Women of Library History

Clara Stanton Jones

Submitted by Lorna Peterson, University at Buffalo. Image from “Mourning the Loss of Clara Stanton Jones,” Detroit Public Library.

Clara Stanton Jones (May 14, 1913-September 30, 2012) was the first woman and first African American to lead the Detroit Public Library.  Born in St. Louis, Missouri, she died in Oakland, California at age 99. Her appointment as DPL library director was controversial. Two library board members quit in protest but she was supported by the United Auto Workers and a coalition of progressive businessmen. Her legacy with DPL was the delivering of services to nontraditional library users.  With a bachelor degree from Spelman College earned in 1934, she completed the library science degree from the University of Michigan in 1938.

Her accomplishments are many. In 1972 at DPL, she established TIP: The Information Place, a community information and referral system that became a model for other libraries throughout the country. She was the first African-American president of the American Library Association in 1976 and in 1977.  President Jimmy Carter appointed Jones as Commissioner to the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science in 1978. She served this post until 1982.  And she advocated for the successful passing of the “Resolution on Racism and Sexism Awareness” in 1977 despite ALA’s Intellectual Freedom Committee’s recommendation to the ALA Executive Board that the resolution be rescinded.

Marta L. Dosa

Submitted by Fred Stoss, Associate Librarian and Subject Specialist for Biological Sciences, Ecology and Environmental Sciences & Studies, Geology, and Mathematics at SUNY Buffalo. He is also the library liaison to the athletic department, past chair of SLA’s Environmental Information Division, past chair of  SRRT’s Task Force on the Environment, and past coordinator of SRRT.   

Professor Emerita, Marta L. Dosa, Ph.D. (University of Michigan, 1971), spent nearly four decades contributing to the growth of knowledge in library and information science. There are three major aspects of this career worth describing here as a nomination for recognition as a “Woman of Library History.”  Marta Dosa made immeasurable contributions to the field of information science, and was a tireless leader of seminars and conferences worldwide.

First and foremost were her efforts in bridging the availability of and access to the vast data and information repositories between developing regions and the industrialized and more developed regions of the world. Marta Dosa was among the very first academics who realized the vast cultural, social, economic and political differences between those two groups: the data and information rich nations, and the much more impoverished nations in such critical need of that very same base of knowledge on which to improve their standards of living and indicators of a better quality of life.

Marta maintained an ever-present awareness of the importance of problem solving that involved shared points of access, cogent policies related to information resources sharing, the dramatic importance of shared information technologies and above all the need for those cross-disciplinary exchanges of ideas that bridged not only literature, data, and information, but also and perhaps more so, that crossed political philosophies and lines of work.

In addition to her Professorship in the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University, Marta held an adjunct faculty status at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. She was a long-time dedicated member of the Association for Information Science and the Special Libraries Association, where she was instrumental with several Federal librarians and information officers established the SLA Environmental Information Division. Marta served as Chair of the Federation Internationale de Documentation (FID) from 1982-1988, and whose leadership allowed FID to continue is mission and service to advance research in information and library science through international collaboration and recognition in the applied, life and physical sciences; the social sciences; and the humanities.

Marta’s research and teaching included the teaching of the first graduate class on Environmental Information, which was taken not only by students seeking their Masters of Library Science, Masters of Information Resources Management, and Doctor of Philosophy degree, but by students seeking advanced degrees in agriculture and forestry, public health, policy science, law, environmental science and policy, education, and public administration. Marta’s work also provided the first serious examination of the role of data and information management in the areas related to gerontology.

It is, however, worth noting that Marta’s ethical and moral devotion to the concept of free and unfettered access to information is found in her book Libraries in the Public Scene (Greenwood), a dramatic account of German librarian scholars living and working under the repression of National Socialism—an account she witnessed as a Hungarian refugee living in West Germany.

Her honors include receiving the Outstanding Information Science Teacher Award in 1986 from the American Society for Information Science, and the University Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award in 1989 from the United Methodist Church.

Dosa’s late husband served as librarian at Syracuse University from 1958 to 1965. Marta Dosa retired from Syracuse after 34 years of teaching, research, and service.

Henriette Avram

Submitted by Violet Fox, MLIS student at University of Washington iSchool (graduating in June!). Photo: Henriette Avram presents a roll of magnetic tape holding over 9,000 bibliographic records to Richard Coward of the British National Bibliography (1967). American Libraries October 1989.

Henriette Avram (1919-2006) was a computer programmer turned librarian who developed the MARC format. Avram began her career at the National Security Agency in 1952, at a time when learning programming was “a bootstrap operation.” After moving to the private sector in the 1960s, she worked as a systems analyst and was hired at the Library of Congress’s Office of the Information System Specialist in 1965.

Tasked with manipulating cataloging data for computer processing, Avram delved into analyzing the complexities of bibliographic description. After intense evaluation, she developed a pilot program for MAchine Readable Cataloging (MARC). The pilot program lasted from 1966 to 1968, and by March 1969, LC began distributing MARC records to subscribing libraries. Avram worked tirelessly to ensure that MARC became a national and then an international standard.

A truly revolutionary innovation, MARC opened up a new world of interlibrary cooperation. For over forty years, it’s been the basis for library automation throughout the world. Avram’s work has reverberated across the library profession.

A delightful retrospective on Avram’s career is available in the October 1989 issue of American Libraries (“Mother Avram’s Remarkable Contribution”). [Ed: see also this post via My Daguerreotype Librarian.]

Ida Leeson

Anna Fidgeon (Digital Learnings Initiatives Librarian at California State University, Northridge) submitted this post and found the above photo on the State Library of New South Wales’s Flickr stream.

Ida Emily Leeson (1885-1964) was the first woman to be appointed the position of Mitchell Librarian in 1932. The appointment was wrought with controversy at a time when men dominated prestigious library positions in Australia. Born February 11, 1885 in Leichhardt to working-class parents, Leeson was a promising student who graduated with honors from the University of Sydney with a B.A. in history. After a very brief stint in teaching, Leeson began a position as a library assistant at the Public Library of New South Wales in 1906. In 1909, she was transferred to the Mitchell Library (a wing of what is now the State Library of New South Wales), where she processed David Scott Mitchell’s remarkable collection of “Australiana”. Leeson’s interest in Australian and Pacific materials grew as she worked up the ranks at the Mitchell Library, eventually landing the senior position of principal accessions officer in 1919.

In 1932, Leeson was appointed as a Mitchell Librarian, a position generally considered successor to the principal librarian. Now that a woman was appointed, library trustees reduced the status and salary of the Mitchell librarian. Controversy surrounded both the appointment of a woman to the position as well as the decision to reduce the position’s status.  During her tenure at Mitchell Library, substantial collections and archives were acquired, including many Australian and Pacific documents. Leeson wrote “The Mitchell Library, Sydney: Historical and Descriptive Notes” for the library’s 150th anniversary celebration. In 1935, Leeson was awarded King George V’s silver jubilee medal .

Leeson had professional and personal relationships with many notable literary figures, and worked perhaps most closely with Miles Franklin. At one point, Leeson lived with her partner, Florence Birch, at a “bohemian enclave” owned by architects Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin.

During wartime, Leeson was active in the Australian Military Forces, first as a research officer, then as captain, then as major.  She worked closely with Lieutenant-Colonel A. A. Conlon. As war was ending, Leeson returned to libraries as an archivist-librarian for the School of Civil Affairs. She left for about a year, beginning in 1949 to start a library for the South Pacific Commission in Nouméa, New Caledonia. She continued work for the South Pacific Commission after her return and in 1954, assembled “A Bibliography of Bibliographies of the South Pacific”.

Leeson spent much of her later years doing private and university research. She died in 1964.

Sources:

Baiba B. (1986). Leeson, Ida Emily (1885–1964). Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. Retrieved March 8, 2013, from http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/leeson-ida-emily-7157/text12359

State Library New South Wales (n.d.). History of the Library. Retrieved March 8, 2013, from http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/about/history/index.html

Martin, S. (2006). Ida Leeson: A life. Crows Nest, N.S.W: Allen & Unwin.

Julia Roselle Pearce

Submitted by Lori Goetsch, Dean of Libraries at Kansas State University.

In September 1894, Julia Roselle Pearce was appointed the first full time librarian at Kansas State University (then Kansas State Agricultural College) in Manhattan, KS. Pearce was from Manhattan and graduated from the college in 1890. Before becoming head librarian, she was employed as a stenographer in the office of President George Fairchild, 1891-1892, and assistant librarian, 1892-1894.  The Board of Regents granted her a six week leave of absence in 1895 “to attend a library school.”  

Pearce served as librarian until 1898 when she was replaced by Helen Wescott.

Eliza Gordon Browning

The image above is from the Indiana Historical Society’s website. Today’s post was written and submitted by Jackie Nytes of the Indianapolis Public Library.

Sadie Peterson Delaney

Women’s History Month is almost over…

…but Women of Library History is not!

• We had a phenomenal response to our call for submissions, so we’ve still got a lot to share. We will be celebrating Women’s History Wednesday for the next several months so that we can post everything we’ve received. (If you haven’t seen your submission on the blog yet, you will!) I’ll be adding the tag “women’s history wednesday” to all of our Wednesday posts going forward; feel free to join in the fun each week with your own women’s history posts.
• If you’d like to know more about the Feminist Task Force, get involved with our other activities, or just continue your social networking addiction, you can join the Feminist Task Force Facebook group. FTF also has a mailing list and a Wiki.
• The image at the top of the post was sent in by Kathleen de la Pena McCook (University of South Florida). Kathleen reminds us that “this series was begun by this book and continued by COSWL.”

Five Ladies Who Contributed to the Life of a Non-Traditional Library

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