from the beginning, with the January issue's announcement of the theme of the Annual Conference, as determined at Midwinter: "A Moratorium on Trivia." (p. 19) Also at Midwinter, Council passed a resolution urging all libraries "to advance a true understanding on the part of all the people of atomic energy and its meaning for civilization", and that the ALA urge international control over atomic energy.

In several news stories, the Bulletin reported on an atomic energy education program developed by the ALA and Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore (or, perhaps, developed by EPFL with some aid from ALA; reports aren't consistent on that point) and presented at libraries around the country (Jan., p. 38, 53). It featured films and lectures with titles such as "While Time Remains", "One World or None", and "Don't Resign from the Human Race."

Major speeches at both Midwinter and Annual addressed the topic. In "Atomic Energy and Your Future," (p. 71-74) J.J. Nickson of Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago and Harrison S. Brown of the University of Chicago laid out three grim facts about the Bomb: there's no secret in how to make it, there's no defense, and there's no monopoly in the ability to make one. Their proposed solutions to the problem of nuclear war: Disperse cities into areas of not more than 100,000 people each (at an estimated cost of more than $200 billion and the suspension of the Bill of Rights), the maintenance of the military at wartime levels at all times (making nuclear war almost a foregone conclusion) or the elimination of sovereign nations and the establishment of a functioning world government (the only solution the speakers suggested was viable.)

At Annual, Joel H. Hildebrand, dean of the Graduate School of the University of California, gave an even less pleasant speech (Sep. 1, p. 273), basically reviewing a number of strategies for controlling atomic weapons—and then explaining why each wouldn't work.

But there was some hope expressed amidst the doom. In his April "Notes from the Corner Office," (p. 99) ALA Executive Secretary Carl H. Milam reported on Enoch Pratt's atomic energy education program with admiration: "It was based on four facts, or, if you like, assumptions: 1) Intelligent management of atomic energy is vital to the preservation of peace and the promotion of the public welfare. 2) The people of the U.S. and the world have it in their power—as never before—to decide how much management and control, and what kind, are desirable and necessary. 3) People should have informed opinions before they speak their minds. 4) The library, as a public institution for public enlightenment, can and should do something about it." His column was accompanied by a letter from journalist Leland Stowe, who spoke at the Baltimore program, that was even more complimentary of librarians and their role: "One of its aspects which cheers me mightily is this: Baltimore's answer to a crying nationwide need was born in a public library. ... The librarians and libraries of America can be, and should be, the Paul Reveres of 1947."