Eric Moon as the Twentieth-Century Embodiment of Melvil Dewey?: A Review Essay

Abstract

Life writing in the profession has been a constant genre, as a search through standard bibliographies and databases will verify.1 The years spanning the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have occasioned a num ber of biographies and autobiographies of notable figures in American librarianship. As colleagues have retired in this pivotal period, the temp tation to look backward, to offer an explanation or perspective, or to make an apology?most efforts to establish significance?has seldom seemed more attractive than now. Among those lives recently celebrated autobiographically are Bill Eshelman, David Kaser, and Paul Wasserman.2 The scholarly biographies of Melvil Dewey (1851-1931) by Wayne Wiegand and of Louis Shores (1904-81) by Lee Shiflett have also appeared.3 Among these works, Kenneth Kister on Eric Moon is unique. Kister and his publisher regard Eric Moon (b. 1923) as the most significant personage in the American library profession in the last half of the twentieth century. The narrative of his life, in eighteen chapters and buttressed with sixty-three black-and-white photographs, is well told. It includes Moon's youth in Southampton, wartime service in Asia, student years at Loughborough, early professional experience at British libraries, escape to Canada and then on to Library Journal, activism in the library profession, leadership at Scare crow Press, presidency of the American Library Association (ALA), and retirement to Florida. Additional tidbits from Moon's inner thoughts about people, events, and trends and especially his roman tic life make this an arresting tale. Few contemporary biographical works present the detail and complexity of a life as does this nearly five-hundred-page, large-format work.