The 2025 awards cycle for ALA’s Library History Roundtable Phyllis Dain Award will open in January.  The submission deadline for this award cycle is January 31, 2025.

 Library History Round Table (LHRT) of the American Library Association (ALA) sponsors the biennial Phyllis Dain Library History Dissertation Award. The award, named in honor of a library historian widely known as a supportive advisor and mentor as well as a rigorous scholar and thinker, recognizes outstanding dissertations in English in the general area of library history. The author of the selected dissertation will receive a certificate and five hundred dollars.

Dissertations completed and accepted during the preceding two academic years are eligible. Dissertations completed in 2023 and 2024 will be considered for the 2025 award cycle.

Dissertations must be original research on a significant topic relating to the history of libraries during any period, in any region of the world. Entries are judged on clear definition of research questions and/or hypotheses, use of appropriate primary resources, depth of research, superior quality of writing, and significance of conclusions. The LHRT is particularly interested in dissertations that place the subject within its broader historical, social, cultural, and political context and that make interdisciplinary connections with print culture and/or information studies.

Submissions for the next award cycle will open in January 2025. Applicants will be asked to submit one electronic copy of the approved and signed dissertation and a signed letter of support from the doctoral advisor or dissertation committee chair at the degree-granting institution.

For more information, please visit: https://www.ala.org/lhrt/awards/phyllis-dain-library-history-dissertation-award

——————————
Deborah Smith
Executive Director
Jones Memorial Library
——————————

Sharing this beautiful essay by Dr. Coleman about Pauline Atherton from ALA Connect…it will help us reflect on the past and guide the future!

---

Dear Colleagues,

As ALA’s Sesquicentennial in 2026 approaches, I revisited two of Pauline Atherton’s seminal works, through an AI-driven lens. This milestone is a unique opportunity to reflect on the leaders who have shaped our profession.

Using the Eleven Labs AI Text Reader, I first listened to Pauline’s Sarada Ranganathan Endowment Lectures (SRELS) given in India (1970), published in Putting Knowledge to Work (1973), and digitized for dLIST Classics in 2007 (cover attached). Hearing her words through an American AI voice was both moving and illuminating—a modern way to engage with her vision using technology she would have embraced.

Pauline’s insights continue to resonate, especially as we explore responsible AI use in enhancing library services. I had the privilege of being Pauline’s first graduate teaching assistant at the University of Illinois. In her opening lecture at SRELS, she explained why she called herself an “apostle of Ranganathan,” humorously recounting her journey from initial skepticism about his Five Laws to becoming its dedicated advocate in the United States—a story she also shared with me. 🙂  By the time I met her in 1992, she’d already had a distinguished career, from ASIS President to pioneering mechanized information systems, OPACs, and traveling widely, bridging traditional librarianship with emerging technologies—a legacy of adapting knowledge to serve people. Listening to her lectures through the Eleven Reader app made historical scholarship both accessible and engaging, embodying the vision that both Ranganathan and Atherton championed: the dynamic evolution of library and information science.

Linda Smith’s metaphor of AI as a “human intermediary” aptly frames AI as a tool that augments our ability to make information accessible. With AI’s support for diverse languages, including Tamil, we now have new pathways for connecting with knowledge across linguistic and cultural boundaries, embodying Ranganathan’s fifth law: “The library is a growing organism.”

Pauline’s 1992 reflection in Libri—she gifted me a signed copy of her Information Technology in Libraries and Ranganathan’s Five Laws of Library Science, which had just come out—invites us to welcome change and simplify knowledge systems: “We introduced complicated procedures… we came to realize it was our responsibility to make them easier to use.”  Inspired by Pauline and her extension of SRR’s “book” laws to IT, I once proposed the corollary: “The growing library experiences pain!” —a humorous reflection on the challenges we face adapting to ever changing systems.

Pauline’s insights remain especially relevant today as we consider how to use AI responsibly to enhance library services while honoring our foundational principles.

How do you envision AI being applied to advance our mission of connecting people with knowledge? What innovative ways can we use these tools to better serve our communities and thoughtfully preserve diverse knowledge traditions?

For those interested, Pauline Atherton’s Putting Knowledge to Work is available full-text in the dLIST repository (University of Arizona, Tucson), and she has a Wikipedia page, thanks to Kathleen McCook.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

Warm regards,

Anita

Anita S. Coleman, PhD | Infophilia | Antiracism Digital Library & Thesaurus | iSchool@UIUC

Cara S. Bertram, American Library Association Archives Program Officer, offers us a fantastic timeline of book bans in the United States!:

Censorship Throughout the Centuries

Check out our full compilation of library history infographics and timelines from around the web at https://lhrt.news/infographics/

Santerre, F. (September/October 2024). The Society of the Priests of Saint-Sulpice in Montreal: A Bookish Community. Caxtonian 32(5), pp. 6-8.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1klsYmkurd9TXm_bS5ghntNyeBHqb3TEl/view

The recommenders of Foundational Books in Library Service included many memories of the authors.  I will post about some as we prepare for the 150th anniversary of the American Library Association. Please add as you think of people in our field who made a difference to you.

——————————
Kathleen de la Peña McCook
Distinguished University Professor
School of Information
University of South Florida

---

William “Bill” Armstrong Katz was born on July 6, 1924, in Seattle, Washington. He received his B.A. in Journalism from the University of Washington in 1947. He received his M.A. in Library Science from the same school in 1956. He received his PhD from the Graduate Library School, University of Chicago in 1965.

Katz served in the U.S. Army from 1942-1945 during World War II and received the Bronze Star.

Katz was editor of the journal Reference Quarterly for 10 years, during which time he oversaw its transition from a short newsletter to a leading scholarly journal. He served as the editor for the Journal of Education for Librarianship from 1964 to 1972. He was professor at the School of Information Science and Policy (SISP) at the State University of New York at Albany where he would remain for the rest of his academic career.

 He was editor of The Reference Librarian in 1981 and The Acquisitions Librarian in 1987.

Katz wrote more than 50 books and articles during his career. In 1969, Katz published his two-volume Introduction to Reference Work which quickly became a standard textbook in reference education. The 8th edition was published in 2002. He also created and edited the reference text Magazines for Libraries, first published in 1969, which is in its 29th print edition as of 2021.

Katz also served as editor and compiler of over 40 works on various topics in library science, poetry, and the history of books. In 1991, he and his wife, Linda Sternberg Katz, published The Columbia Granger’s Guide to Poetry Anthologies. Katz also published on bibliographic history, including Cuneiform to Computer: A History of Reference Sources (1998) and A History of Book Illustrations: 29 Points of View (1994).

For more see: Maatta, Stephanie (2007-07-12). “William A. Katz: A Lifetime of Scholarship”. The Reference Librarian. 47 (1): 9–15.

——————————
Kathleen de la Peña McCook
Distinguished University Professor
School of Information
University of South Florida

https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p07hlqyp/preserving-the-ancient-art-of-handcrafting-books

Ariel Sabar writes: “the Voynich Manuscript has long baffled scholars—and attracted cranks and conspiracy theorists. Now a prominent medievalist is taking a new approach to unlocking its secrets.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/09/decoding-voynich-manuscript/679157

Santerre, F. (2024). The Sulpicians of Montreal and Their Books: A Legacy of National Importance in Quebec. Catholic Library World, 94(3), pp 170-182.

As described by the author: “The article explores the books amassed by the Society of Saint-Sulpice in Montreal, Quebec. It describes the historical, cultural, and scholarly significance of the Sulpicians’ libraries. It discusses the importance of safeguarding and showcasing these heritage collections. The need for a comprehensive catalog to facilitate a deeper understanding of the Society of Saint Sulpice’s relationship with its libraries is emphasized.”

Have you thought about writing the history of the private library of an author? Perhaps your library has a writer’s collection in its archives that would make a good subject.

In “Lost Memory: Reconstructing Writers’ Libraries”, Achim Hölter discusses the importance of writer libraries, noting that “the library of an author’s choice–as a regular visitor, or, even more so, as its creator and, possibly, owner–forms the material basis for that author’s writing and reading practices, and thus for his/her understanding by posterity” (p. 653).

Fortunately, you can access this book chapter (from The Languages of World Literature published by De Gruyter) at https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110645033-047/html

Consider checking it out if you’re thinking about how to approach writing about a writer’s library.