Adelaide Hasse and Documents Librarianship Aaryn D. Silva
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Running head: ADELAIDE HASSE 1 Adelaide Hasse and Documents Librarianship Aaryn D. Silva University of North Texas ADELAIDE HASSE 2 Abstract The purpose of this research paper is to examine the impact of librarian Adelaide Hasse on the field of library science, especially in terms of cataloging and school libraries. Adelaide Hasse (1868-1953) had no formal library training, yet she became a pioneer of documents librarianship, creating new and innovative classification systems at the Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL), Government Printing Office (GPO), and New York Public Library (NYPL). The classification systems she created form the basis of systems used today, and her bibliographies and checklists are likewise essential. She is especially well-known for helping create the SuDocs (Superintendent of Documents) classification system. Hasse was also heavily involved in library training programs, writing several articles and helping train new librarians at the LAPL and NYPL. Hasse was a strong advocate for libraries to provide services to the general public, not just the leisure class. This included students and teachers, and Hasse’s beliefs and advocacy had a lasting impact on school librarianship. The research provided here firmly supports Adelaide Hasse’s role as a pioneering librarian. ADELAIDE HASSE 3 Adelaide Hasse and Documents Librarianship With a career that spanned sixty years, librarian and bibliographer Adelaide Hasse left an undeniable mark on documents librarianship in America. From her early days at the Los Angeles Public Library to her work with the Government Printing Office and the New York Public Library, Hasse’s interest in organizing government documents led to systems that are still widely used today. Additionally, her belief that the public should have access to government documents gained traction in the early 20th century. Along with her trailblazing work with government documents, Hasse also worked with early librarian training programs and believed in public access to library materials. Hasse’s library career coincided with many new ideas in the field of library science. The Early Years and the Los Angeles Public Library Adelaide Hasse was born September 13, 1868 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and moved several times, landing in Los Angeles in 1887. No records of her early education remain, and she did not attend college. Her father, a physician, likely raised Hasse in a home that encouraged critical thinking and analysis (Grotzinger, 1993, p. 182). In 1889, the Los Angeles Public Library, which was founded in 1872, moved into spacious quarters in City Hall, and Tessa Kelso, shown in Figure 1, was hired as new library director. Adelaide Hasse applied for the position of assistant librarian at the LAPL and was hired by Kelso that year (Beck, 2006, p. 16). With no library experience, Hasse learned on the job, and this foray into libraries set the course of the rest of her career. Tessa Kelso had an impressive vision for her library, believing that libraries should be free and open to the public (Gust, 2008, p. 8). Kelso’s beliefs left a lasting impression on Hasse. ADELAIDE HASSE 4 Figure 1. A photograph of LAPL librarian, Tessa Kelso (ca. 1900). Taken from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tessa_Kelso_At_the_Pleasure_of_the_Board.jpg#filel inks When Hasse began working at the LAPL, the library held some 1,300 volumes of public documents in no particular order and with no systematic way to access them (Gust, 2008, p. 11). This collection grew to 17,925 volumes in just one year and continued to grow as the LAPL became a documents depository in 1891 (Nelson & Richardson, 1986, p. 82-83). There was no universal classification system, so Hasse set to work to design one for the LAPL. She began with the Department of Agriculture publications and created a checklist that was later published as the USDA Bulletin No. 9 (Gust, 2008, p. 12). Though not much remains of her classification system, she chose not to use the Dewey Decimal system. Instead, Hasse organized documents by provenance, meaning she kept all Department of Agriculture documents together. Her system, a ADELAIDE HASSE 5 series of codes and numbers, was simple enough for others to learn (Nelson & Richardson, 1986, pp.84-85) and set the stage for her future work with government documents, classification, and indexing. Hasse created checklists and bibliographies, increasing access of these documents to the public (Beck, 2006, p. 26). Figure 2. A photograph of the Los Angeles Public Library’s School and Juvenile Department in the 1890s. Taken from http://tessa.lapl.org/cdm/ref/collection/photos/id/112103 While at the LAPL, Hasse and Kelso also designed the first library training class within a U.S. public library, as shown in Figure 2 (Gust, 2008, p. 12). Though Dewey’s library school had existed since 1887 (Nelson & Richardson, 1986, p. 81), the LAPL library training program focused on a hands-on, apprenticeship approach. Hasse wrote a series of articles about the training of library employees for the 1895 Library Journal. She firmly believed that library school was not essential; what mattered was actual library experience. In 1895, Hasse wrote that ADELAIDE HASSE 6 knowing how to assign a subject to a book “is born of experience, brought about by contact with the public” (Hasse, 1895), not from taking a course at a library school. In 1891, the LAPL began working with public schools to provide books for students and teachers. When the program began, teachers were able to come to the library to check out books for use in their classrooms. As the program grew, librarians created lending lists of books, allowed children to get free library cards, and provided a rotating book service to schools (Gust, 2008, p. 19). Though Tessa Kelso certainly spearheaded the collaboration with public schools and advocated for open access for students, Hasse was strongly influenced by Kelso’s beliefs about public access to libraries. In 1895, Hasse and Kelso were forced to resign from the LAPL over political disputes with the library board. A Library Journal writer bemoaned their departure, describing Hasse and Kelso as “among the ablest library workers of the Pacific coast…they developed the Los Angeles Public Library from a condition of comparative insignificance into its present position as a medium of broad usefulness and educational force” (Library News, 1895, p. 162). Hasse’s time at the LAPL was indeed impressive; she devised a new way to organize documents, compiled bibliographies and indexes, helped develop a library training school, and worked to provide library access to all. The Government Printing Office and SuDocs Congress passed the Printing Act of 1895 in order to consolidate the distribution and sale of government documents (Grotzinger, 1978, p. 183). At the same time, the Office of the Superintendent of Documents was created within the Government Printing Office (GPO) to deal with the swelling numbers of government documents. Francis Crandall headed the organization and set out to collect thousands of current and past documents, create a collection for sale and ADELAIDE HASSE 7 another set to store in the depository, and provide reference services to the public (Cameron, 1983). Crandall hired Adelaide Hasse, shown in Figure 3, as the first librarian of the GPO in 1895. Her duties included collecting, organizing, and classifying the government’s documents (Malcomb, 2005, p. 13). The GPO leased a building in Washington, D.C., and Hasse set to work, creating storage and shelving in the space. She then had to literally go out and find government documents in places such as the sub-cellar of the Interior Department and a bricked-up room at the Capitol (Beck, 2006, p. 47). Hasse found and organized some 300,000 documents in her first six weeks (Cameron, 1983). Figure 3. A photograph (n.d.) of librarian Adelaide Hasse. Taken from Government Printing Office. ADELAIDE HASSE 8 Once Hasse had collected the documents, she needed a classification system for them. She began with Senate and House publications, organizing them by Congress and session. As she had done at the LAPL, Hasse assigned letters and codes to the documents: H for House and S for Senate, followed by a number code (1 for journals, 2 for reports, 3 for executive documents, and 4 for miscellaneous documents) (Nelson & Richardson, 1986, p. 92). Hasse’s systematic approach was the beginning of the Superintendent of Documents (SuDocs) classification system, which was easily processed and made accessible to the public. The SuDocs classification system was not fully developed until after Hasse left the GPO (Beck, 2006, p 52), but Hasse’s methods formed the core of the system, and she is known in the field as the creator of the SuDocs system (Malcomb, 2005, p. 14). By 1897, the documents library at the GPO was organized and held 16,841 printed documents and 2,597 maps (Cameron, 1986). Superintendent Crandall noted that “in its completeness in preserving every kind of public document, and every edition of the same, it is, I believe, not rivaled by any other collection” (Cameron, 1986). Though she only worked for the GPO for two years, Hasse once again left her mark on the organization and the entire field of documents librarianship. The New York Public Library In 1897, Dr. John Shaw Billings, shown in Figure 4, hired Adelaide Hasse to catalog documents at the New York Public Library (Beck, 2006, p. 66). From 1897 to 1913, Hasse developed the public documents collection of the NYPL, which was originally housed in the Astor Library, shown in Figure 5. Thousands of documents were unorganized. In just over a decade, Hasse cataloged 300,000 volumes (Grotzinger 1993, p. 345) and prepared checklists and bibliographies. As she found at the LAPL and the GPO, there were no rules for dealing with ADELAIDE HASSE 9 government documents.