HAROLD M. TURNER The CECL' s First Fifty Years

The first Conference of Eastern College Librarians was held in 1912; in 1964 the fiftieth such conclave took place. Throughout its history the CECL has been noted for its informality, its independence, and its prophetic concern for matters that later command the attention of the entire profession. Led in its early years by strong individual li­ brarians-such as Columbia's C. C. Williamson-the CECL has latterly taken its direction from a steering committee.

CERTAIN SINGULARITIES of this fifty­ especially on this fiftieth anniversary oc­ year-old Conference of Eastern College casion when silence itself might well be Librarians should be noted. These in­ golden. clude: its informality; its long fidelity to Yet having been made the Confer­ Columbia; a total inconsistency with re­ ence's antiquary, I am not easily silenced spect to its name (anyone may come, now. After spending several months off even library patrons); its coincidence and on in poking around in its past, fin­ with America's great feast day; its con­ gering its relics, and inhaling its dust, tinuing location in one of America's bet­ I have become attached to this Eastern ter holiday towns; its wholly indepen­ Conference, as one fifty-year-old to an­ dent status; and its total want of mem­ other. And hence I run the risk of saying bership, minutes, constitution, by-laws, not too little on this occasion but rather business proceedings, money mulcts in too much. the form of dues, and other trappings of As antiquary then I am drawn first­ the more formalized library conferences. almost in Old Testament style-to the But the singularities do not end there. people who have run the Conference For example, even the hastiest examina­ through the years. "In the Beginning" tion of its program contents will show there was W. Dawson Johnston of Co­ how little given this Conference has lumbia, who ran it for two years before been to self-analysis, to brooding over going on to his reward. And that was to its identity, to introspection or even to Paris as director of the American Li­ retrospection in any form. In fact, it has brary there. Next came William Coo­ carried these selfless qualities to the lidge Lane of Harvard, and William C. point where one might legitimately ask Hicks of Columbia, who ran it in tandem whether such a paper as this one belongs for three years; then Hicks alone for ten on the Conference program at all, and years more before going on to his re­ ward, and that was Yale (no Bois de Mr. Turner is Lecturer in the School of Boulogne, of course, but a good place Library Service at Columbia University. even so). Next came Harriet B. Prescott, This paper is printed as read to the fiftieth Columbia's chief cataloger, who ran it Conference of Eastern College Librarians in as an interim matter for one year. Then, New York on November 28, 1964. with two years of assistance from Miles I 289 290 I College & Research Libraries • July, 1965

0. Price while sidelined by illness, C. C. a sure hand, with Hare, and with much Wi~liamson ran it for fourteen years, and dexterity, which make the Conference Carl M. White for several more. There­ seem all the more worth celebrating to­ after the responsibility passed into the day. As Dr. Williamson cheerfully ac­ hands of its steering committees where knowledged to me not long ago, he had it has remained ever since. By every one serious administrative Haw. He show of the record, I might add, these found it almost painfully hard to dele­ committees have done their work effec­ gate detail. But not for want of faith in tively and with good grace. But then his subordinates. Rather, I suspect, be­ I would be neglecting my own responsi­ cause he was so fond of detail himself. bilities .as antiquary if I failed to point In any case, at his desk, first in Low out that here and there the record has library and then in Butler, he centralized also turned up a chairman who sounded the entire responsibility for the Confer­ a little harassed and overburdened, and ence. From there he ran the whole show. a little like the man Lincoln once de­ He handled the delicate business of scribed, who after being tarred and speaker and topic procurement, and in­ feathered, and .about to be ridden out of cidentally, he had quite a knack for that. town on a rail said, .. if it weren't for the Almost ingenuously, he would write honor of the thing, I'd just as soon walk." people asking their suggestions for Of all the people, however, who have topics. Then once he had them, he run the Conference, Dr. Williamson is would ask the same people who sug­ the one I would most like to linger with gested them to speak on them. And now for a bit. He is an extraordinary often enough they would. man, if you don't know him-a spare and Also, Dr. Williamson arranged for the erect eighty-eight-year-old, still very annual meeting place as it moved suc­ much alive, living in Greenwich, Con­ cessively from Milbank chapel to the necticut, and not only running the Men's Faculty Club and the Women's, Greenwich Garden Club now but the to Casa Italiana, and finally to Harkness. club's library as well. Dr. Williamson He screened the mailing lists. He saw to came to Columbia in 1926, you may re­ the mailings. He handled all the corre­ member. He came by way of Bryn Mawr spondence, both outgoing and incoming, where he taught economics, the New relating to the Conference. By far the York public library where he had been most of the incoming mai~ was lauda­ chief of the economics and business di­ tory, but occasionally it could be cranky, vision, the Rockefeller Foundation for as when a college librarian in New Jer­ which he did an Americanization study, sey complained she had heard so many and the Carnegie Corporation which talks on the Library of Congress that sponsored his report on American library she could now make one on it herself. education which he alone refers to today He also prepared, edited, and all but as the .. Carnegie Report." saw the annual program through the His fourteen-year stewardship of the press. And that could be a hazardous Conference was remarkable in many re­ job, like the year he left off Isadore spects. For one, he was simultaneously Mudge's middle initial, or the time when managing two other sizeable enterprises: right up until the final galley proof, the Columbia University library system Keyes D. Metcalf was unaccountably and its school of library service. But down to discuss .. bar, college, and re­ more remarkable, I think, is the way in search libraries" instead of the more which he ran the Conference as if it sobering .. university, college and re­ were a kind of third Indian club he kept search libraries." twirling in the air. And he did so with Dr. Williamson also handled the Con- The CECL's First Fifty Years I 291 ference' s finances, such as they were. himself would toss out a library subject And that could be another precarious for discussion. Often it bore on some task considering that the Conference action of the ALA Executive Council. seldom had more than five dollars to its Just as often it was a rehash of what name (it always passed the hat in those the Association of Research Libraries, days) and that more than once he had another elite, was talking about. More­ to throw not only his own considerable over, there seems to have been a peren­ prestige but all of Columbia's behind nial gripe around the table about the Li­ him as well, in prevailing upon one of brary of Congress' cooperative catalog­ the city's larger banking systems to carry ing venture and about the way LC kept this blue chip account. bouncing cards back for correction until But even all these were not the end the catalogers were scared to death even of his tasks. Besides carrying the full to send copy in. The Friday Nighters load of this Saturday's proceedings on talked about public documents, too, and his shoulders, he also took it upon him­ the need for better numbering and in­ self every year to run a kind of Confer­ dexing systems. And since, as my in­ ence Within a Conference, or, more ac­ formant told me, these dinners were held curately, a Conference Before a Con­ in the period when microfilm was in its ference. And this was the annual Friday ascendancy, much as automation is to­ Night Dinner and Smoker afterward­ day, they also discussed that. I was fur­ a kind of stag at eve at which presum­ ther told that it was as important for a ably no one drank more than his fill. man to be able to discourse knowingly I cannot resist going on about these about "salts of bromide" and the relative Friday night dinners for a bit. They reduction ratios of 8, 16, and 35 mm were highly honorific affairs, freighted microfilm then as it is to do so about with status, and hedged all about with "parameters" and "printouts" and "simu­ restrictions. They were restricted first lation studies" today. to men, and then more specifically, to Now while these dinners were tightly those who after years on the slippery restricted affairs, occasionally the group ladder upwards, now perched securely would make room at the table for a on the top rungs, great gray eagles of young man on the way up, a Danton or the American library scene. They were a Fleming, for example. But never under men like the Goodriches of the College any circumstances would they make of the City of New York and Dartmouth; room for a woman. How inflexibly this Mark Llewellyn Raney of Johns Hop­ rule operated is shown in a letter Dr. kins; Otto Kinkeldey of Cornell; Andrew Williamson wrote-with tongue in cheek, Keogh of Yale; William Warner Bishop I am sure-to a colleague upstate who of Michigan; Fremont Rider of W es­ was unable to attend one year and was leyan; Milton Lord of the Boston public brash enough to suggest that a certain library; Henry Lydenberg and Paul female on his staff attend in his place. North Rice of the New York public li­ Said Dr. Williamson: brary, and Keyes Metcalf of Harvard. In short, The Establishment. I am sorry it will not be practicabl€ to ask Miss W. to represent you be­ According to a Friday Night "regular" cause this little dinner is an intimate of the period, the dinners were both seri­ stag affair ... always has been, and I ous and informal. They began with gen­ am sure I would incur the wrath of all eral conversation. Then around coffee the men who attend if I were to invite and dessert time, an unobtrusive agenda a mere woman. would begin to function. Paul North Rice, Keyes Metcalf, or Dr. Williamson Now these were fighting words and in 292 I College & Research Libraries • July, 1965 a later day and age perhaps enough so to examination, at least not publicly. But . start a battle of the sexes on the spot. there was one time it did and that came But as it was, the women of the Confer­ in 1939, in the impasse at hand, when ence retaliated in the only way they felt with Dr. Williamson's full endorsement they could at that time. They started a and with the consent of others, Willard Friday night dinner of their own in the P. Lewis, librarian of Pennsylvania State Women's Faculty Club next door. Cigars College and soon to become secretary of and tiparillos not then being in vogue the Association of College and Refer­ among women, I do not believe there ence Librarians, spoke on "The Future was a smoker afterwards. But certainly Status and Conduct of the Conference of these dinners had a prestige of their own Eastern College Librarians." In his talk, with such luminaries around the table as Mr. Lewis offered three alternative pro­ Flora Belle Ludington, Miss Mudge, posals for the Conference's future: ( 1) Minnie E. Sears, Lavina Stewart, Julia that it remain wholly independent (and Pettee, and of course, Mrs. C. C. Wil­ I do not think Mr. Lewis' heart really liamson. was in that); ( 2) that it be absorbed But all of this is simply by way of in­ within the Association of College and sisting that Dr. Williamson was rarely Reference Librarians; and ( 3) as a kind gifted, especially where the Conference of compromise between the first two was concerned, and I think it is fair to proposals, that it merely affiliate with say, with due respect to all who have ACRL. followed him since, that much that is It was number three which Mr. Lewis best about the Conference today still seemed to favor most himself. It would, bears his imprint. When I saw him last he said, mean neither loss of autonomy autumn, he wore the red ribbon of the nor of Columbia as the meeting place. Legion of Honor in his lapel. He told me, Moreover, the college library subsection by the way, that any number of people of the association would take over all the had offered to snip it off for him, think­ chorework of running the Conference, ing it was the string of a dry cleaner's even to underwriting its cost and thus tag inadvertently left there. In any case, giving it a sense of moneyed amplitude while the ribbon was worn for his work which until then it had never enjoyed. in helping to promote funds for the And finally as an added dividend, Mr. printed catalog of the Bibliotheque Na­ Lewis offered to have the annual pro­ tionale we now have, it might have rep­ ceedings of the Conference published in resented all his many distinctive contri­ the new ACRL Quarterly. As it might butions to the Conference just as well. even today, Mr. Lewis' proposal had a And that leads me to a second point certain glitter and seductive charm to it. about the Conference. Even Williamsons There is something to be said, after all, get weary. And after so many years of · for the life of a kept conference. And so running the Conference all but single the proposal did draw some serious con­ handedly, he became so himself. So sideration. But in the end, the Confer­ much so, in fact, that the status of the ence showed not only its spirit of inde­ Conference itself as we know it today pendence but its moral fibre as well. It became gravely imperiled. Dr. William­ voted to continue going it alone, solitary, son wanted to be relieved of the re­ unkept, and untarnished. And a loner it sponsibility, and asked that another has been ever since. mechanism for carrying it on be estab­ But to the one factor, weariness, which lished. had imperiled the Conference, . another Earlier I mentioned that the Confer­ should be added, too. And that was ence had never gone in much for self- Columbia's continuing sensitivity about The CECL's First Fifty Years I 293 seeming to monopolize the Conference, is here again today was asked recently to hug it too close, to own it. Dr. Wil­ to explain the magnetic attraction that liamson had said one year himself that the Conference has held for him and he was coming to feel like an hereditary perhaps for others, too. After itemizing monarch, a veritable king of the Con­ some of the magnetic tugs already men­ ference there in Casa Italiana, and so he tioned, he added one more. This was the offered to abdicate on the spot to any prophetic, almost oracular quality of the other interested individual, institution, Conference. "It has," he said, "always or both. And though none took him up been a foreshadowing. Not only has it on it and his unanointed sovereignty kept abreast of most of the important continued, the matter did not rest there things librarians were talking about at altogether. Much later, in 1948, his suc­ any given moment but often a jump cessor Dr. White expressed much the ahead of them." And over the years the same misgivings. Then, with the very record would· seem to bear the gentle­ best interests of the Conference at heart, man out. he actually put the Conference on the Certainly one case in point was when block or up for grabs. And the possibility Ralph R. Shaw, then librarian of the was even suggested of ending the Con­ United States Department of Agricul­ ference then and there. ture, came in 1950 to talk about his Rap­ But whether out of sentimental attach­ id Selector, and that was all of a decade ment for Columbia or sudden panic at before the Information Retrievalists were the thought of losing out on a long holi­ in full voice. Surely another was in 1915 day weekend in New York or a combina­ when an unidentified speaker called for tion of the two, the Conference elected new union lists of serials-eleven years to remain where it was. And so far as I before the great omnibus wrought by know, the twin specters of affiliation and Winifred Gregory. And still another was dislocation have not appeared again in 1921 when James T. Gerould of since. Princeton, twenty-one years before the Properly considered, however, the Farmington Plan, was calling on the Conference of Eastern College Librar­ research libraries of America to begin ians has been far more than the sum of differentiating among the fields of their its unorthodoxies or of the people who collecting. And the library survey was have run it or of the existential perils decidedly an infant art when the subject which have occasionally beset it. As with was first introduced to the Conference the tattooed lady who was a poet under by Blanche Pritchard McCrum of Wash­ the skin, these tend only to be its surface ington and Lee, in 1938. markings. Its true substance, true sig­ More examples of the Conference's nificance, lie beneath and more particu­ prophetic gifts might be offered. But let larly, in its subject matter. For peren­ me mention just one more. Whether to­ nially that is the Conference's real ·busi­ day's gadgeteers would own her as a ness-to deliver up the kind of subject spiritual forebearer or not, Ethel M. Fair matter that will be both stimulating and clearly had the jump on them by at least valuable for those representatives of aca­ a half generation when she began col­ demic libraries, small and large, who lecting exhibits for a Conference talk in come so faithfully, in such large num­ 1939 on "New Library Devices and In­ bers, and often from so far afield to hear novations." Collecting them ·had not it discussed. been easy, apparently, and so, near the In this connection, a Virginian who eve of the Conference, she turned to Dr. has been attending the Conference with Williamson for whatever he might be some regularity ever since 1939 and who able to gather up out of Columbia's sup- 294 I College & Research Libraries · July, 1965 ply. Always helpful, he did what he tics of explosion. In 1912 America's pop­ could, and that resulted in the following ulation was around 92,000,000. Today it items: a pasting machine, an electric nears 200,000,000. In 1912 America had typewriter, interchangeable wire parti­ 494 undergraduate and graduate institu­ tions, folding open-bar shelves, and elec­ tions, including ten recognized library tric erasers. schools, and a student enrollment of two But these were not all. In addition, he hundred and seventy-five thousand. To­ offered two items which understandably day it has 1,985 colleges and universities, could not go in a display case but which thirty-four accredited library schools, the Conference was welcome to inspect and a student enrollment nearing four if it wished. These were Columbia's new million. Science has its familiar statistic: electrically-controlled doors to its stacks 95 per cent of all the scientists who ever and its new gravity conveyor belt for the lived are alive today. And thanks to return of books to the college library. Abraham Kaplan in the current Library And he probably suggested the last item Quarterly, the :6.eld of information now on the well-founded theory that any­ has its statistic, too. Namely, that the thing that gets books back into the li­ yearly output of printed words now brary is information retrieval at its best. amounts to approximately ten million These, then, may be enough to illus­ words for each man, wo.man, and child trate some of the Conference's futuristic in the United States. tendencies. But keeping up with the Now the Conference might have ig­ present can be difficult enough and nev­ nored these explosions or drawn back er more so than in the last half century. from them. Instead, in all the areas ap­ When the charter group of librarians propriate to its mission, it has responded met here on the Saturday after Thanks­ to them not only sensitively but almost giving in 1912, they did so less than a seismologically. It has done so in war­ month after President Wilson's election time when war has not closed it down to his :6.rst term of office, only nine as it did three times. In 1917 the Confer­ months after the sinking of the Titanic, ence discussed the literature of war, less than three months before the onset what to collect of it, and how. And after of the federal income tax, all of eight reconvening again in 1919 it promptly years before women won the right to addressed itself to postwar library prob­ vote, and at a time when some 20 per lems and needs. Again in the meetings cent of the children in the United States of 1944, 1945, and 1946, it devoted itself were their own breadwinners. In 1912 either wholly or in part to the subject of also, world war was still unknown. But desolated libraries abroad and postwar since then the relentless present has ad­ library planning at home. The Confer­ vanced through two world wars and into ence reacted to Depression too. While a Cold War. It has moved through the apples presumably were being sold on eras of the Teapot Dome, the Bonus Broadway street comers outside, men March, and Blue Eagles, through those like Donald Gilchrist and Henry B. Van ·" of the New Deal, the Fair Deal, and the Hoesen were considering ways to keep New Frontier, and on to atoms, astro­ library service afloat in the face of crip­ nauts, and antipoverty programs as at pled budgets and decimated staffs. present. And to the more peaceable explosions But along with these more obvious of exponential growth the Conference signs of turbulence, change, growth, and has responded in like manner. From the even progress, there have been others to inaugural meeting in 1912, for example, mark the Conference's passage through when Frederick C. Hicks spoke on .. In­ time, and among them, the simple statis- ter-Library Loans," the Conference has The CECL's First Fifty Years I 295 discussed cooperation in its expanding the larger vision of librarianship that can forms and on its ascending levels no less "trace horizons thin and fine." than twenty-one times. On this theme With expanding college and university alone the Conference has passed some curricula and proliferating honors and monumental milestones, as when Wini­ independent study programs, the Con­ fred Gregory came to report on her Na­ ference has many times analyzed the tional Union List in 1926; when Ernest library's role in their support. It has also Kletsch proposed his idea of a central at various times studied library archi­ clearinghouse for interlibrary loans at tecture, library administration and re­ the Library of Congress in 1935; when cruitment, library budgets, library re­ Archibald MacLeish, apparently none serves, and rare books. Indeed there is the worse for his embattled appointment scarcely any subject of consequence to the year before, came in 1940 to seek academic librarianship in the past fifty greater cooperation among American li­ years or more which the Conference at braries in collecting research materials; one time or another has not discussed. or in 1962 when the entire Conference Needless to say, the Conference has was focused on regional, national, and not neglected cataloging and classifica­ tion. These, too, have been persistent worldwide levels of library cooperation. themes throughout the years. And the With technology, too, the Conference catalog itself in the discussions has pro­ has kept pace, from the new title-a-line gressed through every incarnation from linotype for printing catalog cards in card., to microcard, to book, to electronic 1915 to the pushbutton instrumentation catalog at present. In fact, on one not­ with its awesome and sometimes alarming able occasion, catalogers themselves capabilities today. When, incidentally, were a topic. This was in 1932 when the first sense of human inadequacy in Roger Howson, then Columbia librarian, the face of today's mechanized intellec­ may have made his final public bid for tion first began to be felt here is not their affections when he addressed him­ known. Perhaps the maximum impact of self to the question, "Must Catalogers Be it simply awaits the day when not peo­ Robots?" ple but computers do the talking here. In mentioning Mr. Howson's talk, it The Conference has also studied pho­ may as well be noted that the Confer­ tographic developments from the day in ence has had its tempestuous moments. 1930 when Andrew Keogh brought down Well within recall of many was the day Yale's new Dexigraph to prove the cam­ then Jacques Barzun, also of Columbia, era eye was quicker than the hand in spoke on the topic, "The Scholar Looks copying catalog cards, down to the pres­ at the Librarian." It was a rather pained ent when microfilm teamed with elec­ look, evidently. From the temper of the tronics can now store whole libraries in discussion at the time and at least one let­ one black box. ter that has survived in the file, I would This year, the Conference will fore­ assume there are still some librarians cast the future of education for librar­ around who would welcome a return ianship. But that subject, too, has a long match with Mr. Barzun. And perhaps a genealogy here, going back all the way few may return to the Conference each to a consideration of the Williamson re­ year in the frevent hope that one of their port in 1923. In fact, the Conference has colleagues will speak on, "The Librarian seldom let much time go by since with­ Looks at the Scholar." out trying to settle on the mode of li­ Now more might be added to this brary education which not only will pro­ chronicle. As it is, I have all but over­ duce day-to-day functional skills but also looked the admirable record of the Con- 296 I College & Research Libraries • July, 1965 ference behind the scenes and the all but better still, for its eternal youth. But this . anonymous work of people like David I must leave to the science of geriatrics Clift, Charles Adams, John Berthel, in any way it may apply to library con­ Lawrence Heyl, Charles Mixer, C. Don­ ferences. ald Cook, Kathryn Sewny, Winifred Lin­ Entirely as a layman I can only sug­ derman, and others who have done so gest more of the same which has already much in support of the committees, not succeeded. And that is, informality, in­ only to put on a good conference but to dependence, brevity, timeliness, Man­ make it a good party as well. A few have hattan at Thanksgiving time, Morning­ asked me as the Conference antiquary if side Heights, and no more speeches on I might not offer some prescription for the history of the Conference than seem the Conference's continued longevity and absolutely necessary. • •

For Library Building Planners

THE LIBRARY ADMINISTRATION DIVISION of the American Library Association, 50 E. Huron, Chicago, Illinois, can be of great help to library building planners because of the many services it per­ forms. These services include furnishing a list of library consultants in any area of the country, supplying a list of new college library buildings in each area, providing a list of architects who have de­ signed college libraries in each state, producing bibliographies on college library planning, and sponsoring building institutes pre­ ceding the American Library Association annual conference. One other rna jor service that LAD performs is to provide for loan to librarians throughout the country building program state­ ments, floor plans, photographs and slides of recently constructed junior college, college and university library buildings. LAD's continued high level of service in this area depends to a great extent upon the completeness of its collection of these materials. Due to the marked increase in library building planning and con­ struction at the academic level and the resulting increase in requests for these planning materials, LAD has experienced shortages in various parts of its collection and especially in the junior college section. Therefore, librarians who have recently been involved in plan­ .. ning a new junior college library building are requested to send any of the above material for their libraries to the Assistant to the Executive Secretary at the above address. Material on recently con­ structed college and university library buildings would also be most welcome.