Library Dust

Lawrence Clark Powell Four

Part four of a series on UCLA librarian Lawrence Clark Powell

 

The quotes and other material for these pieces on Lawrence Powell were taken from his books.  Obtaining them was easy; they are available for sale at online outlets that specialize in used books.  The original homes of these books were public libraries.  For only a few dollars I was able to obtain very nice copies of Powell’s A Passion for Books, his Fortune and Friendship and Books are Basic, all of them de-accessioned from the stacks. 

 

One of them came from a library in South Carolina; another from Colorado; still another from Canada.  Not a one was damaged, and I can assure you, none were superceded by newer editions, because there aren’t any.  In fact, I went to the websites of the libraries involved and discovered that they hadn’t replaced Powell’s books with other copies.  They simply got rid of them.

 

Of course, libraries weed out books for many reasons, but mainly when they are of no further use or value.  It is an inevitable and understandable part of the business; the library is for things that some portion of the population will use.  Still and even so, what could be the reason for the throwing out of the books of Lawrence Clark Powell?  Their utility had hardly diminished or their message gone stale; the man has only been dead four years.  Yet here they are, spines yet wearing call numbers:  020.92 Powell.

 

In point of fact, the audience for these books would always have been the same, limited to a few bibliophiles and of course, librarians.  And that, I think, tells the story.  These books of Powell’s were produced, like nearly all of what Powell wrote during his lifetime, to inspire, instruct and persuade librarians.  The libraries that disposed of these books threw away the library’s premier philosopher and its principal gadfly.  Powell brought a sword to the discussion of the contemporary library, and he wasn’t afraid to swing it.  His writing was one long diatribe in support of the library as he believed it should be, and against librarians who might lead it away from that.  A good deal of what he wrote was harsh, and he meant every word.  Powell’s career was a crusade, and a lot of people didn’t want to be goaded in the direction of Jerusalem.

 

“A library whose staff are concerned with the number of hours they work is a library without distinction.”

 

“Involvement in administration does not increase knowledge of a library’s contents or zeal to serve its users.”

 

“I have no respect for the research degree program as preparation for administration, nor for any course in administration which ignores books . . . Nor have I respect for library administrators whose published writings and reports give no indication that books are their business.”

 

Powell lived and wrote in a world of absolutes.  He required complete faith and fidelity and thought of the librarians as people who had taken the vows of a holy order.  Apart from that, his focus was ever and always on books, or rather, on the various types of literature that the library contained.  He thought of the computer in the same way a carpenter conceives of a hammer—as a mere tool rather than an end in itself, and indeed, a tool which would likely be replaced by some superior device in time.  He believed that the library should exist as a book-centered institution served by book-centered individuals steeped in literature and devoted to a lifetime of personal literary growth and exploration.  He did not think you left the job, mentally or physically, at five o’clock.  He was, whether you like him or not, a champion of a particular vision of the library, generally an irritant, certainly a genius and occasionally a crank.  It is not true that his time has passed; it had passed before he took office, and he well knew it. His life and work were devoted to resurrecting and preserving what he could of a place and a profession that were disappearing like sand through an hourglass.  Like most philosophers, he was thought impractical.  His ideas were considered quaint long before he died, and as we have seen, his books are not held sacred by all in the profession.

 

If you ever wish to see a place which does value Powell and his works, go to the place where he grew up.  The South Pasadena Public Library has a pretty good selection of LCP’s books, and it isn’t likely they’re going to get rid of them soon.  While you’re there, sit in one of the old oak chairs; likely as not Powell himself sat in it, reading through a long summer day, or on hooky from school.  It’s good little library to dream in.  If you want something permanent you can begin collecting his books.  They are generally available and usually cheap, a circumstance which Powell would no doubt find amusing.

 

Michael McGrorty

Lawrence Clark Powell Three

This is the third in a series about UCLA librarian Lawrence Clark Powell.

 

“I work continually, piecing together the daily tiles which will form the mosaic of my future.  I want responsibility, and the opportunity to build and work with people and books.  Given the chance, I can do work of lasting value.”

 

    Journal entry, L.C. Powell, 1940

 

The best way to understand Lawrence Powell is as a confluence—a coming together of a man and a particular sequence of occurrences which together made up the events of his career and compose a portion of the history of the libraries he led to greatness.  Unquestionably, the critical event of Powell’s career was his astonishing appointment to head the UCLA libraries after only six years of working in the system.  That appointment, over the heads and (likely) against the counsel of others, was made by UC President Robert Gordon Sproul. 

 

Like Powell, Sproul was not a typical candidate for the position he held.  Trained as an engineer, he held no advanced degree when he took over the post in 1930, having moved up from cashier in the comptroller’s office to vice-president in charge of business and financial affairs.  There was perhaps no other person so likely to have perceived the potential in the junior librarian from UCLA as a man who had risen to the highest post of the university from a clerk’s job.

 

In the rosy glow of hindsight, Sproul’s choice seems to have been a stroke of genius, but a cold appraisal of the circumstances reveals the risky nature of the move.  Had the appointment failed—had Powell proven unable to lead the library forward, which is to say, to do all the varied things which leadership requires, inspiring others to do the same—his choice would have been a disaster for the UCLA libraries at the most critical moment in their history. 

 

At the time of his appointment Powell was being courted by other university libraries; he must certainly have impressed his contemporaries as a man with real promise.  That promise had less to do with conformity to the then-current ideal of a librarian than to his intense passion for the book in all its manifestations, for the library as a service, and not least, for his immense personal integrity, charisma and charm.  Powell’s appointment is a credit to Sproul’s powers of perception; he had to be at least as aware as the other libraries who sought Powell’s services, though he obviously had the advantage of being on the home team.  But then there is the matter of passing over the many others who no doubt figured, perhaps correctly, that they had an equal or better right to the job than some young upstart, impressive or not.  Sproul’s decision, which went against both custom and caution, was a challenge to the status quo then:  it goes without saying that it would be the same if not more so now. 

 

Which brings us to the question:  could it happen again?  If there were a Lawrence Powell waiting somewhere in the wings of a major university’s library system, or for that matter, resting upon a lower tier of a public library’s org chart, waiting with talent and drive and perhaps a trace of native genius, could we dispense with conformity, set aside tradition and the lock-step of protocol to do the right thing?  The answer of course is, likely not, and the reason is because the library as a public institution is at odds with the library as a public benefit.  In becoming a permanent feature of civic life, the library has taken on the features and workings of bureaucracy.  Having become part and parcel of the modern city or university, the place simply works as an extension of those entities, taking on their features, their requirements, their strengths and flaws.  In exchange for a seat at the table, the library gives up flexibility, adopts procedure, rules and the habit of moving slowly along familiar paths and pretty soon must continue to do so or become entangled in its own feet.

 

A typical advertisement for a chief in a substantial system will call for ten years’ experience in the administration of a major library.  What that means as much as anything is a decade spent unlearning the daily lessons provided by patrons and books and the myriad stimuli of the reference desk, the acquisitions desk and the stacks.  Form matters, and function suffers.  We hire according to civil service tests, promote according to seniority and avoid risk wherever possible.

 

In the end, having filtered out the librarians, we are left with a sterile pool of administrators to choose from.  The result is administration, which is to the library what hospital cooking is to cuisine.  How many of our chief librarians would do, or wish to do, as Powell did, traveling the globe in search of material for the collection?  How many would write of themselves,

 

“The three loves I have are collecting books, keeping books (which includes reading them) and giving books away.”

 

Or claim, “I have worked every day for a month in a Los Angeles bank vault, cataloging the manuscripts of D.H. Lawrence.  Most of them were written outdoors in a notebook held on his lap, and the Lawrentian script is as serenely regular as his books are not.”

 

How many would show such passion for literature as to learn new languages simply to absorb a portion of their literature, even write entire novels from the joy of authorship and the desire to understand the novelist’s craft: very few, but that was Lawrence Powell.  The man who pounded out jazz tunes on whorehouse pianos waged a single-minded campaign against bureaucracy, cant, and the reduction of librarianship to anything as predictable, dry and lifeless as a science.  The man who opened the UCLA library school would write,

 

“How absurd to proclaim librarianship a science!  It is an artful craft, a crafty art, to be practiced with a trinity of talents: hands, head and heart.”

 

Where would Powell find himself in the modern library?  Most likely in a position that his qualifications and experience would earn him, a job far down the ladder, safely tucked away where he could do no harm.  That is, if he were hired in the first place.  You would find him dispensing wisdom from the pulpit of a reference desk to the day he retired—depend upon it.  The benefit would be to the public, but the library itself would suffer, as it suffers now, beneath the clammy yoke of administrators:  men and women who have not ever crashed a car after drinking, never risked the opprobrium of colleagues, never stubbornly adhered to anything other than the rungs of the career ladder.  People who think librarianship is a science.  Librarianship may be many things, but it is not a science.  Science, as Powell knew, is intended to be an emotionless search for answers.  Science works via inflexible rules; libraries are storehouses of art, images, words, imagination, and the home of interpreters, not sterile presenters but involved human beings who must be immersed in these things to convey them, in very human ways, to other very human beings.  This is as true if the holdings are recorded on index cards or computer chips, or if the literature comes from books or bytes.  The library is a living thing, as humans are living things:  individual, variable, reaching for greatness, very often flawed.

 

So what was Lawrence Powell?  Powell was a moment in time, a chance occurrence, a happy confluence of man and moment, and unquestionably, a mistake, even in his own era, when the library world was six decades less ossified than today.  Sproul’s folly, the daring gamble that vaulted Powell over the others and into prominence, is unlikely to see duplication in the modern era—as unlikely as we are to encounter Sproul’s type at the helm of any university.  The two men are linked together in history whose lesson is ignored even as their names are revered.

 

Powell knew that he was chosen to add luster and content to a growing library in an expanding university, and he accomplished both tasks, completely.  He also had the sense to know when the moment had ended: when it had, he was gone.  He came, a spring wind through the sudden opening of a window, departing when he realized that the portal was closing—on him, his type and his era.  We are fortunate to have had him among us.  

 

Michael McGrorty

Lawrence Clark Powell Two

LCP:  Bookman in the Making

 

Lawrence Powell grew up in the small town of South Pasadena California, where the family settled when he was a small boy.  The son of avid readers, he began to consume literature at an early age.

 

“I discovered the Public Library in South Pasadena and had a card—its number was 3089—from age six.  I was recognized as an avid reader by the librarian, dear deaf old Mrs. Nellie Keith, who waived the rule of two books to one withdrawal and let me take home as many as I could carry.”

 

South Pasadena is still a small town.  If you go there, you can visit the same Carnegie library where Powell borrowed his books, sit at the same oak tables where he sat, beneath the eternal gaze of Nellie Keith, whose portrait remains upon a wall near the reference desk. 

 

In grammar school Powell founded a newspaper, the Marengo Literary Leader, the better to showcase his own writing.  His partner in the enterprise was a fellow student, Harry Ward Ritchie, who went on to further work with Powell and to a certain renown of his own.  In high school LCP turned his efforts to the production of an underground scandal sheet known as Jo Trout’s Daily Pimp Stick; this was not his only departure from convention.  He admits:  “I stole a batch of student refund checks and went on a forged spending spree in downtown Los Angeles.”

 

Ritchie and his friend both got accepted to Occidental College, a stone’s throw down the road and just over the line into Los Angeles.  Powell played in a dance band, smoked, drank (it was Prohibition).  Occasionally he studied.  Finally he graduated—without honors.

 

In 1929 the new graduate took a job at Vroman’s bookstore on Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena.  He didn’t last long:  “The manager had no interest in the contents of books.  He forbade me to read on company time and was angry when instead of delivering a copy of the newly published Florence edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, I parked the truck and spent the afternoon reading the book.  I was fired.”

 

Powell decided to pursue a doctorate in literature at the University of Dijon.  On Bastille day, 1930, he boarded a steamer for a month-long journey to France.  His luggage consisted largely of books.  At the university, the chair of English studies said to him, “So you want to write on Robinson Jeffers.  Very well. Compose an essay giving your reasons why you think him important.”  Two months later Powell presented him with fifty pages of justification, which received a warm approval.

 

The transplanted American described his life thus:  “My life was devoted to studying, bicycling, enjoying several women in turn, and going up to Paris or into the deep countryside.”  On one memorable occasion he spent an entire evening playing piano for the Madame and girls of a whorehouse.

 

Eventually came the soutenance, the public examination at which he must defend his thesis.  He was required to respond on Jeffers and two other topics, “La Thème de l’inceste dans l’oeuvre de Byron et Shelly” and “La Côte Pacifique dans l’oeuvre de Walt Whitman.”  Three hours after it began, the examiners concluded that the American was worthy of the degree, with mention très honorable.  Among his audience for the examination were his own mother, two of his favorite café waiters and the Madame from the whorehouse where he’d played piano until dawn.

 

The American came home; married, found himself and the rest of the country unemployed.  He applied for a Guggenheim Fellowship to write about D.H. Lawrence but was rejected.  He managed to get a part-time job with a local bookseller.  Of that job Powell would later write, “I worked two-and-a-half years for Jake Zeitlin, and the experience was fully as educational and useful as the years at Occidental and Dijon.  It proved a base on which my subsequent authority as a bookman was established.”  Around that time editor Phil Hanna gave Powell the first of his writing assignments for Westways magazine.

 

And then fate, or something like it, intervened.  Powell was introduced to the Los Angeles City Librarian, Althea Hester Warren, who convinced him to become a librarian and to attend library school to obtain the requisite credential.  His application to the University of California was accepted, with the provision that he also study German. 

 

Powell wasn’t done raising hell, even with a wife and two children at home.  He recalled,

 

“In July, a week before classes were to start, I drove to Los Gatos to meet John Steinbeck.  I had collected  his early books in every edition and issue and he agreed to autograph them for me.  We had been in correspondence.  He was nearing the end of his heroic labor in writing The Grapes of Wrath, and a series of postcards, written in his spidery hand that could get a thousand words on a card, reported on the progress of his manuscript and his corresponding bad health.  We spent the day talking and drinking wine.  By evening, when it was time to drive back to Berkeley, I was drunk.  Steinbeck and his wife Carol tried to persuade me to spend the night, but as neither they nor we in Berkeley had a phone, I did not want to worry Fay by my failure to return, and so I set out.  The next thing I knew, several hours later and sober, I was being booked into Santa Clara County Jail in San Jose.  I demanded to know why I was there.  The desk sergeant laughed.  ‘You’re lucky to be alive.’”

 

It turned out Powell had wrapped the family car around a telephone pole.  The future librarian of UCLA slept the night on the floor of the drunk tank with his jacket for a pillow. 

 

After library school came more unemployment, followed by his hiring by UCLA and his meteoric rise to the top of the University Library. 

 

[Note:  My daily travels often take me down the same paths that Powell walked during his early years.  I am also a patron of the South Pasadena and Pasadena Public Libraries, and interned at both during my time in library school.]

 

Next:  What was Powell?

 

Michael McGrorty

Lawrence Clark Powell, One

In 1966, Lawrence Clark Powell retired from the Directorship of UCLA’s Clark Memorial Library and from the helm of the School of Library Service.  Powell based his decision to retire—at sixty, seven years short of the mandatory age—because he thought that taking an easier pace would allow him to live and work longer.  Indeed it did:  Powell would live another thirty-five years.  In determining that he should part ways with the college library and school he had done so much to bring to greatness, Powell cast a backward glance at his own contribution, deciding

 

I had done everything I had set out to do, and beyond this, it would only be repetitive.  New vision and energy were needed for the rapidly developing electronic computer age, for the era of governmental aid to libraries . . . I had always had a good sense of timing; not it told me to quit while I was ahead, to leave while I was still loved.

 

Loved he was and much respected as well.  Beneath his name in the 1966 edition of Who’s Who in Library Service lies a dense paragraph of accomplishments, lengthy even in the shorthand of such directories; even apart from the library world, his many books, articles and works of criticism shine forth from the page, and there were more to come in the years he had remaining. 

 

Powell’s tenure as University Librarian lasted a bit more than twenty years; he began there as an acquisitions librarian in 1938, coming to the directorship in 1944.  It would be difficult to find a more sudden rise to power in the career of any prominent librarian, or for that matter, one which seemed less auspicious/likely at its beginning. 

 

After finishing library school at Berkeley, an experience which he endured in a situation of near-abject poverty with his wife and two young sons.  Armed with a librarian’s certificate and a doctorate from the University of Dijon, publisher of a fine and influential book on Robinson Jeffers, he went precisely nowhere, along with a few million others in the grip of the Depression.

 

A month before graduation, I wrote to [University librarian John] Goodwin, to apply for a job at UCLA.  I never received an answer.  I also wrote to USC and to several movie studio research libraries.  Nothing came of any of these applications, most of which went unanswered.  The library school itself made no effort to place me.  Miss Sisler [then Acting Dean] barely gave me a passing grade.  Miss Coulter [his reference professor] was pleasant enough, but she was opposed on principle to men in library work. 

 

The best that Powell could do was a temporary substitute position with the Los Angeles Public Library at $125 a month.  Finally he obtained a minor position accessioning books at the UCLA library for the lofty salary of $1,620 per annum.  The new librarian discovered staffers running staples through a rare first printing of the 1849 Constitution of California, valued even then at a thousand dollars.  He raised hell and began the effort which culminated in the formation of a Department of Special Collections. 

 

He wrote papers, among them “The Problem of Rare Books in the College and University Library,” and “The Functions of Rare Books.”  He ignored offers from other systems to head their libraries.  He believed very strongly (as he certainly must!) that UCLA was the place for him.  Even so, he noted,

 

The other men librarians who had been on the staff when I came in 1938 had by 1942 all left, for one reason or another.  A main one was the hostility toward men expressed by the older women on the staff and Goodwin’s apparent domination by these women.  Seymour Lubetzky, the chief classifier, left when he was refused the salary that had gone to his predecessor in the position.

 

Powell reminded Goodwin that he’d been promised advancement, and was told, “The women won’t stand for my promoting you over them.”

 

Powell kept his nose to the grindstone but beneath the surface he played politics, calling in favors, searching ever for the main chance.  When Northwestern University offered him its top library position, he stalled them; meanwhile, the curator of UCLA’s Clark library was due to retire.  Powell was asked if he wanted the job.  He didn’t: what he wanted was something even bigger.  Much intrigue followed.  Eventually, University of California President Sproul told him,

 

I can now offer you a choice of positions.  The Clark Library, beginning January 1, when Miss Sanders retires; or the University Library next July 1, when Mr. Goodwin retires.  Which do you prefer?

 

“Both,” said Lawrence Powell.  And both he got.  In one fell swoop he went from being a $155 a month accessions clerk in the basement to the very top of the university library.  Much later he observed,

 

My rise there was extraordinary, from bottom to top rung in one move.  Men inexperienced in administrative work, such as professors, have been placed in top library positions, but I know of no instance when a junior staff member, completely lacking in administrative experience, has been thus advanced.

 

Going over the details of Powell’s career, I have often thought of Joe DiMaggio’s comment about Ty Cobb:  “I wonder how he was possible.”  How indeed?  Or perhaps our question should be, whether a career like Lawrence Clark Powell’s would be possible for anyone in the modern library world. 

 

Next: LCP: Bookman in the Making.

 

Michael McGrorty

 

 

Dear Diary

Today I was searching for books at a thrift store when I came across a nice little book with a fabric cover.  It was a blank book and would have been fine for conference notes.  I bought it for that and later discovered that it had been used as a diary.  This is about the third or fourth diary I've found at that thrift store.  People begin them and then simply quit--the diary has always been the manual version of the weblog.  Note:  Names have been changed from the originals in the diary.

The entries:

January, 31, 1999

At this point in time my feelings are quite complicated.  I really want someone to love me.  I doubt it will happen until I lose weight.  I can't believe in myself so neither can anyone else.  I want to be happy and have fun.  I want to be able to shop at any store I choose.  It feels like the only way that I can be happy is if I lose weight.  But a lot of times it feels like my existence doesn't matter so why should I even try to lose weight.  I met Mark yesterday and had a pretty good time with him.  I think he was really disappointed and I doubt I'll hear from him again.  I just want to go back to California to be close to my friends.  I really miss all of the hugs from Joe and Steve.  I'm afraid that being so far away from them will make us drift apart.  I really care about both of them.  I care about all of my camp friends, but Joe and Steve are special.  Steve and I are so similar that we have an unmatchable bond.  Pete is so sweet that I wish I could be with him all of the time.  They're both in California and for now I just have to deal with that.  But I would really love to be able to surprise them by coming home thin.

----------------

February 8, 1999

I decided to spend some of my money to buy a plane ticket to go home for Nancy's party.  I'm really excited to be able to see some of my friends.  i hope most of them will be able to come.  Sue, Joe and Steve have helped me to start the process of learning to like myself.  At this moment in time I would like to weigh less, for me, not anybody else.  I want to be successful at the (name of weight program).  I would really like to have an exercise routine that I would do at least three times a week. My goal for this week is to try to work exercising into my schedule.  In regards to my last entry Mark is still talking to me, we're just friends, but I don't want or exect anything else.  I've talked to Joe and Steve and I think my relationships with both of them are even stronger than they were before.  I'm trying to take life one day at a time and am trying to remind and convince myself that I really am a special person.

-------------

January 13, 2000

It's been almost a year since I've written in here.  A lot has happened, but my situation appears to be the same.  I still don't have anyone that loves me and I'm still not as thin as I would likek to be.  I thought Donald and I were in love and thought we were on our way to a relationship.  We oved past the Laura thing and things were going really well.  Then Tina entered the picture.  She'll drive him anywhere he needs to go at any time.  She buys him as many expensive gifts as she can and is willing to have a sexual relationship with him no strings attached.  Making love really means something to me.  I can't just sleep with someone without loving them and them loving me back.  So I guess Tina wins and I lose.  Losing really hurts and I'm very jealous that I was not the winner.  But I have to move on.  There must be someone out there who love me.  Pleas God send me someone to love who loves me back.

 

-----------------

January 31, 2000

Another airplane crashed today.  80-something people were killed.  It's sad, but it seems to happen so often that I think our country is getting used to hearing news like this.  Amidst all of this tragedy the only concerns that I had were 1) if 7th Heaven was going to show so that I could see Lance from InSync and 2) Is anyone ever going to love me.  Tom came over tonight to bring me dinner.  He is so nice.  I really enjoy spending time with him.  I found out today that he has a 14 year old son.  I'm not really sure how I feel about that.  Right now Bill is in my bedroom using my computer.  He talked to his girlfriend on the phone for a while.  He is so sweet and caring towards her, but he says that she's very unemotional towards him.  I would do anything to have someone care about me as much as he cares about her.  How can she not appreciate what she has in him.  Is there anyone out there for me?  If there is will we find each other? 

Today was a medical nightmare for me.  I'm afraid I have pneumonia and 2 doctors appointments later I don't have any more answers.  Is my cancer going to come back?  Will I die due to someone's ignorance?  Please God help me to find the silver lining in all of the dark clouds. 

 

------------ 

February 21, 2000

Well, it was pneumonia and 3 week and 2 antibiotic courses later I'm finally feeling better!  I was supposed to have a birthday party 2 days ago, but when Linda called to cancel at the last minute I couldn't take it anymore and ended up canceling the whole thing.  She's been very inconsiderate and rude lately and for the moment I do not consider her a friend. . . I'm glad her relationship with that 38 year old guy blew up in her face . . . Joanne mixed up my b-day with one of her friend's b-days and ended up sending me a Mr. Potatohead balloon a week early . . I was supposed to have lunch with Paul today, but I stood him up.  I know it's a terrible thing to do but it's pouring rain and I'm feeling very antisocial with the whole birthday party aftermath.  I'm still looking for love and am really hoping that it finds its way to me soon.

[And that was the last dated entry.]

Michael McGrorty

Dewey's Words

In reading his Simplified Library School Rules, one finds quite a few Dewey Bombs tossed about--the man simply had to do things his own way, and we thus have the following creations:

"Alfabetico-clast catalog.  An altabetic subject catalog in which the subjects are groupt in broad classes with numerous alfabetic subdivisions.  It may also include author and title entries in the same alfabet."

"Bibliografee.  One who is the subject of a bibliografy."

We also have the terms relativ location; indefinit intercalation and adjectiv, not to mention pamflet, autobiografy and bibliografy. 

But that is a small nut to chew compared to learning Cutter's colon abbreviations.  Are those still in use?

Michael McGrorty

Dewey in Writing

Now we come to grips with the issue of library handwriting, to which our mentor Mr. Dewey (or Dui, as he once wrote it) thought important enough to devote a section to in this little handbook for librarians of the 20th Century.

"Requirements:  Legibility, speed.  Nothing pays better for the time it costs the candidate for a library position than to be able to write a satisfactory library hand.  In this, legibility is the main consideration.  The catalog hand can not be written as fast as a running business hand, but skilful writers acquire reasonable speed without sacrificing legibility. The time of the writer is, however, of small importance compared with that of the reader. . . uniformity is vital to a neat appearance, and has much to do with legibility.  Tho (sic) every letter is perfectly formd, (sic) unless it is uniform with the other letters, the effect is like print in which perfect letters from different fonts are used in the same word.  Uniformity is essential among the various catalogers in the same library, as well as in individual practise.  A style should be carefully adopted by a library and all assistants required to follow it."

Dewey establishes rules for two types of library hand:  "Joind and disjoind," by which he means cursive writing and what we call hand printed letters.  What makes joind writing different from ordinary cursive?  Dewey insists that his students "Make letters upright with as little slant as possible, and uniformly the same, preferring a trifle backward rather than forward slant."  I do not find in this book any claim or reference to compactness, which seems to be the commonplace explanation for library hand--Dewey does insist on form, neatness and uniformity.  Here is a sample of joind hand:

 

And here a catalog card in the same:

 

And a sample including "alternativ" forms:

 

And the disjoind hand:

 

And there you have the essence of the Dewey library hand and style. 

Michael McGrorty

Dewey, Continued

Next in our little series we have an example of that library hand being used to write the entries for a shelf list.   

 

And here is a sample shelf list sheet for Serials:

 

Your postmodern librarian will doubtless suck in a huge breath when she realizes just how much writing was done in the old days--the accessions books and shelf lists of even a moderate-sized library could take up quite a few shelves, not to mention those catalog cards!  You knew of course that the American spelling of "catalog" was one of the few surviving remnants of Dewey's little spree with alternative spelling?  Well, you know now.  But just think of how much more library employment there would be if we still did things the old way.  More to come.

Michael McGrorty

Mr. Dewey's Hand

Lately on one of the library listservs there has been some writing about “library hand,” with a brief explanation by some folk who perhaps were senior enough to have experience of that bypassed bit of the librarian’s craft.

 

We are in possession of the late Mr. Dewey’s own Simplified Library School Rules, which contains some examples of that type of writing and more amusements as well.  This book was published in 1904, though the spine reads "1898." 

 

This book was once the possession of the Tennessee State Library and Archives.  As you can see by the bookplate below, they dedicated it to the memory of their Head Cataloger, Miss Catherine Anderson--although this didn't prevent their tossing it out in the fullness of time.  And of course, some clumsy fool had to stamp WITHDRAWN through the bookplate.

 

 

 

At rear of the book is the plate of a subsequent owner, whose biography I will leave to other hands.

 

  The following photograph is of a tool that contemporary librarians may never have seen.  It is an accession book, about which Dewey writes,

 

"To this the librarian turns for final reference in doubtful cases.  Here is the complete story of each volume, fully told, but in the most compact form.  It is the official indicator for the whole collection, the most permanent of library records.  Each line is a separate pigeonhole, in which, if not exactly the book, all the condenst (sic--Dewey's famous "simplified spelling" about which more anon) facts about the book are placed.  Thence they are never removed, they are not stolen, or lent, or condemd (sic) or withdrawn, or sent to the binder, or lost.  The card is never misplaced, the entry does not mysteriously disappear, a new edition never supersedes, the entry never needs to be rewritten.  The librarian may turn to his accession book to lean what, and where, and when, and whence, and how much, and feel sure of his answwer.  A well made accession book has an element of mathematical exactness unknown to the card catalog or shelf list.  It is the editio princips. 

 

 

 

Note that the entries in this accession book sample were made in library hand--but what does that mean?  We will explain a bit more in the next posting.

 

Michael McGrorty

American Libraries

Here is a postcard I received back in 2001 from the publishers of American Libraries.

 

 

I later got a nice unsigned letter from them indicating that they could not find a place for the piece--which by the way does exist.  I doubt they ever read it.

Michael McGrorty