Reading and Writing Library Lives: A Review ArticleAmerican National Biography. John A. Garraty , Mark C. Carnes

Abstract

Among the few general readers in the history of librarianship, one remains especially notable for its biographical essays: An American Library History Reader: Contributions to Library Literature (сотр. and ed. John David Marshall [Hamden, Conn.: Shoe String Press, 1961]). Marshall captured that special moment when the profession had moved from the primarily laudatory to a more mature analysis of the contributions of individuals. The essays he assembled took the library community beyond an earlier period marked by a tone more likely to promote the profession than to evaluate its role in society. By bringing together twenty-two previously completed biographical essays and integrating them into a library history reader, Marshall gave us the opportunity to examine them together and to understand them in a broad historical context. Marshall assembled essays issued between 1949 and 1961; he thus reviewed the state of the art and, having devoted nearly 70 percent of his text to scholarly biographical essays, made a case for the importance of biography. Prior to Marshall's compilation, our impressions of library biography had been formed by the likes of Grosvenor Dawe's MelvilDewey: Seer, Inspirer, Doer, 1851-1931 (Lake Placid Club, N.Y.: Melvil Dewey Biografy, 1932) and the American Library Association's American Library Pioneers series, which was published in eight slender volumes beginning with Harry M. Lydenberg's/o/m Shaw Billings (Chicago: American Library Association, 1924) and concluding with Emily