CentenniAL

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.