Revisiting C. H. Milam's What Libraries Learned from the War and Rediscovering the Library Faith

Abstract

As 2003 unfolds and the world is again troubled with the immediate threat of multinational military conflicts, it is an appropriate time to remember the pioneering contributions made by librarians during a previous conflict, World War I. Although colleagues from this time are now gone, their accomplishments set standards for service that librarians still strive to emulate today. These accomplishments are chronicled in historical accounts of the period and in an obscure Library Leaflet series from the U.S. Bureau of Education.1 During the early 1920s the Bureau of Education issued a series of thirty-six pamphlets to provide educators with lists of references on various topics, including A List of References on Rural Life and Culture, A List of References on Educational Tests and Measurements, and A List of References on Playgrounds. Among these similar titles one stands out: Library Leaflet no. 14, What Libraries Learned from the War by C. H. Milam (1922).2 The pamphlet’s author, Carl H. Milam, is synonymous with the American Library Association (ALA) and the great twentiethcentury champions of public libraries.3 Reading his articulate pamphlet, we relive the wartime experiences of librarians and discover how these experiences influenced the development of library services in postwar America. Milam takes us back to a time when free universal library service was only a dream, total illiteracy rates hovered between 7.7 and 10 percent (for minorities the rate was as high as 44.5 percent), and the average educational attainment was no higher than the eighth grade.4 As Milam points out, World War I offered an opportunity for librarians and their supporters to demonstrate the valuable educational role libraries could play in American society both in war and in peace. Under the direction of Herbert Putnam (and later Milam himself),