COSWL Cause

"Surveying the Field: The Research Model of Women in Librarianship, 1882–1898," by
Kate McDowell. The Library Quarterly, Volume 79 Number 3 (July 2009)

Women who promoted library services to children in the United States in the late nineteenth century introduced the systematic use of survey research on library practice to the field of professional librarianship. They created a series of qualitative survey‐based reports, the Reading of the Young reports, which were presented at ALA conferences from 1882 to 1898. These reports both assessed the current state of and promoted the development of services to youth. The research model they developed was adopted by other women and men in librarianship for research on other aspects of the emerging field of public library service. The discourse of librarianship had been previously based on individual expertise, and their research model changed the field in two ways: first, by gathering empirical evidence about library practice, and second, by introducing a collaborative model of discourse. These findings about the influence of women during the early years of librarianship call for reexamination of historical explanations for feminization of the field.
The Library Quarterly, Volume 79 Number 3 (July 2009): 279–300
© 2009 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

Dr. Lynn Westbrook, Assistant Professor at the School of Information of the University of Texas is the 2008 winner of the Jesse H. Shera Award for Distinguished Published Research presented by the Library Research Round Table [LRRT]

The 2009 recipient is Lynn Westbrook for her work on “Understanding Crisis Information Needs in Context: The Case on Intimate Partner Violence Survivor,” Library Quarterly 78 (3): 237-261. The study examines the role public libraries can play in providing the information needs of victims of intimate partner violence. Data was collected from two populations and two data-gathering methods and analyzed through the lens of everyday-life-information-seeking theory.

The Jesse H. Shera Award for Distinguished Published Research is given to the author(s) of a research article published in English during the calendar year and nominated by any member of LRRT or by editors of research journals in the field of library and information studies.

LRRT was founded in 1968 to contribute toward the extension and improvement of library research by providing public program opportunities for describing and evaluating library research projects and for disseminating their findings. LRRT is dedicated to informing and educating ALA members regarding research techniques and their usefulness in obtaining information. The information must help users reach administrative decisions and solve problems and expand the theoretical base of the field by serving as a forum for discussion and action on issues related to the literature and information needs for the field of library and information science.

The Robbie Emily Dunn Collection of American Detective Fiction at Jackson Library of the University of North Carolina Greensboro was begun in 1981 with the initial intention that only women writers would be included. It quickly became evident that to exclude certain works written by men would be to exclude some interesting women detectives. The character of Bertha Cool, for example, allowed the inclusion of Erle Stanley Gardner writing under the pseudonym of A. A. Fair. Gardner keeps company with approximately forty other gentlemen writers similarly brought in to the collection by their fictitious lady sleuths.

The collection has grown to approximately 3000 volumes representing nearly 200 authors, 85 percent of whom are women. The earliest known American work in the genre written by a woman predates, as far as is known, the earliest American novel to feature a female detective. Historians of popular literature credit Seeley Regester (pseudonym of Metta Victoria Fuller Victor, 1831 - 1885) as our country's first woman to write a work of detective fiction. It is with her novel, The Dead Letter (New York, Beadle & Company, 1867) that our collection begins.

Cambridge University appoints first female librarian.