mydaguerreotypelibrarian:

Edward Christopher Williams (1871 – 1929) was the first African-American professional librarian in the United States of America. His sudden death in 1929 ended his career the year he was expected to receive the first Ph.D. in librarianship.

Upon his graduation with distinction from Adelbert College of Western Reserve University in 1892, he was appointed Assistant Librarian of Hatch Library at WRU. Two years later, he was promoted to librarian of Hatch Library until 1909, when he resigned to assume the responsibility of the Principal of M Street High School (now Dunbar High School) in Washington, D.C. He continued his career as University Librarian of Howard University until his death on December 24, 1929.

He is also author of the novel When Washington Was in Vogue.

Holla library history / DC history twofer.

mydaguerreotypelibrarian:

Anne Hadden on her way to deliver books in Big Sur.

From Denise Sallee’s “Reconceptualizing Women’s History: Anne Hadden and the California County Library System” in a 1992 issue of Libraries and Culture:

Anne Hadden, a California librarian for forty-six years, was one of many career-oriented women who worked within the California County Library System during the early years of the twentieth century. California library history is rich in strong, autonomous, and influential women who viewed their work as fundamental to the cultural and educational development of the state. They exemplified the educated and Progressive-minded “New Women” who came of age at the turn of the century.

mydaguerreotypelibrarian:

Esther Walls (b. 1926 in Mason City, IA) was a librarian and literacy advocate. Among other things, she served as director of the US Secretariat for International Book Year in 1972, worked at NYPL, and was associate director of libraries at SUNY Stony Brook for over a decade.

Her papers are part of the Iowa Women’s Archives at the University of Iowa Libraries, and you can find a bunch of digitized stuff in the Iowa Digital Library. (I recommend you look through the images — I had a hard time picking just one pic, because she was way photogenic.)

Another superb submission to MDL by KellyMcE.

erikkwakkel:

The Chained Library of Zutphen

I took these pictures during a visit to the 16th-century chained library of Zutphen, in the east of the Netherlands. It is one of three such libraries still in existence in Europe. Nothing much has changed here for 550 years.

Here is more information (in English) on the chained library in Zutphen. Also check out this recent blog on medieval chained libraries (and Zutphen’s), written by one of the researchers in my project. 

usnatarchives:

Freedmen who fled from slavery during and after the Civil War did not expect that their flight toward freedom would lead to sickness, disease, and death. As Jim Downs reveals in Sick from Freedom, the war produced the largest biological crisis of the 19th century.

Join us Friday, May 17, at noon at the National Archives in Washington, DC, for “Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction.”

You can also watch online as we stream this program live on our Ustream channel.

A book signing will follow the program.

mydaguerreotypelibrarian:

NYPL Librarians: ERNESTINE ROSE (1880-1961)

March 19^th [was] the 131^st birthday of Ernestine Rose.  Her professional accomplishments could be celebrated by highlighting her 27 years as head of three NYPL branches.  Or her involvement with library education at the NYPL Library School,  the Carnegie Library School in Pittsburgh, and Columbia’s School of Library Service.  Or, her publications could be listed—especially The Public Library in American Life (1954) which was long regarded as an important text on librarianship.

Even more than those accomplishments, however, Rose should be hailed for her efforts to racially integrate the NYPL staff and to bring library services to the growing African-American community in Harlem.

Thanks JJ Jacobson of U Michigan for the submission!

Love those curls, Ernestine.

mydaguerreotypelibrarian:

Thanks to David Crawford of McGill who submitted Margaret Ridley Charlton. He said of her, “She is the first, and only, librarian (so far) awarded the title of National Historic Person by the Canadian Government.”

Read more about her at David’s website: Margaret Ridley Charlton.

ex-tabulis:

The Know Your Neighborhood series of programs continues at the Mount Pleasant Library Monday May 6th at 6:30pm with a workshop to help DC residents learn how to research the history of their homes. Jerry McCoy and Michele Casto from the Washingtoniana Division of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library will present strategies for using plat maps, finding building permits, researching previous owners and occupants, using the wealth of resources available both online and at the Washingtoniana Division. Anne McDonough from the DC Historical Society will also present a segment on doing photo research as part of a house history.

These guys just keep hitting it out of the park!

DCPL, library system of my childhood, library system of my dreams.

jothelibrarian:

Pretty medieval manuscript of the day depicts the demise of a unicorn, sometimes thought to be an allegory for the passion of Christ. Here, the unicorn lies passive in the arms of a virgin whilst the brutal knight spears it.

The book is a collection of theological texts compiled during the thirteenth century. It is now in the collections of the British Library in London.

Image source: British Library MS Harley 3244. Image declared as public domain on the British Library website.

Sometimes on a spring morning you just need to see an illuminated manuscript image of a unicorn.

Chris Bohjalian: "We Are Still the Mountain" →

willywaldo:

In the coming days, Armenians around the world will come together to acknowledge what I have come to call “The Slaughter You Know Next to Nothing About.” April 24 marks the 98th anniversary of the night the Armenian religious and intellectual leaders were rounded up in Constantinople — and the start of the Armenian genocide.

And yet most of North America probably can’t find Armenia on a map. Certainly only a few of us could pinpoint the mountain of Musa Dagh. Yet Musa Dagh has become for me — an American who is half-Armenian and half-Swedish — the story that brings the Armenian genocide to life.

Novelist Chris Bohjalian (The Sandcastle Girls) eloquently recounts the story of the 4000 Armenians who refused to be marched into the Syrian desert and fought off the Turks for four months. Their story later inspired the Jewish fighters of the 1944 Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

While April 24 is about mourning the dead, it is also about the triumph of the living — and how, indeed, we are still the mountain.

gov-info:

Smithsonian Gov Doc

The works featured in Natural Histories span from the 16th century to the early 20th century, with scientific disciplines ranging from anthropology to astronomy to zoology. The edition is packaged with 40 extraordinary, suitable-for-framing prints representing each essay.

“In the days before photography and printing, original art was the only way to capture the likeness of organisms, people, and places, and therefore the only way to share this information with others,” said Tom Baione, the Harold Boeschenstein Director of Library Services at the Museum. “Printed reproductions of natural history art enabled many who’d never seen an elephant, for instance, to try to begin to understand what an elephant looked like and how its unusual features might function.”

Watch this video interview with Library Director Tom Baione, below, and for more information see the full press release.

(via New Book Highlights Rare Scientific Works)

For more images check out http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/11/27/natural-histories/

I loved finding this book on my shelves last fall. Check out our review of the book!

mydaguerreotypelibrarian:

thehannahmachine:

Women, Mobility, and Libraries by Beverly Goldberg

“Long before there were such devices as smartphones and tablets—or personal computing, for that matter—women in librarianship were bringing reading material to people beyond the four walls of a physical library.”

About the photo: Kentucky trails are hard and riding for this Pack Horse Librarian is dangerous, except at such points where the Works Progress Administration has completed its farm-to-market road program. Photo taken January 12, 1938, part of the National Archives and Records Administration collection, reproduced courtesy of the New Deal Network photo gallery. Control number: 69-NS-BN.

Holla pack horse librarian! An A+ historical librarian.

My Daguerreotype Librarian both CAN’T stop and WON’T stop.

My Daguerreotype Librarian: Mabel Zoe Wilson →

womenoflibraryhistory:

Tamara Belts sent us this article (with permission) by Marian Alexander (Associate Professor Emeritus, Western Washington University Libraries), about Mabel Zoe Wilson’s role in their library’s history. The image is from WWU’s Special Collections.

Leading Lady: Miss Wilson Makes a Library

It’s hard to imagine Western without the Mabel Zoe Wilson Library. Its elegant, Italianate brick façade has graced the south end of the green swathe in front of Old Main since 1928. But when the famously feisty, determined woman for whom the building is now named first set foot on campus, there was no separate structure serving as a library, and there was barely a library collection at all.

“There just wasn’t a library,” Mabel Zoe Wilson was to exclaim many years later, recalling her reaction on February 1, 1902, her first day on the job. On the uppermost floor of the institution’s only building at the time (now Old Main), she saw a few reference books, a great pile of disorganized magazines shoved into a corner,  and perhaps 400 to 500 additional books. A sheaf of bills from book firms and some lists of items to be ordered constituted the official records.

For the next 43 years, Mabel Zoe Wilson made it her life’s work to wrest a functioning, well stocked, superbly organized academic library from virtually nothing. “Her dedication to one library was total,” remarked a colleague, and her leadership nothing short of remarkable in the face of significant challenges as Western grew and as its mission and purpose evolved throughout the first half of the 20th century.

Born in 1878 in Athens, Ohio, Mabel Zoe Wilson was not trained as a librarian; rather, her degree from Athens’ Ohio University, earned in 1900, resulted from a course of study that included Greek, political economy, and rhetoric.

Read More

MyDaguerreotypeLibrarian + WomenofLibraryHistory = nonstop badass feminist historical tumbling.

of1749:

New York, New York Public Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division,  NYPL MA 067

On first leaf, a signature reading “a uous me ly/ Glouce(stre)” has been interpreted that it was owned by Richard, Duke of Gloucester, later Richard III.

chicagohistorymuseum:

Portraits of African American Civil War soldiers, c. 1863, Chicago, Illinois. Photographs by unknown. 

Skokie found this great tumblr from the Chicago History Museum! Also check out these awesome images of some of the most badass men in history: black Union soldiers.