One thing that I think Dee Garrison did quite well is incorporate conclusions, ideas, and larger themes into the context of library history in America. The first chapter on the genteel setting of the 1800s, for example, incorporates Stow Persons’ ideas about the new gentry elite in explaining the emergence of a new kind of social order in librarianship after the Civil War period. The acknowledgement of this new professional middle class and morally-oriented group and then showing how they influenced library history was a good choice on Garrison’s part. Although she may be creating some of her own ideas about history here, the use of other academic studies helps her arguments greatly and gives them a foundation to build upon that is recognized by the rest of the history community. Also, it is perhaps more interesting for readers to understand the context surrounding library history events because it makes library history a part of larger American movements and demonstrates the interconnectivity of events and movements. I think people generally like discovering the interconnectedness of thoughts and ideas.
One idea which I did not expect Garrison to examine so penetratingly was the myth of the librarian as a failed professional from another area of academia. She does a very good job of using statistics as well as life stories from the prominent librarians of the 1800s in affirming the idea perhaps that librarians were not necessarily failures but ones who “demonstrate[d] a remarkable inability” to choose one career. That it appears she did her own research and calculations concerning library leaders for this section shows that the academic foundations for her conclusions are sound and rather extensive for a proportionally small part of her book.
Garrison proved much better than Harris in examining the conservative and morally stringent tone of librarians in the late 1800s by use of primary source quotations. Instead of making grand statements that simply accomplish ruffling the feathers of current library leaders, the use of quotes from the Library Journal as well as letters written by Larned and others to back up her assertions about the conservative nature of librarians in the late 1800s is well done.
Such a large amount of text devoted to Melvil Dewey, however, was strange for such an academic book. While Garrison certainly proves that Dewey was the most important character in his time concerning libraries in America, I wonder how many other lesser-known librarians or small-scale movements were ignored. Certainly, some minute details are relevant or particularly interesting about Dewey, such as his obsessive compulsions and racial prejudices, but some areas deal so out of the way from library history itself and focus on bibliographical notes that one wonders whether the editor could have done a better job of keeping the published text on track. An example of this would have been the sexual scandal near the end of Dewey’s career which was talked around for much too long considering the level of knowledge about what actually happened between Dewey and his alleged victims.
I really did appreciate, however, the serious and significant treatment of the feminization question in Garrison’s book. While in any other profession such a long section of the text devoted to gender studies would have been too much, since the feminization of the profession still exists today, the examination in detail of its origins and development are completely appropriate. First, the comparison of data between nursing, teaching, and librarianship were very interesting in revealing how gender-biased the professions were nearly from the beginning in America. Hard facts are always welcome in historical writing in my opinion. While Garrison may take a long time in coming to conclusions as to why the gender disparity existed, the reasons are well-thought out and grounded in solid reasoning. One that I thought was strikingly made in the use of primary material was Garrison’s assertion that in one way, feminization of the profession was a conscious plan by leaders such as Winsor to save money by employing women. Garrison also points out very well through primary sources the ways in which women seemed to glide towards librarianship naturally because they supposedly suited the profession, one instance being the believed relation between child-rearing and supervision of child services in libraries by women. Garrison shows very well how over and over assumptions were made that women were somehow inherently better at some kinds of work, and characteristics of women were invented time after time to support the female domination of the field outside of administration. It was very appropriate, also, for Garrison, after revealing some data on women in administrative posts, to mention that as of publication of the original text, there was no female who served as executive secretary of the ALA. Thus in one sentence Garrison rightly reminds the reader that the sex bias has not yet been overcome in the halls of library administration in America.
What I did not expect to hear from Garrison, however, was the assertion (correctly, I think) that women were on some level in league with the forces that kept their pay low and professionalization at bay: the home-maker morals that at once constrained their lives were also the ones that had given them meaning in the past. Garrison is right in asserting that to expect the women to reject such a worldview immediately is unrealistic. Garrison correctly asserts that those morals were simply extended into society and the library, resulting in one reason for the feminization of the library itself.
Garrison’s book struck me as academically sound, correct in most if not all of the conclusions, and conscious of the subtleties of addressing such large questions about library history. I applaud her work and would have only pared down a few sections to make way for possibly more examination of smaller subjects in library history.
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