Let Us Forget This Cherishing of Women in Library Work: Women in the American Library War Service, 1918–1920

Abstract

ABSTRACT When ALA established the War Service Committee in 1917, leading male librarians saw an opportunity to reconstruct the profession as masculine and refused to allow women to serve as librarians in the training camps. Women resisted this attempt to appropriate their profession. Seven notable female librarians submitted a letter to the War Service Committee at the 1918 annual conference, saying, “We are getting excessively weary of being protected, shielded from hard work. We are quite accustomed in our own spheres to doing hard work of all kinds, so let us forget this cherishing of women in library work.” This article explores the interaction of gender, power, and professional identity in this failed attempt by ALA leadership to use the Library War Service to “masculinize” the profession, and the impact that the women's service in camp libraries had on their construction of their professional identity.