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Library history rediscovered: American Library Association 21st General Meeting, Atlanta, Georgia, May 8–13, 1899 The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Martinez, Katharine. 2013. Library history rediscovered: American Library Association 21st General Meeting, Atlanta, Georgia, May 8– 13, 1899. Harvard Library Bulletin 23 (3), Fall 2012: 46-48. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:42669146 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Library History Rediscovered: American Library Association 21st General Meeting, Atlanta, Georgia, May 8–13, 1899 Katharine Martinez American Library Association 21st General Meeting, Atlanta, Georgia, May 8–13, 1899. 34 x 42 cm. Portrait Collection, VSCO230.00051. oving the Fine Arts Library out of the Fogg Art Museum so the building could be renovated was a bittersweet experience for the Mlibrary staf. On the one hand, we were sadly unraveling a long-standing relationship with our colleagues in the museum, while at the same time we were celebrating with them the vision of new refreshed environments for the museum and 46 Te Fine Arts Library at 50 library collections we all loved. As we began to inventory and box the library’s very large photograph collection, we had the pleasure of looking at works that had quietly rested in drawers for years. During the three years we spent preparing for the move we learned so much about the collections. One large photograph particularly caught my attention. In May 1899, over 200 librarians from across the United States assembled in Atlanta for the annual meeting of the American Library Association (ALA). Te six- day program was packed with sessions devoted to reports from ofcers and committees, as well as sessions about library collections, services, and buildings. Fortunately for the attendees, social activities relieved the serious proceedings. One afernoon the attendees traveled to Stone Mountain for an outdoor barbecue and the next afernoon the sessions and a reception were held at a private gentlemen’s club, the Piedmont Driving Club House, “with lunch and coon-dance at sundown.”10 It was during one of these social events that the accompanying group photograph was taken. Initially I wondered if this photograph of such a large group might actually be a composite of several photographs. Tis might help to explain why one woman in the middle of the group has her back to the photographer. Afer the photograph was scanned and we could study the image more closely, I concluded that it was not a composite. If it were a composite, more of the individual faces would have been visible. It appears that the photographer simply attempted to capture an informal view of a group, which suggested to me that it was intended as a memento or keepsake of the conference. Our copy of the photograph was owned by the Librarian of Harvard University for thirty years, William Coolidge Lane (1887–1931), also President of the American Library Association at the time. It was given to Harvard College Library by his wife afer his death in 1931, and eventually it came to the Fine Arts Library, joining over two million photographs items in our Special Collections Department. When I frst encountered this photograph among the Fine Arts Library’s collection of oversized portrait prints and photographs, I was intrigued for several reasons. Te photograph depicts a large group of serious white men and women outdoors, well dressed in business attire yet informally arranged for the camera, and not posed shoulder-to-shoulder or grouped by gender. Some were seated on the ground while others stood. I wondered if the group organized itself for the photographer. What might this photograph tell us about the politics of the emerging profession, twenty-one years afer the founding of the American Library Association? Did the Association’s ofcers take a dominant place at the front to denote their status? Te balding, bearded man in the middle of the front row who appears to be lost in thought is Melvil Dewey (1851–1931), best known as the creator of the “Dewey Decimal 10 Papers and Proceedings of the 21st General Meeting of the American Library Association held at Atlanta, Georgia, May 8–13, 1899, 14. Katharine Martinez 47 System,” a classifcation and subject indexing system, still in use, for organizing books in libraries. Dewey’s passion was education and efciency, the former leading him to participate in the establishment of the American Library Association and the latter to a less-successful drive to reform spelling and the metric system. Dewey, despite his appearance in this photograph, was a charismatic leader and behind-the-scenes bully who signifcantly shaped the association’s early development and served as its president and secretary. When the ALA group photograph was taken Dewey was state librarian of New York, but his professional standing was about to fall. His reputation in history is mixed. He championed librarianship as a profession for women, yet throughout his career he was prone to poor judgment in fnancial management and in his professional relationships with women, whom he ofen referred to as “his girls.” In the group photograph he is surrounded by women. To his lef, the vigorous looking woman in a dark dress with an impressive hat is one of his protégés, Katharine Lucinda Sharp (1865–1914), a dynamo of librarianship. Dewey handpicked Sharp to organize the ALA’s exhibit for the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, and her success launched a highly successful career that included her appointment as head of the library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. We see her in the ALA group photograph in the center of the front row, where she has placed herself next to her mentor, no doubt because she is proud of her status as the organization’s vice president. Notably absent from the front row but in the center of the row behind Katharine Sharp, and separated from Dewey by “his girls,” is ALA President William Coolidge Lane. His reputation in librarianship has fared better than Dewey’s, but Lane held many of Dewey’s late nineteenth-century prejudices. For the Atlanta conference Lane had cautioned against a suggestion that the association invite Harvard graduate W. E. B. Du Bois to speak in a session on libraries and their role in the education of blacks. Te local planners opted instead to feature the aforementioned Southern “coon-dance” as entertainment. Immediately behind Lane is Herbert Putnam, recently appointed Librarian of Congress, thanks in part to Lane’s determined lobbying with U.S. President William McKinley.11 Discovering the identity of some of the sitters and the story of their relationships with each other gave the photograph a depth of personality for me. When the library moved into its newly renovated home in Littauer, I hung a facsimile of the photograph over my desk. Times have not changed that much. At work, relationships among colleagues are what gives an organization meaning. My memories of my time working at Harvard are about my colleagues, perhaps even more vivid than my memories of the extraordinary Harvard collections I was privileged to manage. 11 Te full list of attendees is available in Papers, 168–170. 48 Te Fine Arts Library at 50 Contributors James S. Ackerman is Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Fine Arts Emeritus, Harvard University. Glaire D. Anderson is Associate Professor of Art History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Susan Anderson is Curatorial Research Associate for Dutch and Flemish Drawings, Harvard Art Museums. Persis Berlekamp, PhD 2003, is Associate Professor of Art History, University of Chicago. Francesca Bewer is Research Curator in the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, Harvard Art Museums. Kathryn Brush is Professor of Art History, Department of Visual Arts, University of Western Ontario, Canada. Ellen P. Conant is an independent scholar. Harry Cooper, PhD 1997, is Curator of Modern Art, National Gallery of Art. James Cuno, PhD 1985, is President and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust. Walter B. Denny, PhD 1971, is Professor of Art History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Emine Fetvaci, PhD 2005, is Assistant Professor, Department of the History of Art and Architecture, Boston University. Shirin Fozi, PhD 2010, is Assistant Professor, Department of the History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh. Wolfgang Freitag was Librarian of the Fine Arts Library from 1962 to 1989. Jeffrey L. Horrell was Librarian of the Fine Arts Library from 1992 to 1998 and currently is Dean of Libraries at Dartmouth College. Harvard Library Bulletin 65 Aden Kumler, PhD 2007, is Assistant Professor, Department Art History, University of Chicago. Melissa Beck Lemke is Image Specialist for Italian Art, Department of Image Collections, National Gallery of Art. Megan R. Luke, PhD 2009, is Assistant Professor, Department of the History of Art and Architecture, University of Southern California. Katharine Martinez was the Librarian of the Fine Arts Library from 1998 to 2010 and currently is Director of the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona. Christine Mehring, PhD 2001, is Associate Professor in the Department of Art History, University of Chicago. John E. Moore, PhD 1992, is Professor of Art, Smith College. Alexander Nagel, PhD 1993, is Professor of Fine Arts, New York University. Peter Nisbet is Chief Curator at the Ackland Art Museum, Te University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.