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Library program on Black Nationalism

January 23rd, 2012

The Gleeson Library is pleased to co-sponsor with the African American Studies Program a faculty reading on Thursday, February 2nd with University of San Francisco Associate Professor James Lance Taylor, who will read from his recent work Black Nationalism in the United States: From Malcolm X to Barack Obama (2011). Professor Taylor is also co-editor of the forthcoming book, Something’s in the Air: Race and the Legalization of Marijuana. His current research is on Peoples Temple, Jim Jones, and Black America. Professor Taylor is a noted political commentator on U.S. and San Francisco politics for national and Bay Area media and has served as a policy consultant for the San Francisco Human Rights Commission and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

The program begins at 5:00 on Thursday, February 2 in the Donohue Rare Book Room, located on the third floor of the Gleeson Library. Light refreshments will be served and books will be available for purchase. The program is free and open to the public. All are welcome to attend. For further information, please call (415) 422-2036.

John Hawk
Head Librarian, Special Collections & University Archives


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The Best Library Postcard Sites on the Internet

January 23rd, 2012
Selected postcards from my collection
In my previous post I discussed some of the World's Largest Library Postcard Collections. Of those collections, only a small portion of the Sjoerd Koopman collection has been digitized (by the American Library Association Archives)and made accessible on the Internet. At the same time, realizing the popularity of this medium, a large and growing number of library and archival institutions have digitized non-library focused collections of picture postcards. It has fallen, for the most part, to individual library postcard enthusiasts who are not affiliated with an institution to break ground in this postcard niche. Here are what I consider to be the best library postcard sites on the Internet.

The Library History Buff website "Library Postcards" page. This recently updated webpage serves as a portal to library postcard collections and resources on the Internet. In addition to the postcard sites below it contains links to less robust sites.

Library Postcards: Civic Pride in a Lost America, the library postcard site of Judy Aulik. Judy has a personal collection of about 3,000 library postcards and she has digitized many of these for our enjoyment. Judy links her postcard images to information about the library that is available on the web. She is continually updating and expanding her website.

The Library Postcard site of Sharon McQueen and Richard Douglas is a well constructed website that displays a large portion of their library postcard collection. A nice feature of this site is that the non-picture side of the postcard is also shown. Updates are infrequent, however.

The Library Postcards Blog of Mark Jackson has over 1,000 library postcard images. Postcard images are added as blog posts and each card has associated tags or keywords, including the name of the library, city or town, state or country of location. Whenever historical information is available, it is included. Frequently updated.

The Booth Library Postcard Collection (Eastern Illinois University) includes an extensive collection of postcards showing Illinois libraries. In 2010 the Booth Library also acquired 2,811 library postcards of a broader nature which were assembled by a private collector that the library plans to digitize. This site utilizes the highest digitization standards and represents the ideal in the display of library postcards.

The ALA Archives Digital Collections is worthy of mention. As noted above, the ALA Archives has digitized a portion of the Sjoerd Koopman collection. Other postcards have also digitized. Hopefully, the ALA Archives will continue to acquire and digitize more library postcards in the future.

One of the most important developments that could take place in regard to library postcard digitization is the digitization of the 25,000 plus library postcards in the Norman D. Stevens Collection of Library Architecture at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. This is the largest collection in institutional hands.

If you have other nominations for this list, put them in the "comments" section of the blog.

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World’s Largest Library Postcard Collections

January 22nd, 2012
 
The collecting of picture postcards sometimes called deltiology has been a popular activity for more than a century. Because of the vast volume of postcards, individuals have often confined their collecting to postcards depicting one or just a few specific subjects. The extensive construction of new library buildings in communities across the United States in the first two decades of the 19th century coincided with the heyday of picture postcards and libraries were a frequent subject of these postcards. So it is not surprising that some individuals collected postcards with libraries as their subject. With the help of veteran library postcard collector and authority Norman D. Stevens I have compiled lists of former and current collectors of library postcards. Some of these collections are significant in scope and I've identified what I think are the world's largest collections of library postcards.
 
Two collections of library postcards stand by themselves in scope. Both collections exceed 25,000 library postcards. The first was assembled by the aforementioned Norman D. Stevens. The Stevens collection includes a number of smaller collections that were previously assembled by several other individuals. Stevens donated his collection to the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal, Quebec, Canada where it is now located and is part of the Norman D. Stevens Collection of Library Architecture. The second 25,000 plus library postcard collection was assembled by Hans Krol, a retired librarian in The Netherlands and founder of the Bibliotheekmuseum (Library Museum). Krol continues to actively build his collection and it will undoubtedly eventually be the world's largest library postcard collection. Both the Stevens and the Krol collections include postcards of libraries worldwide. I consider Stevens and Krol to be the world's greatest librariana collectors.
 
There are a few other library postcard collections that are in the 10,000 plus category. Those include the collection of Dan Lester, a retired librarian and former (also one of the greatest) librariana collector, who has a collection of over 13,000 library postcards. His collection is currently inactive. Sjoerd Koopman, a retired librarian in the Netherlands who worked for the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), has a growing collection of 12,700 postcards depicting libraries in more that 80 different countries. A portion of Koopman's collection has been digitized by the American Library Association Archives. Koopman gave the presentation "Libraries on postcards: historical trends, modern applications and potential" at the IFLA Conference in 2008. Michele Farrell of Alexandria, VA, a librarian who works for the Institute of Museum and Library Service, has a current collection of over 10,400 postcards of libraries from around the world. Her collection is still growing.  Marjorie Warmkessel, a professor in the Library Department at Millersville University (PA, has a postcard collection of approximately 25,000 postcards including around 10,000 library postcards. Her collection includes former library postcard collections of several individuals.
 
I have a relatively modest library postcard collection numbering around 1,700 postcards. Other current library postcard collections are listed HERE. The postcard shown at the beginning of this post includes images of four library postcards. It was created by Sjoerd Koopman to solicit library postcards for his collection.
 
In my next blog post I intend to highlight some library postcard sites on the Internet.

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The Libraries of Louvain Revisited

January 20th, 2012


"On the night of 25 August 1914, around one or two o'clock in the morning, several fires broke out in the medieval Belgian city of Louvain, which had been occupied for about a week by invading German troops. The fire lasted three days, during which time the Germans did not allow authorities to combat it. The result was the destruction of much of the city, including the famed library of the Catholic University of Louvain." So begins an overview of the history of the Louvain University Library written by Phillip A. Metzger for Libraries & Culture. Following its destruction in World War I the library was rebuilt in 1928, but sadly it was destroyed again in World War II. I wrote an earlier blog post about the destruction of the libraries in Louvain in 2009. I also created a webpage about the destroyed libraries on the Library History Buff website which includes images of a number of postal artifacts in my collection. I recently added the two postcards shown above to my collection. The first shows the library after its destruction in 1914 and the second shows the interior of the new library built in 1928. I also have a previous related post about "Fire - The Enemy of Books".

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The Bibliosmiles Revisited

January 18th, 2012
I wrote an earlier post about Charles Lummis and "The Bibliosmiles", an organization designed by group of librarians who probably had too much time on their hands at the 1906 American Library Association Narragansett Pier (RI) Conference. In doing some research on ALA's centennial I came across "ALA Centennial Vignette No. 9" in American Libraries for February, 1976. The vignette was about the Bibliosmiles and was written by Ed Gleaves, at the time Director of the School of Library Science at George Peabody College in Nashville, TN. Gleaves wrote about the first meeting of the Bibliosmiles at the 1907 ALA Conference in Ashville, NC where the organization was officially founded. The organization's motto was "To keep the Book Dust off our Top Shelves" and its password was, "Cheer Up, ALA". Their official seal is shown to the left. The officers, who included some heavy hitters in ALA, gave themselves some interesting titles: John Cotton Dana was the Grand Ha Ha; Tessa L. Kelso was Minehaha; W. P. Cutter was Sardonic Grin; Adelaide R. Hasse was Big Stick; Samuel S. Green was Supt. of Edification; Joseph F. Daniels was Glad Hand; F. K. W. Drury was Subdued Snicker; E. L. Pearson was Main Guy; and Charles F. Lummis was Grim Reality. Grim Reality spoke first at their meeting at the conference according to Gleaves - "Mr. Chairman: In our profession, even more than in most, we must accept Civilization. In our profession, as much as in any, we need to take it with reservation .. We have to catch, ourselves young, and organize against the Habit of Huddling... The whole tendency of civilization is to run together in an indistinguishable mess. We must Get Together, to Keep ourselves Apart... ." Later in his presentation Grim Reality makes a surprisingly serious point for an organization founded in humor, "I wish to call your attention further to the fact that, while ladies have their full share of library positions, they have never been admitted to those serious and subterranean councils in which the real fate of the ALA is determined. With the highest regard for the generic wisdom of this convention, I respectfully submit that there ARE women fully worthy to share our efforts to retain humanity in the libraries... ." In an essay titled "Adelaide Hasse: The New Woman as Librarian" in the book Reclaiming the American Library Past: Writing the Women In edited by Suzanne Hildenbrand (Ablex Publishing, 1996), Clare Beck wrote the following about the participation of Hasse and Kelso in the Bibliosmiles: "Among librarians, Hasse and Kelso's liveliness stood out to an extent that they were chosen as two of the three women members of the Bibliosmiles, a mildly rowdy organization founded by their old friend from Los Angeles, the flamboyant Charles Lummis, as a refuge from the solemnity of ALA meetings. The Bibliosmiles, 'Librarians who are Nevertheless Human' dedicated to 'keeping the dust off our top shelves,' specialized in comic songs and speeches, but the group was also a meeting place for some of the iconoclasts of the library world, men like Lummis and John Cotton Dana, who thought highly of Hasse and reinforced her belief that libraries could be a vital and innovative part of progressive change." Gleaves notes in his article that by 1911, "The Biblioshmiles, being human, were soon to pass into history, and with them went their dream of laughter, their irresistible protest against undue solemnity in the profession of librarianship. A rally of librarians to be remembered, they are largely forgotten - the final grim reality." And so, lest we forget.

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