The arrangement was beneficial to both CLA and NYPL. The Library hired Anne Carroll Moore in 1906
to develop its children’s services and needed a cadre of trained librarians to
staff the growing number of children’s rooms in its newly-opened Carnegie
buildings. The CLA graduates (most
wanted to be children’s librarians) were able to gain experience in a large,
well-run system before returning south to work in that region’s growing number
of libraries.
The CLA Library School wanted to make certain its graduates
were well-prepared and also wanted to position the school as the place to
contact when towns sought to organize or expand a library. Thus, the school wanted to know how its graduates
were progressing and urged the graduates to write letters describing their expectations
and experiences.
Fortunately, much of that correspondence survives in the
alumni files of the CLA Library School which are housed in the Manuscripts,
Archives & Rare Book Library at Emory University. I recently spent a day reading through those files.
The graduates’ correspondence reported on both the
attractive and unattractive aspects of working and living in New York City.
They found NYPL’s six-day work week to be strenuous. But, while
the hustle and bustle of New York City was also difficult, they enjoyed the
opportunity to live independently and to experience the City. May Smith reported in 1914 that “New York is
wonderful and Katharine and I have our ‘day away’ together, and we have had
some most enjoyable jaunts.” Other
letters indicates that the ability to attend the theater seemed a particular
attraction to the Southerners. Another
wrote “I feel that the past five months … has been as broadening as a trip to
Europe.”
The City and the Library also presented situations at odds
with the graduates southern backgrounds.
In 1913 Elwyn de Graffenried reported with apparent surprise on her
first day working in the Central Children’s Room: “yesterday I found myself
answering the questions of a ‘black’ lady with the same desire to please as
though she had been white.”
The mutually valuable connections between NYPL and the CLA have
not drawn much historical attention but deserve to be explored further.
