Chapter Five:
Within the Special Libraries Association, the decade began with a burst of professional enthusiasm as the idea of specialized librarianship, so dear to the organization's founders and its leaders and members during the first 21 years, continued to be a focus for their collegial work together. Wanting greatly to carry that idea--their "movement," they often called it--beyond their profession, these individuals were continually looking about for concepts and "hooks" that could attract attention in the management offices of organizations that employed specialist librarians (or which should be employing them).
Almost immediately, as the decade began (and in a presentation that clearly anticipates the entrepreneurial/intrapreneurial management direction that became so popular in specialized library management some 60 years later), Ruth Canavan laid out guidelines for how specialist librarians could make the specialized research library a "profitable" department in the organization. Beginning with the theory that the library serves the organization both "as its memory and as its forgettory," and functions "as a headquarters to which questions throughout the entire organization can be referred," she went on to note that "it coordinates departmental activities and avoids the duplication, delay, and expense of reproducing data already available," thus saving time and money. But these efforts, Canavan suggested, while not revenue producing, could be operated along with services that could produce revenue for the host organizations. She offered translation services, the producing of bibliographies, "literary researches" and the editing of technical manuscripts as tasks which could be undertaken, at a profit, by the staff of the specialized library.
Canavan's article was typical of one of the most successful efforts of the association at the time to provide practical information ("methods" was the term usually applied) that specialist librarians could read, discuss with colleagues and put to use in their own libraries for the benefit of their employers. Other titles, such as the "Methods Series" published in Special Libraries, offered advice and guidelines for such subjects as "Staff Organization and Administration of a Special Library," "Clipping Files," "The Care of Pamphlets in a Business Library" and "Reference Work."
Other theme issues of the magazine were published, including several devoted to newspaper libraries, both in America and in Great Britain. And the fairly recent tradition of publishing articles on business libraries was continued, including special issues on business libraries affi liated with local public libraries in various parts of the United States. Libraries in Indianapolis, Savannah, Boston, San Francisco and Providence were described, and articles with titles such as "Business Idea in Libraries" and "Publicity for Public Business Libraries" were published, to give specialist librarians in public libraries the opportunity to share in the findings of those in the corporate and research communities.
Many such efforts were undertaken, and while Special Libraries, as the organization's journal, was the primary medium for distributing this information, the SLA publishing program overall was exceptionally successful. In November 1931, a "Historical review" of association publications was undertaken. Among the remarkable facts presented was that the magazine itself, started in January 1910 with eight pages (and no advertising) had, by Volume 22, Number 6 (the Convention Issue of July-August 1931) grown to 101 pages, including paid advertisements. Paid advertising, in annual pages, had grown from six to 81 in just the six short years between 1923 and 1929, as new emphasis was put on the value of attracting advertising income to the association.
In a review of the association's publishing activities, it was noted that "The influence of the Special Libraries Association has made itself felt in two ways--by publications outside of the association that grew from ideas within the membership and promoted by them, and by those aids printed by the Special Libraries Association. the association can well be proud of its accomplishments." Noting that specialist librarians need "special tools," the association undertook to work with commercial publishers--especially "that good friend of the profession" the H.W. Wilson Company--with Industrial Arts Index being one of its first successes. In 1910, as noted earlier, the genesis of Public Affairs Information Service had been fostered by the association, and a great many timely articles and reprints of articles were furnished for members through the SLA publishing program. In 1921, the first volume to bear the imprint of the association, a Directory of Special Libraries, edited by the then-president, dorsey W. Hyde, Jr., was published, and from then on all presidents of the association encouraged publishing activities, including, in 1937, President Howard L. Stebbins's proud announcement that the new Technical Book Review Index had been launched with great success.
The nascent interest of specialist librarians in the value of technology in their professional lives came forward in a number of published articles that let the readers of the association's publications know that this was not a subject being neglected. In the earliest instances, the technology being described was microphotography, a precursor of what became known as microfi lm, microfiche (or simply "fiche"), and, later, more generically simply as microforms. (An earlier article on barometers had been published in the March 1925 issue, but its relevance to the management of a specialized library was not made particularly clear.) The first article on the subject, "Microphotography for the Special Library" by Vernon D. Tate, Chief, Division of Photographic reproduction and research, National Archives, was so well received that several articles on microphotography followed it.
In the aforementioned review of the association's publications program, the chronological list of titles (many of them available at the SLA office) included nearly 75 published works. But the association was not simply looking back when it came to its publishing activities. Another issue of Special Libraries at that time included the article "What Shall Special Libraries Association Publish? Present Activities and Future Projects," which stated the purpose of the effort, "to compile and print professional tools, valuable primarily to our members, which cannot be put out by commercial publishers because of the slight prospect of profit," and "to prepare and issue publications useful to our members but also useful to many persons and organizations outside of the Special Libraries Association, the larger sale of which will cover losses on the first group, and thus balance our budget." It was, all things considered, an ambitious and far-reaching goal, and it established the framework for what would become for the remaining years of the twentieth century one of the association's primary services, both to its members and to the larger professional community.
Excerpt from the book SLA at 100: From Putting Knowledge To Work To Building The Knowledge Culture by Guy St. Clair
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