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An Overview
David Ruggles
(1810-1849),
born in Norwich, Connecticut, is probably the first known
African-American book collector. He was was known for his
intimate knowledge of law as it related to cases of formerly
enslaved escapees on the Underground Railroad. Black
Librarians
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This book [Bibliography of the Negro in Africa and America
(1928)] has a history of a quarter of a century. The first
date of importance is 1904, when the author, Mr. Monroe N. Work,
was a teacher of History at the Georgia State Industrial
College in Savannah. He then became deeply interested in the
study of Africa and began to compile a bibliography on the
subject. This work was materially helped by his purchasing
several thousand cards on Africa from the Library of Congress.Anselm Phelps Stokes
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Dorothy Porter Wesley (1905-1995), a
scholar-librarian and bibliographer was born
in Warrenton, Virginia in 1905, to her
father, Hayes Joseph Burnett, a physician,
and her mother, Bertha Ball Burnett, a
tennis champion. After receiving her A.B.,
from Howard University in 1928, she became
the first African American woman to complete
her graduate studies at Columbia University
receiving a Bachelors (1931) and a Masters
(1932) of Science in Library Science.
Dorothy Bennett joined the library staff at
Howard University in 1928, and on December
29, 1929 married James Amos Porter. In 1930
University President W. Mordecai Johnson
appointed her to organize and administer a
Library of Negro Life and History
incorporating the 3,000 titles presented in
1914 by Jesse Moorland. |
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The library opened in 1933 as the Moorland
Foundation. In 1946 Howard University purchased the
Arthur Spingarn Collection. By the time Porter retired
in 1973 the library, which was now called the Moorland-Spingarn
Research Center, had over 180,000 books, pamphlets,
manuscripts and other primary sources. Over 43 years,
Porter had successfully created a leading modern
research library that served an international community
of scholars. . . .
Black Past
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Glennor Shirley head
librarian for Md. prisons, believes in books
behind bars—By Michael S. Rosenwald—25
March 2011—Glennor Shirley, head
librarian for Maryland prisons, responsible
for the rows of books behind the barbed-wire
fences here at
Western Correctional Institution and 16
other state prison libraries. . . .Miss
Shirley, 67, immigrated to Maryland in the
1980s from Jamaica, where she was a
librarian. She has a gentle voice, inflected
with an island accent, and she’s a talker.
While working low-level jobs in public
libraries during the day, she worked nights
in a prison library to pay her bills. . . .
Roughly 7,000 new
prisoners sign up for library privileges
every year, according to state statistics.
There are about 199,000 items in monthly
circulation. The libraries look little
different than an elementary school’s
facility. The shelves are low. The Dewey
Decimal System is in operation. |
Posters for the
National Book Festival hang on the wall, even though
these library patrons won’t attend. Miss Shirley has
found that leisure reading among prisoners—when they
aren’t doing legal research—has held relatively steady.
Urban novels are popular. So are romance novels by
Jackie Collins and Eric Jerome Dickey.
“A lot of guys in
relationships, they read that stuff to tap their
sensitive aspects,” says Heslop, the inmate from Silver
Spring. Westerns are popular for their depiction of
old-time lawlessness. Thrillers are also in high
demand.—WashingtonPost
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Introduction to I Am New
Orleans—From
1944 to 1950, [Marcus Bruce] Christian continued his association with Dillard as
assistant librarian. In her Christian essay, Marilyn Hessler
suggested that Christian left Dillard after a member of Dillard's
library staff raised objections to his presence on staff without
degree. After Dillard, Christian became a "recluse"; the
poet "sank into abysmal poverty and everyone lost sight of
him," according to Hessler.
"Living
in virtual poverty, Christian," Dent wrote, "tried to
maintain his vast and valuable collection of historical documents
and rare books, his long-hoped-for volume on black Louisiana
history still incomplete." In Hurricane Betsy, Dent
continued, Christian suffered the indignity of arrest as a looter
in his efforts to wade to his house to save his collection from
the floodwaters of the Lower Ninth Ward (Dent, 1984).
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The Bible is itself a library. During the Middle
Ages it was commonly called, first "The Divine
Library" and then "The Library" (Bibliotheca) in
the same exclusive sense that it is now known as "The
Book" (Biblia as Latin singular). Even the word Bible
itself is historically "Library" rather then
"Book" for it was originally the neuter Biblia
"The Books," although now made by violence into a
Latin feminine singular, and "the books," i.e., books
collectively, is a natural and common name for library.
Bible as
Library
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Jessie
Carney Smith
In 1964 Smith
became the first African American to
earn a Ph.D. in library science from the
University of Illinois. Beyond the
confines of academia where she found her
niche, she is widely known for her
written collections that document the
culture and achievements of African
Americans and of Black people worldwide.
Smith has lectured widely and served in
a variety of international assignments.
After completing her doctorate at the
University of Illinois, she joined Fisk
University in 1965. |
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Born Jessie
Carney on September 24, 1930, Smith grew up outside
of
Greensboro, North Carolina. She had two older
siblings and a twin brother. Her parents, James and
Versona (Bigelow) Carney, graduates of North
Carolina A&T, ran James's small business. The whole
family would often help in the store. Smith's
maternal grandparents lived only yards from the
Carney home. . . .
Smith has
further plans for the library and her writing
career. "I find this is a very exciting time to be
in library and information sciences and to become
involved in the constant changes that technology
brings," she told CBB. Given the low funding usually
allocated to libraries, Smith admitted that she
could have enjoyed her position much more if funds
and been available to make Fisk's library high-tech.
Outside the library, Smith's newest projects
included a third volume of
Notable Black American Women, set to be
published in 2002.
Answers
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David Ruggles
(1810
- December 16, 1849)
No comprehensive work
dealing with early African-American
collectors and collections would be
complete without chronicling the work of
David Ruggles. Although his life
and writings never gained a niche in the
annals of American literature, for me
his life was almost as exciting as
Benjamin Franklin’s. Ruggles was
probably the first known
African-American book collector. He was
born free in 1810 in Norwich,
Connecticut, and was known for his
intimate knowledge of law as it related
to cases of formerly enslaved escapees
on the Underground Railroad. Ruggles was
a major station keeper on the New York
City branch of the Railroad. A noted
orator, Ruggles widely circulated essays
and pamphlets, which infuriated
pro-enslavement agitators and led to the
burning of the bookstore which he had
worked to establish. His magazine,
Mirror of Liberty, published in New York
in 1838, was the first magazine produced
in the United States by an African
American.
Wikipedia
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People in Need
Are Filling and Taxing Libraries—As the national
economic crisis has deepened and social services have
become casualties of budget cuts, libraries have come to
fill a void for more people, particularly job-seekers
and those who have fallen on hard times. Libraries
across the country are seeing double-digit increases in
patronage, often from 10 percent to 30 percent, over
previous years.But in some cities,
this new popularity—some would call it overtaxing —is
pushing libraries in directions not seen before, with
librarians dealing with stresses that go far beyond
overdue fines and misshelved books. Many say they feel
ill-equipped for the newfound demands of the job, the
result of working with anxious and often depressed
patrons who say they have nowhere else to go. The stresses have
become so significant here that a therapist will soon be
counseling library employees.
NYTimes
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Jacob C. White, Jr.
(1837-1902)
A
life-long friend of Octavius Catto,
Jacob C. White, Jr. co-founded the
Pythians. . .
In 1868, two former classmates and best
friends founded the Pythians, one of
Philadelphia's first African-American
baseball nines, and a team that would be
the first in the nation to petition for
membership in an organized baseball
league. Jacob "Jake" White Jr.
(1837-1902) and
Octavius Catto had been friends
since childhood. Both were sons of
prominent black Philadelphians. . . .
In
the 1890s White helped found the
American Negro Historical Society—one of
the first in the country to collect
materials that documented the history of
African Americans - and placed in its
care the records of the Pythians, which
he had held onto for more than twenty
years. When W. E. B. DuBois came to
Philadelphia in 1896 to research his
path breaking sociological study, The
Philadelphia Negro, White was one of his
most important contacts and sources of
information.
Explore PA History
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Daniel Alexander Payne Murray
(1852-1925) Assistant
librarian,
Library of Congress; bibliographer,
author, politician, and historian was the
son of a freed
slave. He was born in Baltimore,
Maryland on March 3, 1852. In 1861, he went
to work at the United States Senate
Restaurant managed by his brother who was
also a caterer. Murray became the personal
assistant to the Librarian of Congress,
Ainsworth Rand Spofford at the age of
nineteen. On April 2, 1879 he married Anna
Evans with whom he had seven children. By
1881 he had risen to become assistant
librarian. He joined the professional staff
of the
Library of Congress in 1871. He was
eighteen years old, and only the second
black American to work for the Library. Ten
years later Murray was named assistant
librarian, a position he held for
forty-one years. Murray married
educator
Anna Jane Evans, and the couple became a
major force in the social and civic life of
the
District of Columbia.
Murray began to compile a
collection of books and pamphlets authored
by
African Americans at the request of
Herbert Putnam, the successor to Spofford.
Wikipedia |
The
collection was to be an exhibition for the
1900 Paris Exposition on "Negro Authors". In 1900
Murray published a list of the collections' holdings to
date and appealed for additions to the list through
donations.
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Constance Porter Uzelac, formerly a
medical librarian, is the guardian and
keeper of the numerous books, papers and art
works that once belonged to her parents and
is now devoting her life to organizing and
managing the
Dorothy Porter Wesley Research Center
(incorporated as a not-for-profit
corporation in 1995), an archive of items
from the estates of her parents, James Amos
and Dorothy Louis Burnett Porter, and
step-father, Charles Harris Wesley.
Her publications include
William Cooper Nell: Nineteenth-century
Abolitionist, Historian, Integrationist;
Selected Writings, 1832-1874.
BlackPast
|
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Salaam: When
we read some of the letters, statements, and interviews
with people from the village period about you, when they
would mention you, a lot of the writers and publishers
had a lot of respect for your talent as an editor. Did
you think of yourself as talented as an editor?
Baraka:
Yeah. I thought I knew how to get together something
that people wanted to read. I figured if I found
something I wanted to read then I knew a lot of people
would like it.
Salaam: How
did you develop that talent?
Baraka: I
think by knowing the field and knowing the varieties of
that discipline, knowing about magazines and about other
kinds of publications, which I did know a great deal
about.
Salaam: How
did you know about that?
Baraka:
While I was in the Air Force I had read everything in
the world.
Salaam: Is
that what you did while in the Air Force instead of Air
Forcing?
Baraka:
Yeah, I was the night librarian, and I ordered all the
books. The woman who was the day librarian found out I
knew all about the books so she hired me as the night
librarian. So the whole time I was at Ramey when I
wasn't up flying, I was in the library. I ordered all
the books and the records. I had my own group in there.
We would sit there get drunk and read and listen to
music.
Salaam: You mean you went
through that whole library?
Baraka:
Yeah, I stocked the sucker. Not only did I go through
it, but I stocked it. I would go through all the
bestsellers and the publisher's catalogues and find out
what was happening, what was I supposed to know about,
what was I supposed to read.
Salaam:
Basically you read not only what they call the classics,
you read everything that was happening?
Baraka:
Yeah. Bestsellers, classics, whatever. I would check it
out and find out what was it, what was it supposed to
be, who was a Kafka. I would search around until I would
find Kafka, I would read it, and then I got it.—Amiri
Baraka Analyzes How He Writes
* * *
* *
It is difficult to overestimate the significance of this
Bibliography to all students of the Negro and of interracial
problems. During recent weeks I have personally had several
examples of its need and value. A graduate student at a southern
university wrote me asking information regarding books dealing
with the Negro and crime. Chapter XXXIV, Section 1-3, gives the
student a key to this whole difficult field. Similarly, another
correspondent wished information regarding the segregation of
the Negro in public places in American cities. Chapter XXXIII,
Section 4, gives him all essential facts regarding the racial
characteristics of the Negro, as shown both in Africa and the
United States. Chapter XXXVIII, supplemented by Chapter XXVII,
will make it possible for him to pursue his inquiries
intelligently. Scores of questions such as those mentioned can
be answered in a competent way only by the use of this work.
Significance of the Bibliography
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Mayor Bloomberg's budget ax will prune
key public library branches—"Queens
Library was recently recognized
nationally as Library Journal 's
'2009 Library of the Year' in part
because of the quality, depth and
breadth of our programs and services,"
said
Thomas Galante, the library's CEO.
"When service hours are reduced by over
40% - as would happen with this budget -
nearly every opportunity library users
currently have, to improve and enrich
their lives, could be lost behind locked
doors."
For
the 50,000 people who walk through the
doors of the Queens Library system each
day, this would be tragic.
The
city's proposed budget calls for
slashing $16.9 million on July 1 from
the Queens Library. This is on top of
previous funding reductions, bringing
the total cut to $28.3 million—30%
sustained since 2008. |
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If this
happens, library services in the borough will have
been reduced to their lowest levels ever. The cuts
are part of a larger citywide plan to plug a $4.9
billion budget deficit.
Testimony given
by Galante before the City Council in March
forewarned that budget cuts of this magnitude would
close 14 neighborhood libraries in Queens. The
remaining 48 branches would continue to have weekday
and Saturday hours.
More than 400
Queens library staffers would be laid off—30% of its
workforce. Two-thirds of the community libraries in
Queens would be closed more days than they are open.
The negative
impact would be tremendous."This is the worst time
to cut the budget because people are using the
library more than ever," said
Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer (D-Queens), who for
11 years worked in the Queens Library system. The
library's free computers, for example, are used for
about 250,000 sessions a month.
If funding is
further reduced, schoolchildren won't be able to
access homework help, and the people who go to the
library for job search assistance, ESOL programs,
literacy programs and more than 1,000 free
public-use computers would find these services
drastically curtailed. If the budget reductions take
place, it would be the first time in its history
that the Queens Library system is forced to close a
community library outright.
"Even during
the depths of the
Great Depression, libraries remained open seven
days a week to serve a population desperately in
need." Galante said. "While the mayor, the speaker
and city government embark on their ambitious plans
to get people back to work, to support small
business, to connect students to resources and job
opportunities and to educate our adults," Galante
said, "it would be counterproductive to shut the
doors on an institution with a proven record of
accomplishing all of those goals."
That is why
keeping the Queens Library open in every community
is so important. The community needs to be actively
involved in defending its library.
"Please join us
in letting your elected officials know that
libraries are important to you by signing the
petition at
www.savequeenslibrary.org," Galante said.
Source:
NYDaily News
* * * * *
Library
Community Rallies to Aid Earthquake-Stricken Haiti—Unlike
so many medical facilities destroyed by the
earthquake, the Hospital Albert Schweitzer in
Deschapelles was unscathed and utilizing every inch
of space to treat patients. “Every single room is
being pulled into service,” Ian Rawson said in the
Pittsburgh (Pa.) Tribune-Review reported January 14.
“The classrooms are closed. The library is closed.
The cafeteria is closed.”
Miraculously,
the National Library building also survived,
Director-General Françoise Beaulieu-Thybule e-mailed
members of the Conference of Directors of National
Libraries January 15. “The building of the National
Library is safe [although] the shelving and holdings
have shifted,” she
wrote [3]. Noting that “our building is the only
one standing in the whole area,” Beaulieu-Thybule
added, “I have not been able to locate all the
personnel; half of them are safe. We keep
on checking.”—AmericanLibrariesMagazine
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This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians
and Cybrarians Can Save Us
By Marilyn Johnson
In an information age
full of Google-powered searches,
free-by-Bittorrent media downloads and
Wiki-powered knowledge databases, the
librarian may seem like an antiquated
concept. Author and editor Johnson (The
Dead Beat) is here to reverse
that notion with a topical, witty study
of the vital ways modern librarians
uphold their traditional roles as
educators, archivists, and curators of a
community legacy. Illuminating the state
of the modern librarian with humor and
authority, Johnson showcases librarians
working on the cutting edge of virtual
reality simulations, guarding the
Constitution and redefining information
services—as well as working hard
to serve and satisfy readers, making
this volume a bit guilty of long-form
reader flattery. Johnson also makes the
important case for libraries—the
brick-and-mortar kind—as an
irreplaceable bridge crossing economic
community divides. Johnson's wry report
is a must-read for anyone who's used a
library in the past quarter century.—Publishers
Weekly |
Contemporary
librarians are morphing into undisputed masters of
the information cosmos. An Internet-savvy,
database-crunching cohort of multimedia manipulators
passionately dedicated to empowering the
data-deprived, they democratically distribute all
the fruits of the emerging hypertext universe.
Johnson’s paean to this new generation of librarians
demolishes superannuated myths and stereotypes of
fusty librarians filing catalog cards and collecting
fines for overdue books, and replaces that with a
vision of the profession’s future where librarians
serve as guardians and guides to information in
cyberspace. These rock-star librarians maneuver
their way through a labyrinthine network of glowing
computer-terminal screens to retrieve whatever
answers patrons may seek. If that’s not high calling
enough, librarians stand tall as superhero sentinels
bravely beating back every assault on civil
liberties and Constitutional government. Johnson
offers portraits of American librarians, both
institutional and freelance, already achieving fame
as cybrarians and informationists, and she affirms
and celebrates their conquests. Take that, Nicholson
Baker!—Mark Knoblauch, Booklist
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The Idea of the Library in the Ancient
World
By Yun Lee Too
The Idea of the Library in the Ancient
World takes the reader not just to
Alexandria, the home of the famed
library of Greco-Roman antiquity, but
far beyond it. Reading across antiquity
from the fifth century BCE to the ninth
century CE with Photius, the Byzantine
scholar, this study recognizes that
‘library’ in antiquity comes in various
forms and shapes. It can be a building
with books, but it can also be
individual people and individual books
themselves. Its functions in antiquity
are also numerous. The library is an
instrument of power, of memory, of which
it has various modes; it is an
articulation of a political ideal, an
art gallery, a place for social
intercourse. The book indirectly raises
issues about the contemporary library as
a collection and in this way it
demonstrates that antiquity offers
insight into the topics that the library
now raises. |
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The vast generosity of Mr. Carnegie to literature
and scholarship—for the library is the storehouse of literature
and the open door to scholarship—is not a matter of impulse and
did not take its rise in suggestion from without. Love of poetry and
learning came to him by inheritance. His youth knew the spell and
the inspiration of Burns and Shakespeare and those noble old ballads
in which the idealism, the passion, and the tragedy of the Scottish
found such moving and dramatic expression.
Andrew
Carnegie
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* *
It is a correlative of
the Carnegie Foundation and of the Carnegie Institution,
each doing altruistic work in its separate field. Up to
the year 1907 Mr. Carnegie's library gifts had provided
for 1636 library buildings, covering grants of
$44,545,742 -- 1014, representing $32,734,267, in the
United States, and the others dotted over England,
Wales, and Scotland, Canada, South Africa, and other
parts of the English-speaking world. A decade later, up
to 1917, the total grants promised by Mr. Carnegie
personally, and by the Carnegie Corporation, had
provided for 2865 buildings amounting to $65,069,684.44,
in itself an enormous fortune. It would be unfair not to
recognize at this writing the part of Mr. James Bertram,
first, as Mr. Carnegie's personal secretary for library
purposes, and later as secretary of the Carnegie
Corporation, and as the general channel of Mr.
Carnegie's library generosity.
Carnegie & Method of Giving
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Arna
Wendell Bontemps (1902-1973) -- born in Alexandria,
Louisiana, the son of Creole parents -- was one of the more prolific writers of the
Harlem Renaissance. He was the author of over 25 books of
poetry, history, biography, fiction and anthologies. Bontemps
was a major figure of the Harlem Renaissance. Bontemps served as
head librarian at Fisk University from 1969 to 1972. He was also
curator of the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of Negro
Arts and Letters at Yale University.
In 1923, Bontemps
received his B.A. from Pacific Union College in Angwin. In 1924,
his poetry appeared in Crisis
magazine, the NACCP periodical edited by Dr. W.E.B. DuBois. |
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* *
"It has been my good fortune,"
said President Taft, at the dedication of the Carnegie Library of
Howard University, "to stand with Mr. Carnegie and to speak
with him from the same platform at Tuskegee, at Hampton, and here,
and to hear his accents of encouragement to the colored race and
his wise advice to them as to the necessity for education on their
part, and as to the
obligation of each individual of the race to remember that in all
his conduct he is a representative, and on trial. Mr. Carnegie was
absent a year ago when we founded this library. I was glad, on the
occasion of the laying of the cornerstone, for the moment to
officiate in his place and to feel as a great millionaire
benefactor feels." Tuskegee
Library and Carnegie
* * *
* *
The Black Caucus of
the American Library Association serves as an
advocate for the development, promotion, and
improvement of library services and resources to the
nation's African American community; and provides
leadership for the recruitment and professional
development of African American librarians.
* *
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Edward
Wilmot Blyden (3 August 1832 – 7
February 1912) was a
Sierra Leone Creole and
Americo-Liberian
educator,
writer,
diplomat, and
politician in
Liberia and
Sierra Leone. Because Blyden was an
intellectual force in both Liberia and
Sierra Leone, historians regard him as
both a
Sierra Leone Creole and an
Americo-Liberian.—Wikipedia
[B]ook
learning is not the most essential part
of our educational needs as a people.
You do not educate a man when you merely
fill his mind; but you do educate him
when you make him feel what he ought to
feel; the one is mental, the other
affectional. The one teaches him to lean
upon others, the other teaches him to
"retire upon himself." . . . And this
view . . . of their education becomes
more important when we look upon the
work which a large portion of them are
destined to do they will not be able to
succeed as mere imitators of the
European.—Edward
Wilmot Blyden |
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The Price of Civilization
Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity
By Jeffrey D. Sachs
The Price of Civilization is a book that is essential reading for every American. In a forceful, impassioned, and personal voice, he offers not only a searing and incisive diagnosis of our country’s economic ills but also an urgent call for Americans to restore the virtues of fairness, honesty, and foresight as the foundations of national prosperity. Sachs finds that both political parties—and many leading economists—have missed the big picture, offering shortsighted solutions such as stimulus spending or tax cuts to address complex economic problems that require deeper solutions. Sachs argues that we have profoundly underestimated globalization’s long-term effects on our country, which create deep and largely unmet challenges with regard to jobs, incomes, poverty, and the environment. America’s single biggest economic failure, Sachs argues, is its inability to come to grips with the new global economic realities. Sachs describes a political system that has lost its ethical moorings, in which ever-rising campaign contributions and lobbying outlays overpower the voice of the citizenry. . . . Sachs offers a plan to turn the crisis around. He argues persuasively that the problem is not America’s abiding values, which remain generous and pragmatic, but the ease with which political spin and consumerism run circles around those values. He bids the reader to reclaim the virtues of good citizenship and mindfulness toward the economy and one another. |
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The Last Holiday: A Memoir
By Gil Scott Heron
Shortly after we republished The Vulture and The Nigger Factory, Gil started to tell me about The Last Holiday, an account he was writing of a multi-city tour that he ended up doing with Stevie Wonder in late 1980 and early 1981. Originally Bob Marley was meant to be playing the tour that Stevie Wonder had conceived as a way of trying to force legislation to make Martin Luther King's birthday a national holiday. At the time, Marley was dying of cancer, so Gil was asked to do the first six dates. He ended up doing all 41. And Dr King's birthday ended up becoming a national holiday ("The Last Holiday because America can't afford to have another national holiday"), but Gil always felt that Stevie never got the recognition he deserved and that his story needed to be told. The first chapters of this book were given to me in New York when Gil was living in the Chelsea Hotel. Among the pages was a chapter called Deadline that recounts the night they played Oakland, California, 8 December; it was also the night that John Lennon was murdered. Gil uses Lennon's violent end as a brilliant parallel to Dr King's assassination and as a biting commentary on the constraints that sometimes lead to newspapers getting things wrong. —Jamie Byng, Guardian / Gil_reads_"Deadline" (audio) / Gil Scott-Heron
& His Music Gil Scott
Heron Blue Collar
Remember Gil Scott- Heron |
update 4 February 2012
|
