Remembering Great Librarians

E.J. Josey/Pushed for integration of library work force

Wed, 8 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0400

by Eleanor Chute, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

University of Pittsburgh professor emeritus E.J. Josey, who was instrumental in integrating the library work force, died Saturday in Washington, N.C. He was 85.

At the 1964 annual conference of the American Library Association, Mr. Josey wrote a resolution prohibiting association officers and staff from participating in state associations that refused to admit black librarians. It resulted in the integration of library associations of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi. He was the first black librarian to be accepted into the Georgia Library Association.

"Few have brought about more significant change in librarianship than the late Dr. E.J. Josey," said ALA President Jim Rettig. "Through his leadership, he opened doors to segregated library associations and acted as librarianship's conscience, encouraging the field to live up to and operate by fundamental American principles of justice and equity."

In 1984, 20 years after the resolution, Mr. Josey was elected president of the ALA and emphasized in his inaugural address that only the library, with its community service goal and trained experts "can provide the full scope of information for the total population in a fair and objective manner..."

Although recovering from illness and in a wheelchair, he managed to attend the mid-winter convention of the American Library Association in Philadelphia last year. When [his son-in-law] went with Mr. Josey to a floor microphone to ask the speaker, basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a question, the crowd erupted into a standing ovation when they learned it was Mr. Josey in the wheelchair. "People came out to touch him, pat him on the back..."

Library Recalls Two Who Made It Better

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0500

by Gerri Hirshey, The New York Times

ON a frigid February morning, it smelled like spring in the children’s wing of the Perrot Memorial Library. Beneath a fragrant bank of floral arrangements on the circulation desk, a toddler ambled past a display with photographs of two smiling women. He stopped short, planted a messy kiss on one of them and blurted, “K.” Off he went, followed by his stricken-looking mother.
After a week of breathtaking sadness here in this sunny, arch-ceilinged dream of a children’s library, the flowers were still coming in tribute to its mainstays known as Mrs. K and Mrs. Mac. On Jan. 28, Kathleen Krasniewicz, 54, also known as Kathy, and her friend, mentor and partner in literary high jinks, Kate McClelland, 71, were killed en route to the airport in Denver where they had attended the midwinter conference of the American Library Association....
Perrot’s director, Kevin McCarthy, recalled the women as great friends and gleeful co-conspirators. “They would talk on the phone in the morning even before they came in — along the lines of ‘Hey, I’ve got this idea I don’t want to forget.’ They shared everything.” Their boss declared himself a willing enabler of their enthusiasms. “They brought wonderful ideas, from the latest early learning computer stations to kids’ literary criticism and music programs,” he said. “I learned to say yes to them early on. And I miss them terribly.”

Most descriptions of Mrs. McClelland suggest the savoir faire of Auntie Mame crossed with the sagacity of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle — as illustrated by Maurice Sendak... “Jangly jewelry...Striking hair and glasses, fabulous, unusual clothes. You were just so glad to see Kate — and Kathy — always...”

Mrs. Krasniewicz’s.... eldest daughter Erin said....”we read it all, from the ‘Little House on the Prairie’ books to ‘Don’t Cry, Big Bird.’ The thing that stands out to me is that she never talked down to children. She had great respect for little developing minds....We read ‘Good Night, Moon’ so many times we broke the book...” It is unknown how many times in their combined tenure that Mrs. Krasniewicz and Mrs. McClelland replaced Perrot’s loved-to-bits copies of that literary lullaby....

Henriette D. Avram, Modernizer of Libraries, Dies at 86

Wed, 3 May 2006 00:00:00 -0400

by Margalit Fox, The New York Times

Henriette D. Avram, a systems analyst who four decades ago transformed millions of dog-eared catalog cards in the Library of Congress into a searchable electronic database, and in the process helped transform the gentle art of librarianship into the sleek new field of information science, died on April 22 in Miami...

Mrs. Avram, who was not a librarian by training, is widely credited with developing the automated cataloging system that rendered printed cards obsolete. Known to librarians as MARC, for Machine Readable Cataloging, Mrs. Avram's system is, in its current form, the worldwide standard.

Her work changed forever the relationship of a library to its users, making it possible, with the push of a button, to search the holdings of a library thousands of miles away. It also made it possible to "visit" the library at midnight attired in nothing more than a bathrobe...

In 1965, she joined the Library of Congress, where she was put in charge of the MARC pilot project.

It was not a job for the faint-hearted. The catalog comprised millions of items — books, maps, films, sound recordings and more — in hundreds of languages, many using non-Roman alphabets. The cards for each item contained many discrete pieces of information (including author, title, publisher and place of publication), each of which would need to be represented with a separate mathematical algorithm.

To translate the cards into something a computer could digest, understand and share, Mrs. Avram also had to enter the mind of the library cataloger, a profession whose arcane knowledge — involving deep philosophical questions about taxonomy, interconnectedness and the nature of similarity and difference — was guarded like priestly ritual...

Agnes Swift, 96; librarian lived with zest, loved the sea

Thu, 8 Jul 2004 00:00:00 -0400

by Gloria Negri, The Boston Globe

Agnes Swift learned to sail soon after she learned to walk and didn't stop until she was well into her 80s. Old salts around Maine's Southwest Harbor called her the best sailor on that part of the coast. The hundreds she taught to sail can vouch for that.

Miss Swift also loved books. As the librarian for 43 years at the independent Shady Hill School in Cambridge, she introduced generations of students to the joy of reading...

''Agnes could cook beef hash and eggs on a skillet over an open fire," [Laurie] Clarke said. ''She could handle a boat under full sail. She could attend to an old friend's dignity and she could break from housecleaning while listening to Vivaldi's 'Four Seasons' to dance with the duster. It's hard to imagine saying this of a lady in her 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, but Agnes was cool..."

''I am firmly convinced that Agnes knew what every child who came to her library had read, and liked, and what his next book would be," said Mary Eliot, a former teacher. Years later, at 50th reunions, Miss Swift was still able to connect former students with books they liked...

At Shady Hill, Miss Swift met Alice and Anne Thorp, the two grand-daughters of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow... The three lived together, two doors from the Longfellow House on Brattle Street, where Miss Swift cared for the Thorps when their health declined.