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Books for Soldiers and Sailors in WWI – An Exhibit

April 1st, 2012
As I mentioned in a previous post, I have put together an exhibit on the American Library Association Library War Service for the month of April at the Hales Corners Public Library in Wisconsin. I've included some images of the exhibit below.





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Deaderick and Rothrock, Uncommon Women

March 30th, 2012
Both Rothrock and Deaderick were directors of this library.
Looking back over my library career I feel fortunate to have met and come to know many exceptional library people. Since this is Women's History Month I thought I would close it with a post about a couple of those exceptional people who happen to be women. After I was released in 1969 from a military obligation that had interrupted my library career, I managed to land a job as Director of the Clinch-Powell Regional Library System located in East Tennessee.   The library system consisted of six rural counties in Appalachia and I was the only public librarian with a library degree in the six counties. Feeling a little isolated I sought out connections with librarians in the nearby Knoxville urban area. It was through this effort that I met Lucile Deaderick (1914-2006) who had recently taken the position of Director of the Knox County Public Library. Tennessee had twelve multi-county regional library systems and four metropolitan county library systems. The directors of all of these library systems met quarterly with the state library staff in Nashville. For one of those meetings Lucile invited me to ride with her and a friend. The friend turned out to be Mary Utopia Rothrock (1890-1976), a pioneer in rural public library development and former Librarian for the Tennessee Valley Authority.  Rothrock was also a former President of the American Library Association (1946-47). While Lucile and I were in meetings Rothrock conducted research at the Tennessee State Library and Archives. This trip was a memorable one for a young librarian embarking on a library career. Thinking about that trip I did some online searching and came across an online article about Lucile Deaderick in Metro Pulse written by Jack Neely shortly after her death in 2006. Neely used the phrase "An Uncommon Life" in the title of his article about Deaderick.  In addition to a varied library career which included a stint as editor of the A.L.A. Bulletin, Deaderick and a friend operated a small farm for a number of years. Read Neely's article to learn more about her "uncommon life". Both Deaderick and Rothrock were strong individuals who chartered their own courses. Both were also historians which makes their story even more appropriate for Women's History Month.  

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Yale University Library and World War I

March 29th, 2012


One of the biggest challenges faced by historians is the absence or loss of historical records which in many instances have been deliberately disposed of. The historian's best friends are those individuals who have the vision to acquire and preserve records that document important historical events. John Christopher Schwab, Yale University Librarian 1905-1916, was one such individual. In the early stages of World War I when the United States was still neutral, Schwab and the Yale University Library, as documented in the letter and circular above, aggressively sought to collect "the ephemeral publications on every phase of the present war which appear as well in the neutral as in the belligerent countries." The two items are in my collection along with the envelope in which they were contained addressed to a Yale alumnus in Natal, South Africa and mailed on May 1, 1915. It's difficult to determine where the materials collected by Yale in this effort are currently located, but Yale does have an extensive portal to its World War I resources on its website.

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Fusion and EBSCO Databases: Temporarily Out of Service

March 27th, 2012

Fusion and all EBSCOHost databases (e.g., ERIC, PsycInfo, Academic Search Premier) are presently down. :-( Our vendor is working on the problem and we hope to have the databases up and running as soon as possible.

We apologize for this inconvenience.

 


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A Good Pleasant Job on the S.S. Washington, 1921

March 26th, 2012



As I've mentioned on earlier posts, I like used postcards and I look for interesting messages on the cards. The postcard above has a picture of the harbor in Cherbourg, France. It was mailed by sea post from the S. S. Washington on September 11, 1921. The message reads: "Have a vacation job on "S.S. Washington" as librarian. Good, pleasant job. Have arranged library of 2,000 books alphabetically." It is signed C. Begemann. It appears to be sent by a student or former student to a teacher at Dickinson High School in Jersey City, NJ. The S.S. Washington mentioned in the postcard is actually the S.S. George Washington which was a German built ship seized by the U.S. during World War I. According to a Wikipedia article the ship was reconditioned for passenger service in 1920. Libraries seem to be pretty standard on passenger/cruise ships. My wife and I took a cruise on the ship Pride of America in Hawaii recently and it had a great library (see below). I think being librarian for that ship's library would also be a "good pleasant job".

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