Background
Like War Camp Community Service, the American Library Association was a secular organization operating in a campaign dominated by religious groups. Still, the group shared similarities with some of its faith-based counterparts. Like the Jewish Welfare Board and National Catholic War Council, the association had its own motives in its war work aside from patriotism. Libraries were a growing facet of American life in the years up until the war and the American Library Association was eager to garner more attention and patrons for American libraries.[1] The organization also had a mere 3,300 members and a budget of under $25,000 at the outbreak of the war, making it perhaps the least likely group to be included in the United War Work Campaign.[2] Still, the Association saw a chance to simultaneously expand its services, aid in the war work and gain good press in the United War Work Campaign and prepared for mobilization.
Motivations
At the core of the American Library Association’s work lay a belief in the reforming and educating potential of public libraries.[3] In the aftermath of the Great War, the group launched a fundraising drive to increase the number of libraries in America.[4] Programs for adult immigrants and certification of professional education were some of the main goals of the drive.[5] One publication for this “Enlarged Program” showed several immigrants in a library with the caption “Good books make good citizens.”[6] Indeed, librarians had been involved with educating immigrants and culturing them to American society in the decades up until the war. This became all the more important during the Great War rush to educate foreign-born Americans about America’s war time goals.[7] During the Red Scare, American Library Association publications emphasized how libraries could help educate the public about the terrors of Communism and support society.[8]
This belief in the potential of libraries to raise better citizens went part and parcel with the belief that service libraries could make better soldiers. Herbert Putnam, librarian of Congress and a leader of the Library War Service, the Association’s service arm, admonished librarians in 1918: “But don’t for a moment believe that-outside of the fighting ranks themselves-there is any “war work” more necessary or more patriotic than you are doing here.”[9] A desire to promote good citizenship and an earnest believe in the necessity of books for the war effort lay at the root of the organization’s work, thus making it a perfect candidate for the United War Work Campaign.
War Work
The group provided, through its Library War Service, ten million books for U.S. service members over the course of the war.[10] The Library War Service shipped some 55,000 books to France in April of 1918 alone.[11]The Association constructed libraries in both the U.S. and France. These libraries were typically staffed by men and books were loaned out with great leniency with fines. Citizens back on the home front donated books through book drives. These drives netted a wide range of topics. While many Library War service librarians boasted of how the soldiers enjoyed reading Shakespeare and other classical works of literature, most of the books circulated by the ALA’s libraries were much more tabloid.[12] The library war service appears to have been popular with the troops and service members frequently requested books on the German Empire and technical training. One war librarian noted that African American soldiers in particular flocked to their local library and claimed, “…no class or group of readers appreciate the work of the A.L.A. more than they do.” [13]
The Association was not above censorship and a number of titles donated to its libraries never made their way onto the shelves of camp libraries. Anti-war treatises and any work that thought highly of Germany were barred from circulation.[14] The group also did not hire any citizen suspected of being disloyal and a German-American librarian from Oregon was rejected from library war service, despite having 3 letters vouching for his loyalty.[15]
While some of the war work agencies (click here to learn about the YMCA) suffered blows to their reputations, the American Library Association gained the admiration and gratitude of many U.S. soldiers. “The books are doing the 306th infantry a world of good,” exclaimed one private in a letter to Burton Stevenson, the organization’s representative in France during the war.[16] Another grateful soldier praised the Association’s honor system of allowing soldiers to return books to other libraries in a letter to Stevenson.
Tension with the YMCA in France
It is especially interesting to note that the American Library Association was not always at peace with the other war work organizations in France, even despite their cooperation during the United War Work Campaign. Stevenson, in particular, seems to have had no love lost for the YMCA. The Y was the most famous of the seven going into the war and often tried to have other organizations work through its own buildings and location. The YMCA “gives the impression the newspapers that it is a sort of sponsor for us,” Stevenson remarked in a letter to another employee.[17] On another occasion, he opined in a letter to Herbert Putnam, Librarian of Congress, “There is a tendency on the part of the Y……to treat us as a kind of tail to send its kite higher.”[18] On another occasion, a YMCA employee ordered shipments of books for their own libraries and then tried to get Stevenson to fit the bill, much to Stevenson’s ire. “I told Mason [of the YMCA] that our mission is, not to furnish the YMCA with them, but to supply the American Army with them,” he remarked latter of the incident.[19] Contrary to the unified façade the seven sisters organizations had created, tension existed between the groups in France at times and the different agencies bumped shoulders often.
[1]Caroline Daniels, “‘The Feminine Touch Has Not Been Wanting’: Women Librarians at Camp Zachary Taylor, 1917-1919,” Libraries & the Cultural Record 43, no. 3 (2008): 288.
[2]Arthur P. Young, “Aftermath of a Crusade: World War I and the Enlarged Program of the American Library Association,” Library Quarterly 50, no. 2 (April 1980): 192.
[3]Young, “Aftermath of a Crusade: World War I and the Enlarged Program of the American Library Association,” 192.
[4]Young, “Aftermath of a Crusade: World War I and the Enlarged Program of the American Library Association,” 191.
[5]Young, “Aftermath of a Crusade: World War I and the Enlarged Program of the American Library Association,” 191.
[6]Young, “Aftermath of a Crusade: World War I and the Enlarged Program of the American Library Association,” 202.
[7]Jane A Rosenberg, The Nation’s Great Library: Herbert Putnam and the Library of Congress, 1899-1939 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 84.
[8]Young, “Aftermath of a Crusade: World War I and the Enlarged Program of the American Library Association,” 203.
[9]Rosenberg, The Nation’s Great Library: Herbert Putnam and the Library of Congress, 1899-1939, 92.
[10]Young, “Aftermath of a Crusade: World War I and the Enlarged Program of the American Library Association,” 192.
[11]Burton Egbert Stevenson, letter to James Logan, May 13, 1918, Box 14, Burton Egbert Stevenson Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington D.C.
[12]Arthur P Young, Books for Sammies: The American Library Association and World War I (Pittsburgh, Pa.: Beta Phi Mu, 19810),46-47.
[13]Young, Books for Sammies: The American Library Association and World War I, 71.
[14]Young, Books for Sammies: The American Library Association and World War I, 47-52.
[15]Young, Books for Sammies: The American Library Association and World War I, 33.
[16]Nathan Lerner, letter to Burton Egbert Stevenson, March 15th, 1919, Box 14, Burton Egbert Stevenson Papers.
[17]Burton Egbert Stevenson, letter to D. Raney, May 20, 1918, Box 16, Burton Egbert Stevenson Papers.
[18]Stevenson, letter to Herbert Putnam, April 23, 1918, Box 16, Burton Egbert Stevenson Papers.
[19]Stevenson, letter to D. Raney, May 20, 1918, Box 16, Burton Egbert Stevenson Papers.
