GLADYS YOUNG LESLIE—UPDATE

Last November, I posted a short biography on Gladys Y. Leslie .  Thanks to the courtesy of the Lilly Library at the University of Indiana, I can now add some additional information on her 1915 marriage to Noel Leslie, a British actor. 

Her husband’s given name was actually Noel Leslie Brown, but he used the shorter version as his stage name.  In my earlier post I mentioned her marriage but speculated that it had not lasted.

Under US law in 1915, Gladys Young lost her US citizenship since her husband was a British national.  Apparently this law only applied to American women; American men who married a foreign national kept their US citizenship.  (See the Wikipedia article on the Married Women's Independent Nationality Act for more information.)

The Lilly Library holds the papers of John J. O’Connor (a New York City Congressman) and provided copies from his file on Gladys Young Leslie’s effort to regain her US citizenship. The papers confirm that Gladys Young Leslie divorced her husband in 1924.  Six years later she sought O’Connor’s assistance to have her US citizenship restored.  Finally, in 1930 Gladys Young Leslie once again became a citizen of the United States of America.    

GLADYS YOUNG LESLIE (1890-1977)

Gladys Young was born in Iowa.  After graduation from Cedar Rapids High School, she worked as an Assistant Cataloger at the Cedar Rapids Public Library, 1908-1912.  She resigned that position to enter the NYPL Library School and finished the two-year program in 1914.

Young started working at NYPL in 1912 and was named First Assistant in Central Circulation even before she received her library degree.

In 1915 Young married Noel Leslie (1888-1974) an English-born actor.  It seems likely that they separated since she is not listed as a survivor in his obituary.

Gladys Leslie served as Branch Librarian at Seward Park, 1925-1927.  After the NYPL Library School closed in 1926, NYPL re-established its Training Class, and Leslie was named Supervisor of Training.  She was credited with attracting good trainees, some of whom later went on to get library degrees.

Leslie resigned from NYPL in 1930 and the following year was selected to organize the library for the newly founded Bennington College.  On her retirement as head of the college library in 1956, a notice in College & Research Libraries (Vol. 17, p. 441) recognized her as “entirely responsible for building a well balanced and mature book collection and for the efficient and friendly operation of the library.”

Today would be the 121^st birthday of Gladys Y. Leslie.

PUBLIC LIBRARIANS IN ACADEMIC LIBRARIES

I taught in library schools for 20 years and found that most students seemed to have a sense that they would take a public library or an academic library track.  It was rare that they crossed over the dividing line from one to the other.

As I looked at my database on those who became NYPL Branch Librarians 1901-1950, I discovered an unexpected fact.  There was a significant amount of back and forth by the Branch Librarians between NYPL and academic libraries. 

Overall, slightly more than 10% of all Branch Librarians worked in an academic library before going to NYPL, 5% took a leave of absence from NYPL to work in an academic library, and 8% worked in an academic library after leaving NYPL. 

In addition, five NYPL librarians not only worked in an academic library but made a major contribution in that position.  They were:

Rae Stockham was head librarian of Drake University for 10 years before starting at NYPL in 1921.

Gladys Young Leslie started the library at Bennington College in 1930 and headed it until 1956.

Ruth Wellman took a leave of absence from NYPL to organize the New School Library.

Mary K. Dempsey organized the Marquette University Library in 1945.

Loda May Hopkins retired from NYPL to serve as Assistant Director and then Director of the Simmons College Library.

These statistics indicate that for NYPL librarians, at least, the boundary between public and academic libraries was once much more permeable than it is today.