Alabama Library Association in 1904

I began working at Auburn University's Draughon Library in 1973; in 2015, I retired as librarian for the UAB Department of Anesthesiology. In between those places I worked at Tuscaloosa Public Library. Thus, if my math is correct, I worked for 42 years in libraries in Alabama, academic, public, and medical. So I thought for my 801st blog post I'd discuss this little publication, the Proceedings of the First Meeting of the Alabama Library Association, an account of the gathering held in Montgomery on November 14, 1904. 

I've written some other pieces on library history in the state. The topics include Carnegie libraries, the state's first library, libraries in Alabama in 1851, unusual libraries in Birmingham, bookmobiles and traveling libraries, and medical libraries. I'm also working on "Alabama Libraries Before 1920: A Chronology in Progress" found here. 

Papers presented at the meeting are included in this book, but as can be seen in the contents below most address general library topics with little or no Alabama content. The one exception is Thomas Owen's "Public and School Libraries in Alabama" which is an attempt to list those libraries in the state operating at that time. 

Perhaps the most useful material here is the listing of officers and charter members. This provides a snapshot of the library community in Alabama in 1904, both actual librarians and the friends of libraries. One of the latter was Russell Cunningham, M.D., then Lieutenant Governor of the state. Others included John Abercrombie, President of the University of Alabama, and novelist Frances Nimmo Greene, who at that time was principal of Capitol Hill School in Montgomery. Thomas Owen was founder and director of the state archives, the first such organization in the U.S. His wife is listed as Mrs. Thomas Owen. She was Marie Bankhead Owen, a member of the prominent political Bankhead family and aunt to actress Tallulah. She would become director of the archives for 35 years after her husband died in 1920.  

A preliminary announcement with a tentative program was issued prior to this meeting. That publication also contained the announcement of a second meeting to be held in Mobile in 1905 and included a tentative program. That program indicates more papers with Alabama material would be presented. 

In his "Prefatory Note" Owen acknowledges "the work of the meeting was not in any way notable", due to the fact that library development in the state was only beginning. He felt the papers would especially aid "the village librarian, the struggling teacher, and the poorly equipped library assistant" rather than the state's professionals, which were few at the time. Presumably he would be pleased to see the development of both libraries and librarians in Alabama over the past 100 years. 

In 1962 Jean Le Furgey Hoffman completed a dissertation at Florida State University, "The Alabama Library Association, 1904-1939: A History of Its Organization, Growth and Contribution to Library Development." That dissertation can be downloaded as a PDF here. The Alabama Library Association's web site provides information on current activities. 

I've written about a 1922 silent film based on one of Greene's novels here.

The meeting was held at the new Carnegie Library in Montgomery at the corner of Adams and Perry Street. 

Alabama Library History: A List

I've been pulling together some of my related blog posts and other materials into lists. So far I've done "Film Actresses from Alabama Before 1960" and "Medical History in Birmingham". This post is the third in the series. 

Woodlawn Library in 1949

Three Generations in One Library [UAB's Sterne Library] 

Alabama's First Library, Books & Printing  

Alabama Libraries in 1851 

Some Unexpected Libraries in Birmingham 

Alabama Library History: Bookmobiles 

Alabama Library History: A Call for Traveling Libraries in 1898 

My Alabama Library History board on Pinterest 

Two Early Medical Libraries in Birmingham 

UAB's Anesthesiology Library 1980-2015 

Carnegie Libraries in Alabama 

Alabama Libraries Before 1920: A Chronology in Progress 

[Not a blog post, but still relevant!]

Two Early Medical Libraries in Birmingham

In March 2014 I wrote a post on "Alabama Libraries in 1886 and 1897" that described libraries found in the state in surveys done by the U.S. Bureau of Education. That 1886 survey found three medical libraries in Alabama. The largest was at the State Board of Health in Montgomery with 3000 volumes. The Pierson Libary at the Alabama Insane Hospital [later Bryce] had some 1500 books, and the Medical College of Alabama in Mobile had 500.

In this post I want to briefly discuss two medical libraries in Birmingham in the first decade of the 20th century. Comments are below. Today there are a few more medical libraries in the state, primarily at hospitals and academic medical centers. Since 1980 the Alabama Health Libraries Association has served those facilities.

Alabama Medical Journal October 1901 Volume 13 number 11

This item announces the intent to organize a medical library for Birmingham physicians. As items below indicate, efforts quickly began and a library association continued meeting until at least 1908.

George Summers Brown, M.D. [1860-1913]

Source: Holley, History of Medicine in Alabama

According to the article above, Brown was the "prime mover" in the effort to organize a medical library for the county society. As the item below notes, the idea quickly morphed into the impressive-sounding Birmingham Medical Library Association. Brown taught obstetrics at the Birmingham Medical College.

Alabama Medical Journal November 1901 Volume 13 Number 12

Alabama Medical Journal September 1908 Volume 20 Number 10

This 1908 meeting report indicates that the library association meetings were much like the county and state medical society ones--a chance to exchange some clinical information, eat good food and socialize. The Dr. E.M. Prince mentioned was a founder and surgeon for a number of years at South Highlands Infirmary [now UAB Highlands]. Prince published numerous articles before World War I and some indicated the presence of Dr. James Robertson Dawson as the physician giving anesthesia for his cases. 

That 1908 volume of the Alabama Medical Journal contains two letters to the Birmingham Medical Library Association from local physician Dr. H.S. Ward reporting on his visits to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and London, England. The first letter was read at the December 1907 meeting of the Association. In closing his second letter, Dr. Ward expresses the hope that "some day our own medical library association may be in a home of its own." 

I'll have to do some more research to determine how long this association met and if a library ever really developed and what eventually happened to it if it did. The list of names above in the original announcement indicates that a large cross-section of the county society's members at least wanted themselves associated with this project.

The second example is the private library belonging to a physician who practiced for a number of years in Birmingham, Dr. John Clark LeGrande. You'll note that he served as president of the library association organized in 1901. 

LeGrande taught hygiene and medical law at the Birmingham Medical College. He was the founding editor of the Alabama Medical and Surgical Age which was published from 1889 until 1911. LeGrande was also one of the individuals who helped furnish Hillman Hospital when the permanent brick building opened in July 1903; his contributions outfitted the obstetrical ward. 

LeGrande died in March 1906 and his personal medical library was offered for sale. The John Daniel Sinkler Davis named in the notice below had also practiced medicine in Birmingham for many years. An 1879 graduate of the Medical College of Georgia, Davis was the older brother of William Elias B. Davis, one of Alabama's most prominent physicians of his time period. LeGrande's "magnificent" personal library must have been impressive for its day.

Alabama Medical Journal April 1907 Volume 19, number 5 page 252

John Clark LeGrande, M.D.

Source: Holley, History of Medicine in Alabama

This page is from Jefferson County Probate records pertaining to Dr. John Clark LeGrande and dated April 7, 1906, just over two weeks after his death. As noted, he died without a will and the list of his "real and personal estate" included a "medical library." Family members probably asked Dr. J.D.S. Davis to handle the sale of the collection.





A Quick Visit to Union Springs, Alabama

One of the towns brother Richard and I visited on our recent tour through east central Alabama was Union Springs in Bullock County. The town dates from the early 1830's. We were passing through quickly, so I only took a few photos. They are below with some comments. 

The Bullock County Courthouse has some very striking architecture. The building was constructed in 1871 and 1872; information about it and many other historic structures in Union Springs can be found here. 

Downtown Union Springs is a lovely place with lots of history, but was very quiet on the July Saturday afternoon when we visited. 

Unfortunately, I did not get a photo of the Carnegie Library in Union Springs, but found one on the Deep Fried Kudzu site in a post with others from around town. The site is linked below. 

Back in the early 1980's I worked on a master's degree in library science in Tuscaloosa. For one of my classes I wrote a paper on the development of this Carnegie Library. In the late 19th and early twentieth century industrialist Andrew Carnegie gave away much of his fortune to many communities to build public libraries if the towns and cities would agree to fund operating expenses. About a dozen were built in Alabama. Over 2500 were built in the United States and various other countries.

Both a summary and the full report I wrote on this library are available online. 

Carnegie Library in Union Springs
Source: Deep Fried Kudzu 

Alabama Library History: A Call for Traveling Libraries in 1898

In September 2014 I posted an item on bookmobiles, one of a series I'm doing on library history in Alabama. Today's post is a late nineteenth century call for such "traveling" libraries in the state. 

The article below appeared in the Sewanee Review, Volume 6 in 1898 and found via the Internet Archive. That literary and cultural journal is still being published at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee.  

The author is Kate Hutcheson Morrissette of Montgomery's No Name Club. She begins her piece noting the importance of education and bemoaning Alabama's low state appropriations in that area--only New Mexico is lower among the states. Even South Carolina, Louisiana and Georgia are moving forward. 

Morrissette notes that the Georgia Federation of Women's Clubs have adopted a Yankee innovation--"traveling" libraries to help with educational efforts. Such libraries will bring learning materials to rural areas that do not have it, allow graduates to continue learning and replace the "poisonous cheap literature" abroad in the land. The article credits the traveling libraries concept to "chief promoter" Melvil Dewey. Dewey was a prominent librarian and educator who created such mobile libraries while serving as director of the New York State Library from 1888 until 1906. 

The article closes with several rousing paragraphs extolling the virtues Traveling Libraries will bring to Alabama. I leave it to the discerning reader to parse these sentiments.

Morrissette's efforts are part of a grand tradition in America, one in which middle-class ladies and their clubs metaphorically rolled up their sleeves and went to work on various public issues---education, libraries, sanitation and so forth. We are the beneficiaries of those efforts.

Some Unexpected Libraries in Birmingham

            I recently read an article on LitReactor.com by Kimberly Turner about “The 10 Weirdest and Most Wonderful Libraries in the World.” There is the Biblioburro, a donkey used to bring books to villages in rural Columbia. An outdoor library in a Tel Aviv park has books in 15 languages to serve Israeli migrant workers and refugees. There are vending machine libraries, a floating library, a library-by-camel in Kenya, and numerous Little Free Libraries in small wooden boxes on poles around the U.S. or in recycled phone booths in Britain.

               Birmingham, Alabama, doesn’t seem to have anything quite so striking yet. But there are several libraries around the area that you might not expect. One of my favorites is UAB’s Reynolds Historical Library. Located in the Lister Hill Library building, the Reynolds is devoted to the history of medicine and currently houses more than 13,000 rare books and manuscripts. In 1958 Lawrence Reynolds, a physician and Alabama native who had amassed about 5000 items, donated them to the UA School of Medicine, and the collection has continued to grow. 

               The library has strong collections in a number of subjects, including surgery and Civil War medicine, and also has a number of medical classics, such as first editions of William Harvey's De motu cordis (1628) on the circulation of blood and Andreas Vesalius' De humani corporis fabrica (1543) on human anatomy. Although currently closed for renovations, the Alabama Museum of the Health Sciences is also located in the Lister Hill Library building.

              

Reynolds Historical Library,UAB

            Another specialized library at UAB is the Patient Resource Library located on the second floor of the Kirklin Clinic. Staff at the PRL assist patients and families with finding information from in-house materials including reference books, pamphlets and videos, as well as appropriate material from the Internet.

            The Clarence B. Hanson, Jr., Library, on the first floor of the Birmingham Museum of Art, is named after the publisher of the Birmingham News who died in 1983. He was also a museum board member for more than 20 years. The collection includes over 35,000 items mostly related to the museum’s collections and travelling exhibitions. Materials are used by both staff and visitors.

Clarence B. Hanson, Jr., Library 

Birmingham Museum of Art

            Another well-known local institution with an extensive library is the Birmingham Botanical Gardens. This library holds over 8000 books, DVDs, gardening magazines, a children’s section and rare and archival material. The “Thyme to Read” book club meets monthly at what is the only public horticultural library in the United States.

Botanical Gardens Library 

            Perhaps one of the most unexpected of these “unusual” libraries in our area is the Research Library at the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum. This collection of 6000 books, 700 videos, magazines and numerous parts catalogs and service manuals has become one of the largest devoted to motorcycles in the world. The facility is intended for use by in-house restoration personnel and not open to the public, but inquiries from outside researchers are welcome.

Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum Research Library

            The Birmingham Family History Center is one of many branches of the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, and is maintained by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Genealogical research is a focus of all the centers, and they are open to anyone and free to use. The Birmingham Center has print, microfilm and online resources and offers free workshops and classes throughout the year.

Birmingham Family History Center

            Many libraries in the area have what might be considered “libraries within libraries” that are devoted to a particular subject or resource type. Libraries at Samford University and Wallace State have renowned genealogical collections. Extensive printed and archival material related to local history is available at the Birmingham Public Library downtown. 

We may not have a floating library or a library on a donkey just yet, but we do have some fascinating and useful collections!

This item appeared on the DiscoverBirmingham.org site in May 2014.

Alabama Libraries in 1851

[This post is one of a series I'm doing on the history of libraries and books in Alabama.]


In 1851 Charles Coffin Jewett published one of the early inventories of public libraries in the United States. At the time Jewett was Librarian and Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution; he moved to the Boston Public Library as Superintendent in 1858 and worked there until his death a decade later. 

The report, Notices of Public Libraries in the United States of America, was issued as an appendix to the 1850 report of the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents. In some 200 pages Jewett gives state-by-state library listings and descriptions. Listings are organized by town within each state. In his “Preliminary Remarks”, Jewett tells the reader:

As might be expected, Jewett found through his tedious methods of circulars and private correspondence only a few libraries in Alabama at that time. His first entry for the state, under “La Grange”, says simply “College Library—3,000 vols.” He refers of course to LaGrange College, the state’s first chartered college established in 1830; the site is located eight miles southeast of Muscle Shoals. The college was burned in April 1863.

From that brief entry Jewett moves on to Howard College, founded in Marion in 1842, with a library containing 1500 volumes. “It is opened once a week for half an hour”, he notes. Organized by Alabama Baptists and chartered in 1841, Howard was moved to the East Lake area of Birmingham in 1887 and finally to its present location in Homewood in 1957 and renamed Samford University in 1965.

In Mobile Jewett located the library of the Franklin Society, founded in January 1835. “The library contains 1,454 volumes, with a few coins and maps….The library and reading-room are open daily for the use of members of the society and subscribers to the reading-room.”

           

 In Spring Hill Jewett found the state’s second largest library of the time, that of the Catholic college holding 4,000 volumes. The school was founded twenty years before Jewett’s report was published. He gives no other library details.

The original main building of Spring Hill College, built in 1831. 
Source: Wikipedia

Jewett’s longest entry is the last, as expected the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa with 7,123 volumes. This figure included the 4,500 volumes in the “Rotundo” and two student libraries containing 2,623 volumes. He notes an annual circulation of some 800 volumes, a “stated annual appropriation of $200” and two extra $500 appropriations within the past five years.  “The library is opened twice a week, and kept open about an hour each time.”

The Rotunda in 1859, one of seven UA buildings existing when the school opened in 1831.
Source: Encyclopedia of Alabama

Jewett also mentions the two library catalogs that had been prepared by Richard Furman and Wilson G. Richardson. He notes that Richardson’s effort “is on the plan of the catalogue of Brown University Library.” In 1841 Jewett became librarian at Brown, reorganized its library and published a catalog in two parts: an alphabetical description of items and an alphabetical index of subjects. 

Thus Jewett found six “public libraries” in Alabama ca. 1850; he seems to have missed the one in Huntsville and probably others. By way of comparison, he found eight in Georgia, four in Mississippi and three in Florida.

Jewett knew this effort was only the beginning:

Charles Coffin Jewett [1816-1868]
Source: Wikipedia 
 

This document is available at Google Books



ALABAMA LIBRARIES PRIOR TO WORLD WAR I: A CHRONOLOGY IN PROGRESS

            

Alabama Libraries in 1886 and 1897

Having spent my working career in Alabama libraries, the history of those institutions in this state has always interested me.

I've constructed the beginnings of a chronology of Alabama libraries up to about 1920. Maybe one day soon I'll start organizing those boxes of material I have on the subject and continue expanding that resource. Maybe.

At the moment I'd like to look at the Alabama libraries listed in two reports published late in the nineteenth century.

The 1886 report from the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Education gathered information on “public” libraries holding over 300 volumes during 1884-5. A similar report by the same office in 1876 found 3,647 such libraries in the United States; ten years later 5,338 were found. The report does not define “public”, but the term seems to be applied to any library open to some subset of the public, whether free or by subscription, as opposed to purely personal libraries.

There are 41 libraries in Alabama included in this 1886 report, as noted in the table below. Only two are libraries with more than 10,000 volumes: the State and Supreme Court Library in Montgomery with over 17,000 volumes and Spring Hill College library in Mobile with over 12,000 volumes. Both of these libraries were also founded early in the state's history, 1828 and 1829 respectively.

A few libraries held between 3,000 and 10,000 volumes: 

Huntsville Female College Belles-Lettres Library, Howard
(Samford) College in its original Marion location, Judson Female Institute, Mobile Bar Library, Mobile Library-a “general” library with 5500 volumes although founded in 1879, the State Board of Health library,Young Ladies’ Academy of the Visitation library in Summerville, the Talladega College library, and the University of Alabama library in Tuscaloosa which was the third largest in the state with 6300 volumes.

Libraries between 1,000 and 3,000 volumes:

Southern University library in Greensborough, Howard College’s two society libraries, Marion Female Seminary, Spring Hill College’s Reading Room Association, YMCA in Selma, Talladega College’s Theological Department library, Institute for Training Colored Ministers in Tuscaloosa [now Stillman College], Pierson Library at the Alabama Insane Hospital [now Bryce]

Some libraries with under 1000 volumes:

18 libraries including those at several small schools, the Dallas Bar Library in Selma, a general “Library Association” in Opelika, a “Ladies Library” in Florence and “Book Club” libraries in Gainesville and Tuscaloosa.

Many of these libraries were designated as “free”, but some were subscription: the two law libraries in Mobile and Selma, the Mobile general library, and the book club libraries in Gainesville and Tuscaloosa.

The second table included in this post shows the 28 Alabama libraries over 1000 volumes in the 1897 report. Most were included in that group in the 1886 report, but several libraries have now joined it which were absent earlier.

These libraries include some not included at all in 1886: Birmingham Public Library, Zelosophian Academy library in Birmingham, St. Bernard Benedictine Society library, Jones College for Young Ladies library in Gadsden, Central Alabama Academy library in Huntsville, Academy of the Visitation library in Mobile, and the State Normal College library in Troy. Some, such as Birmingham Public, were new libraries; some of the others may have been newly discovered by the compilers of these reports.

These two publications give us an interesting snapshot of Alabama libraries as the nineteenth century is coming to an end. A number of libraries with significant collections have developed, including a few of what we now consider “public” libraries. Social groups in even small towns have started collections. Specialized law and medical libraries have appeared.

 

                       Table XVI from the 1884-5 Statistics of Public Libraries of the United States

From a table on page 370 of the Statistics of Libraries…1897