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Article Excerpt
ABSTRACT
Free public libraries, and "modern" library methods, arrived late in the Pacific Northwest. Two individuals were particularly influential in the introduction, growth, and professionalization of library service in the state of Oregon: Cornelia Marvin (later Pierce), of the Oregon Library Commission and the Oregon State Library (1905-28), and Mary Frances Isom of the Library Association of Portland (1901-20). This article will explore their relationship as leaders and colleagues during the early years of public library service in Oregon. Isom and Marvin frequently consulted one another on professional and personal questions, supporting each other as senior leaders of their institutions and as women in positions of power. Often working together, Isom and Marvin promoted tax-supported libraries throughout Oregon and the advantages of staffing them with formally trained librarians. Between them, they established the foundations for community and government support for libraries in the state. They contributed to creating a professional support system for librarians in the region as cofounders of the Pacific Northwest Library Association and were also active in the American Library Association. Their publications, reports, and surviving correspondence provide evidence of their extensive mutual support, opinions, actions, and decisions, as well as their professional development during their years as Oregon colleagues.
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To my thinking, a great librarian must have a clear head, a strong hand, and, above all, a great heart. He must have a head as clear as the master in diplomacy; a hand as strong as he who quells the raging mob or leads great armies on to victory; and a heart as great as he who, to save others, will, if need be, lay down his life. Such shall be the greatest among librarians; and, when I look into the future, I am inclined to think that most of the men who will achieve this greatness will be women. --Melvil Dewey, 1899
In this statement equating librarians with heroes, Melvil Dewey looked forward from 1899 and observed that in the future most of the "great librarians" would be women. Certainly women were already very well represented in the profession, many of them with formal training from America's newly established library schools. Librarians trained at Dewey's New York school ,and other schools formed shortly afterward, shared a common body of knowledge, common principles, and a collegial connection to each other. Having received their formal credentials, these librarians went to work throughout the nation, contributing to the "missionary phase" of the free public library, one of America's most enduring public institutions.
In the states of the Pacific Northwest in the earliest years of the twentieth century, free public libraries were still scarce, although they had become common farther east. Oregon in 1903 boasted 3 free public libraries; by contrast, Massachusetts had 206 (U.S. Bureau of Education, 1909, p. 30). A member of the Library Association of Portland board explained that the late development of free libraries was a result of the understandable need for communities to focus first on essential services: "Light and water and the other necessities of municipal life demand their attention and money; they wish the best public schools they can afford, so that they are not without excuse in allowing the comparative luxury of libraries to wait" (Brewster, 1905, p. 785). As popular support for libraries began to take hold, librarians with formal professional preparation were increasingly drawn to the Pacific Northwest region, which they perceived to be a wide-open field. The advantages to a community of hiring a "trained librarian" began to be recognized, and since the Pacific Northwest had no library schools until 1911 when a program was established at the University of Washington, the pioneer librarians of the Pacific Northwest were trained in the schools of the East and Midwest. They were nearly all female and unmarried.
Mary Frances Isom and Cornelia Marvin were key figures in the development phase of Oregon's public libraries, influencing and implementing public policies that made these institutions possible. Isom headed Oregon's most important library, beginning in 1902 when it opened to the public, first serving the city of Portland and then all of Multnomah County; Marvin led Oregon's first state library commission, established in 1905, and she worked quickly to extend library services to the rest of the state's population through the establishment of city and county libraries and through the traveling libraries and direct mail-order service made available through her agency. These two women were at the top of Oregon's library hierarchy and were extremely influential in determining what public libraries in the state would be and who Oregon's librarians would be. Enough reliable evidence has survived to permit a critical summary of their professional activities and achievements and to support the application of the "pioneer" label to both. (1) Along with a small group of their peers from the same generation, both women were model librarians of the time: well-trained, highly competent, intelligent, and confident, with a mastery of the tools they needed to establish and operate libraries. Both possessed personal qualities that were considered highly desirable for female leaders of this period, although today they might be dismissed as antiquated, sexist, and elitist. These were enumerated by historian Joanne Passet as "breeding, social skills, feminine virtues, and physical appearance" (Passet, 1991b, p. 217).
EXAMINING TWO LIVES
Mary Frances Isom (1865-1920)
Several authors have previously written about Isom. Along with Marvin, she was among four pioneer librarians featured by Passet in Cultural Crusaders (1994, pp. 135-149). She has been the subject of two biographical articles (Van Home, 1959; Kingsbury, 1975) and is represented in several reference works; (2) she is also one of the three librarians featured in Oregon historian Dorothy Johansen's The Library and the Liberal Tradition (1959). Published histories of the Library Association of Portland (LAP) include information about her role as an important leader of a cultural institution with a long history of service to Portland's elite, as it was transformed into a tax-supported free public institution (Brewster, 1938; Anderson, 1964; Ritz, 2000; Gunselman, 2001, 2002). All of these works have been built upon a somewhat sparse and fragmented documentary record. Along with the correspondence mentioned in note 1, evidence of Isom's career may be found in the minutes of the LAP board; other sources of information are local newspapers, which often included coverage of library affairs and activities, memorial tributes which appeared after her death, and an interview with Marvin (Pierce, 1956).
Most of the details of Isom's early years have not been preserved; very little record remains of her life prior to her enrollment at the Pratt Institute library school. We know that she was born in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1865, to army surgeon Dr. John Franklin Isom and Frances A. (Walter) Isom. She appears to have been their only child. Her family was from Cleveland, and they returned there after the Civil War. She spent one year at Wellesley but interrupted her college education to return to Cleveland, where she served as "hostess and companion for her father" (Kingsbury, 1978, p. 261). When Dr. Isom died in 1899, Isom, then in her thirties, enrolled in the library program at Pratt at the urging of her childhood friend, Pratt faculty member Josephine Adams Rathbone. She spent two years there, completing the optional second year "historical course," and began seeking a position.
Isom's ascent to the top position in the Library Association of Portland, a private subscription library, was remarkably rapid and occurred at a critical time for the institution. She was hired very shortly after completing her work at the Pratt Institute library school in 1901 to catalog a large collection of books that had been bequeathed to the LAP in 1900 by Portland merchant John Wilson. Wilson had attached a significant condition to his bequest: if the directors of the LAP wished to accept this gift of approximately 9,000 volumes, they had to agree to make the books accessible, free of charge, to the public. Isom began the process of cataloging the books as the directors were making their final decision about how their private institution would go about making the collection freely available. In a remarkably rapid series of events between September 1900 and March 1902, the state of Oregon passed its first legislation authorizing tax levies for the support of free public libraries; the directors of the LAP agreed to make their library free; and Isom replaced Davis P. Leach, the head librarian, to preside over the LAP's transformation into Oregon's first tax-supported public library. Under her supervision, the use of the library skyrocketed; the number of library users grew from 803 dues-paying members in 1901 to 12,233 registered public users in 1903. Statistics also reflect use of the library building, a large structure in downtown Portland built by the LAP in 1893: attendance rose from 56,750 in 1901 to 228,918 in 1903 (see table 1). Isom and her staff apparently accommodated the changes very well, and the LAP continued to grow rapidly.
At the time of her promotion she was thirty-seven, unmarried, and financially secure, having inherited the estate of her parents. For the rest of her life Isom lived in Portland, intentionally choosing to devote herself to her career. In her correspondence she occasionally joked about matrimony, but in general she appeared content with her choice to remain unmarried. She maintained a busy social and volunteer schedule: at the time of her death, she was a member of the Oregon Civic League, the Consumer's League, the Professional Women's League, the Art Museum, the Drama League, the Evening Star Grange, the British Benevolent Society of Oregon, and a director of the Social Workers' Association of Oregon and the Audubon Society (Library Association of Portland, 1920, p. 4).
Isom's domestic life was privileged and full. In 1910 she adopted a young girl, Berenice Langton, the daughter of impoverished friends. They lived very comfortably with the help of their live-in domestic employee, Inga, who served as maid, cook, and housekeeper--a kind of support that undoubtedly gave Isom a great deal of freedom from the day-to-day domestic chores that often demanded so much of women's time and energy during this period. Her dependence on Inga is occasionally revealed in her letters; in 1909 she wrote to Marvin that "Inga is away on her vacation and will not be home until September 1st; we are taking our meals out and hating it" (Unpublished letter from M. E Isom to C. Marvin, August 20, 1909. Records of the Oregon State Library, 89A-35, Box 54. Oregon State Archives). Marvin, whose own meals were prepared over the years by boarding house proprietresses, restaurants, and hired cooks, sympathized. Isom maintained two homes: in addition to her Portland house, she also built a beach house on the Oregon coast, a cottage called Spindrift, which was designed by A. E. Doyle, the same architect who...
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