Part of my job with American Libraries is to help compile the list of annual ALA award-winners, published each September. If you've perused the list, you've seen that many of the 200 or so are named in honor of librarians from the Association's early years.

Not surprisingly, these librarians also appear in early years of the Bulletin. Throughout this year, I'd like to review some of them.

My first subject is John Cotton Dana. Today, a Library Administration and Management Association award for public relations bears his name. And certainly, the Bulletin does contain several examples of Dana's work in library promotion, such as coverage of his chairmanship of a committee to produce a library exhibit at the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco.

But it's Dana's fiery final appearances in the Bulletin that initially attracted my attention. His obituary in the September 1929 issue noted that "He was like a gadfly to stodgy conservatism. He was always calling for a reassessment of old traditions and standards in library work."

In his last years, ALA activities were frequent targets. A lengthy letter read to Council at the Midwinter Meeting December 29–31, 1927, and published in the January 1928 issue, expressed his opposition to a number of ALA activities:

• The appointment of a board of examiners of library schools. ("My charge is that they did not use their brains; but dumbly submitted to the dictates of current fashion in attempting to introduce the goose-step into a flourishing private enterprise.");
• The then-new term "Adult Education." ("Our Adult Education Committee has inflated this new name for an activity half a century old, at a cost of $50,000; and has so pleased us with the notion that we are doing something new and grand as to make us forget that we have always been busy at that same thing.");
• ALA Library Extension efforts. ("If intelligent and alert adults in large numbers could be persuaded to read the publications on which the Library Extension Committee has spent about $16,000, the steady growth of libraries would perhaps have been quite notably increased.... We await proof that any access of growth has been due to the expenditure by the A. L. A. in the last four years of a quarter of a million dollars.");
• A survey of members. ("I insisted that its thousands of questions on thousands of questionnaires would bring no results of value; that we already had ample information on our administrative methods; and that, if we had money for a survey, we should spend it not on a survey of a dead past, but on an inquiry into the relation of recent vast economic and educational changes to library methods."); and
• A Curriculum Study, which produced two textbooks "that [the authors'] native talents and forms of experience and education would have impelled and permitted them to write had they never heard of $30,000 worth of questions and answers acquired via a curriculum study."

Council did formally consider Dana's concerns, appointing the "Special Committee to Consider Communication of Mr. John Cotton Dana," which made its report at Annual in 1928 and generally defended the value of the projects that Dana had attacked. A couple of proposals related to Dana's concerns (one to publish full financial statements in the Bulletin; the other to require a report of the estimated cost and detailed description of any policy proposal brought before Council) were introduced, but Council voted both down.

Dana wrote a couple more letters to the Bulletin, which were covered but not published. I get a sense that by that time, receiving a communication from Mr. Dana was not an occasion for celebration at ALA headquarters.

For example, a January 1929 treatment: "Mr. Dana criticized in his usual vigorous manner three activities of the Association.... We are unable to publish the whole letter, and, as it does not lend itself to abstracting, we shall be glad to send a mimeographed copy of it to any member of the Association who cares to write to Headquarters for it." (Emphasis added.)

Earlier Years
Dana was an active member of the association and made numerous appearances in the Bulletin's pages. I don't want to give the impression that all of his work was controversial or confrontational. But he did have his rabble-rousing moments in his earlier years. For example, at the Midwinter meeting January 1-2, 1914, he argued via a letter to Council that "It is a great mistake for a quasi-literary institution of 2,500 members, like our association, to devote a good slice of its income to the preparation and issuance of [Booklist] that would probably be welcomed by the reading public of this country, and then, in effect, to conceal it from that public"; that papers presented at Annual should be directed more towards the public, and that the association should "extract it from the Almighty Library Aggregation of piffle and technique which we must annually produce... and let our friends see it and even dare them to read it"; that Headquarters should move from Chicago to New York City; and that conferences should be held in major cities rather than on "distant prairies and mountain fastnesses."

All of this came after excoriating attendees for feeling the need to meet in person rather than communicating by print. (His exact words: "No, you must feel your own reading limitations; that you are unable to get out of print what the writer of print wishes to convey; that you are all grievously ear-minded, and have never so devoted yourselves to acquiring skill in that use of print, to the promotion of which you devote your lives, that you can understand it clearly when you see it.")

The letter went over poorly.

Councilor F.P. Hill said "The only objection I have to Mr. Dana's letter is that he does not make any plans for building up the structure which he is always so ready to tear down." Henry Legler, chair of the publishing board, reported that he had often heard from Dana about Booklist: "Often before he has wanted to have the Booklist changed; to have the matter changed; the form changed and the character changed, in fact everything about the Booklist changed except perhaps the quality of the paper. In other words that Mr. Dana did not want an A. L. A. Booklist published; what he wants is a library journal for the public."

—Greg Landgraf, Editorial Assistant, American Libraries

In the early years, the Bulletin of the American Library Association usually published six issues per year, but it was primarily devoted to publishing the Annual Conference proceedings. (In 1907, for example, the proceedings took up the 326-page July issue. The other five issues totaled only 109 pages, and 65 of those were the ALA Handbook.)

There wasn't a huge amount of tech talk at those conferences, and what there was tended to touch on the subject only obliquely. A 1907 paper (page 163) by C. H. Brown, a reference librarian at Chicago's John Crerar library, titled "Use of Scientific and Technical Books," advocates for the value of technical collections (while dropping lines such as "Public libraries are useful to the women and children but not so much to the men. ... Women use books as playthings; men as tools."). The 1910 conference in Mackinac Island, Michigan, had an exhibition of such books (page 598), although Elwood McClelland, head of the committee that organized it, felt the need to apologize for how hastily prepared the exhibit was, noting that "Many of those interested have already found their way to it, probably more by reason of its accessibility than its merit." A 1908 survey (page 208) of the Pratt Institute's library school curriculum noted that business skills had been dropped from the program entirely, with the exception of typewriting, which had been made optional.

The first real coverage of technology itself comes in 1911, and outside the conference coverage. A two-paragraph story on page 45 of the May issue covers an informal conference of library educators, where attendees concluded that stereopticon slides could have use in library education, "if some means of obtaining them for temporary use by different schools could be effected, as the purchase of a large collection by any one school would be too expensive."

The year 1914 saw a bit more serious coverage of technology, as the Annual Conference in Washington, D.C., featured an exhibit of labor-saving devices, including typewriters; manifolding machines; machines for billing, dictating, and adding; and vacuum cleaners. One of two articles previewing the exhibits promised that "there will also be a number of devices shown which are not so widely known. Perhaps the most important of these will be the photographic copying machines." (May, page 65). Photostat and Rectigraph, two of the three major manufacturers of copiers at the time, demonstrated their products at the Exhibits.

The copiers were prominent enough to have a technical paper on the use of the Photostat machine presented at the 1916 conference, by Walter T. and Maude Kellerman Swingle of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (page 194).

Coverage of the exhibit was omitted from the conference proceedings, but a review in the November issue (page 507) by C. Seymour Thompson, who had coordinated the exhibit, called for the creation of a "clearing house" of information about such labor-saving devices. Work began on it, but, in 1917, the committee reported to Council that the work had been "unavoidably delayed" (Jan., page 30). The United States' entry into World War I put the Association's focus on the war, and it appears the work was never completed.

—Greg Landgraf, American Libraries editorial assistant.

Much has been written lately (and, of course, actually done) on the value of gaming to libraries.

Gaming's advocates may find a sort of spiritual forefather in Graham Romeyn Taylor, whose address to the 1910 ALA Annual Conference was reprinted, along with the rest of the conference proceedings, in the September issue of that year (pages 668–671).

At the time, Taylor was associate editor of The Survey, a journal on social issues. While he wasn't, obviously, advocating for library Pong tournaments (let alone Dance Dance Revolution), it's not difficult to see how his themes, plus 97 years, equal the themes of today.

Taylor opened his speech, "Play and Social Welfare," with a simple recitation of the explosive growth of city playgrounds: 90 cities had maintained playgrounds in 1907, 185 in 1908, and 336 in 1909. "This recent widespread activity has been due primarily to a new appreciation of the value of play as a positive force.... The more extensive adoption of the playground idea by communities of every sort has come in recognition of the new idea that wholesome play is not merely a preventative of ill health and delinquency among children, but that it is an essential in the process by which all children grow up."

Taylor also spoke on the need for someone to reach teenagers, observing how most kids who got into serious, juvenile court–level trouble did so between the ages of 14 and 16—"the very period at which the small children's playground begins to lose its grip and its appeal." Notably absent from his speech is a call for libraries to be the ones to reach those people, but gaming advocates today (and others) have made that leap.

In fact, Taylor's speech really didn't cover libraries specifically. But he did welcome all comers: "The play spirit, in the opinion of those who attended the recent Play Congress in Rochester, should extend far beyond the playground or special occasion, and should permeate our whole life," he said, also noting that with the rise of commercial amusement parks and nickel theaters, "If the community itself is blind to the recreative needs of the people, commercial exploitation certainly is not."

The 1910 Recreation Symposium
The 1910 conference also included a Recreation Symposium (pages 666–668), although the procedings of that are, in my opinion, more amusing than interesting. Based on his introduction, I suspect ALA President N.D.C. Hodges felt the same way: "It seems to me a courtesy we owe to our speakers to be quiet before taking up the next number, although I am sure that the subject does not require such extreme concentration of thought probably as some other subjects that might appear upon the program at this time."

I wouldn't be thrilled about taking the stage after that intro.

The speeches seemed to live up to it, however. Samuel Ranck of Grand Rapids (Mich.) Public Library opened with a paper titled "Recreation for Librarians," although it really covered what he termed "Keeping Fit."

How to do so? "There are two elements which to me have always been of the greatest importance—eating and sleeping."

After that insightful announcement, 13 librarians gave five-minute talks extolling the virtues of their favorite recreational activities. I suppose there may be some historical interest in knowing that, say, Minneapolis Public Library Chief Librarian Gratia Countryman enjoyed sleeping out of doors, but an hour-plus session about the hobbies themselves? I'd rather do them than just talk about them, thank you.

—Greg Landgraf, American Libraries editorial assistant.