stumbling across history in the details

[bronze_ribbons]

At my local public library, there are several pages in a 1963-4 volume of The Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature that have had to be laminated, presumably due to frequency of use. The subjects they correspond to?

p. 1079 - "Justice, Administration of -- United States"

pp. 1091-6: "Kennedy, John Fitzgerald"

pp. 1407-8: "Negroes in the United States"

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The cover of the October 15, 1964 Library Journal features the headline, "Is it possible to be '...both a Goldwater Republican and a friend of the library'? -- see page 3926." Inside, the editors endorse LBJ and Humphrey.

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From the November 1962 issue of Wilson Library Bulletin, page 234: "With a circulation of only 1,000, it is clear that not every library buys even a single copy [of the ALA's Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom] for staff use. This is difficult to understand in a profession which exists to facilitate intellectual communication."

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The October 1, 1964 issue of Library Journal includes a collection of "lacerations" from John Cotton Dana, about whom Charles A. Goodrum admiringly wrote, "Here was a librarian who could have held his own with Mencken and Bierce. Give Mr. Dana a fountain pen and in 15 minutes you'd have blood all over the room."


Samples:

"I sometimes fear my enthusiasm for the free public library is born more of contagion than of conviction. To this place come in good proportion the idle and lazy, also the people who cannot endure the burden of a thought, and who fancy they are improving their minds, while in fact, they are simply letting the cool wave of knowledge through a sieve of idle curiosity."

"[The card catalog] is abhorrent to many practical men who make use of books. The ignorant can't use it, the learned don't need it. It is a tedious and irritating task to finger cards. In a large catalogue the entry of the latest book, and the vast majority of those who use books want first of all the last book issued on the subject, is lost in a vast desert of useless references. Men of moderate intelligence, occasional visitors to the library, are helpless in the presence of the catalogue and turn in despair to the attendant, who often depends himself more on lists and special bibliographies than on the catalogue."

[On "All the World's Ills":] "I have a remedy. It is education. But it is damned slow in operation, and the Philistines be upon thee, Samson."

"A collection of books gathered at public expense does not justify itself by the simple fact that it is."

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[Current research subjects: Rose Leary Love and Frederic G. Melcher]

Comments

[xanthophyllippa.livejournal.com]

Peg, I love you. :^)

[mechaieh.livejournal.com]

*blows a kiss across the tops of the carrels at ye*

[xanthophyllippa.livejournal.com]

*bats eyelashes*