July 4, 2016 • 50 mins
Being a librarian was originally a man's job. Then Melvil Dewey and his book-loving bros came along and changed all that. But while the feminization of librarianship offered new a new occupation for women, it was built on old ideas about female nature and its proper place.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you From house top
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, And by very popular demand, we're
talking about librarians, not just in this podcast but also
(00:23):
in the next because there's so much to talk about.
There's so much to talk about, and you were just
going to listen to me over the course of two
episodes trying not to say librarians. And I'm not teasing anyone.
I'm not making fun of speech impediments. I'm literally concerned
about my lazy mouth. Well, and it didn't help that
the email I sent Caroline with all of my library
(00:46):
sources that I was reading was subject line library sources.
So now library is in my head. Yeah, well, librry
sounds like some kind of uh refreshing tonic, a liberry juice.
Really go for a library right now? What what flavor
would a library be? Um? Something sour? I bet like
(01:08):
lime and BlackBerry. Let's make that happen. Can that be
a cocktail? Throw some gin in there? I'm sure it could.
But um, but about specific actual human librarians? True? Um,
we we seriously did receive so many emphatic requests for
this episode. People out there who work with books, work
(01:31):
around books, they do tend to call themselves librarians. Um,
and yeah, we we couldn't not listen to you guys.
Your your request. We had to answer well because we
mentioned off handedly in an episode. I think it was
our episode about Hillary Clinton's early life that we should
revisit librarians, because there is a librarian themed episode of
(01:57):
Stuff Mom Never Told You from the Vault. I think
it came out in two thousand and ten. Um, so
we will be revisiting a little bit of that. But
I have a feeling a lot of listeners either haven't
heard that episode or it's probably been a while since
you have heard that episode, because I mean, children born
that year are like six now I know, so, so
(02:18):
six year olds. This is for you. Yeah, this goes
out to you, and also all the librarians out there. UM. If,
by the way, the two bossy Dames who are fantastic
librarians who send out a weekly newsletter that you should
absolutely subscribe to, if they're listening, because I think they
might know who we are. Hello, I thought about you
(02:39):
a lot during this episode, just pondered them. I'm picturing
you like sitting in your window looking out at the moon,
because they're rab librarians. I mean, And in college, Caroline,
I really wanted to work at our college library. So
as part of my student aid, I had an on
campus job and you could check off the ones that
(03:00):
you wanted, and the library was where all the cool
kids worked. Like a lot of townies worked at the library,
and it just kind of sounded cool, like, oh, I
just came from my shift at the library, and they
always had cool glasses and cool to tuos. And instead
I ended up working at the print shop, which had
(03:21):
its own you know, benefits hashtag free copies. But uh,
but still it was it was my dream to be
the college librarian. Well, it's funny that you mentioned like
the cool kids and the cool glasses and the tattoos
and everything, because that is sort of a latter day
librarian stereotype. You know. We over the course of these
(03:43):
two episodes, we will discuss stereotypes a bit. But um,
you know, we've always had the image of the old
spinster woman shushing children, but I feel like more recently,
the new stereotype it's been introduced is like it is
a lady job, and here I am the alternative librarian
with the tattoos and glasses. Yeah, and she has really
(04:05):
cool glasses, some great tattoos, She wears modcloth dresses, has
fantastic vintage decor in her home, and a record collection,
and essentially is just has really great aesthetic taste and
also so many cultural references. Because she's read so much
(04:29):
cultural and literary references. She sounds like somebody i'd want
to hang out with. She's kind of my ideal woman.
I think that's what I'm realizing right now. It sounds
like you still want to go work in a library
a little bit. I've also been thinking about librarians a bit, though, Caroline,
because I've been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer for the
first time, thank you Netflix. And Giles the Watcher is
(04:53):
a librarian and he fits the stereotype of your of
the he's the a curmudgeon, but he's a little bit fusty. Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
And it is interesting to see, and I mean it
makes total sense. It's pretty self explanatory. It's interesting to
see the evolution of the librarian stereotype and how it
(05:13):
exactly matches the trends that we see in librarian nging librarianship.
Oh sure that'll work as well. Yes, uh. And in
this episode we're going to talk about how librarianship used
to be a dude's job and how a guy named
Melville Dewey came along and changed all of that. And
(05:38):
he also is the one who created the Dewey decimal system.
And while he often gets praised for that, I mean
he's kind of considered this hero of librarianship, we have
we have darker tales to tell about Dewey. Yeah, sounds
like a he's a real joy. But the whole transition
(06:01):
of librarianship from being a man's job to a woman's job,
which it still very much is today, is a really
intriguing exploration of how masculinity, ideal masculinity changed in turn
of the century America. Yes, this is such a great
episode to encompass all of the themes that Sminty just loves. Like, what, so,
(06:28):
we've got women in the workplace, but we've also got
the professionalization issue surrounding gender. So very professional when it
comes to men, but less professional when it comes to
women and wages. Um, we've also got issues of the
spinster and marriage and relationships, and who is allowed to
(06:51):
be employed both like you know, legally and just socially,
what is socially accepted? Um? And just a boatload of stereotypes. Yeah,
Victorian womanhood, gender norms. These two episodes, folks have it all.
So in this episode we're gonna be focusing on men
(07:12):
in librarianship, and then in our next episode we're gonna
be talking about rad lady librarians and how it became feminized. Um.
And we should say that it is still very much
a feminized occupation. So, according to stats from the American
Library Association, as of two thousand ten, women made up
(07:35):
eighty two point eight percent of all librarians and of
all masters in library science students. Yeah, but it's not
as diverse a field as ideally it would be. Women
of color actually comprise less than sixteen percent of all librarians.
(07:55):
And so this is another very sminty esque tidbit. I know,
I do remember tidbits. They were little cheese snacks. I
don't think they make them anymore, but I ate them
so often as a child. I was about to say
that sminty esque tidbits sounds like like a British cookie.
So we've got the library Drink, Library Drink liberry to
(08:18):
eat with our Sminty esque tidbits. I'm sorry, I will
get back to the topic at hand, but basically what
I'm getting at is that, like teaching, and we discussed
this inner episode on teachers, if you want to go
back and check that out, men are disproportionately represented at
the top higher ranks of librarianship and library societies. So
(08:39):
men make up of all university library directors and they
earn a median a hundred and eleven thousand dollars. And
it's basically always been this way. Even when the profession
became incredibly feminized and the ranks were overwhelmingly filled by women,
men were still at the higher rank of running the libraries,
(09:01):
and the bigger libraries too, because of how Dewey and
his male cohorts professionalized librarianship. I mean, they essentially built
this structure so that men would stay at the top. Yeah. Yeah,
We've got a quote about that later in the episode.
Yea um, And really quickly, speaking to the issue of
(09:23):
diversity and librarianship, we are going to talk about women
of color and librarianship and also libraries during the civil
rights movement. In our next episode, stay tuned because real
red stuff to come. But first, let's talk about the
original librarians, who were fellows. They were well to do,
(09:46):
educated guys. That's right. The original librarian, contrary to popular belief,
was not the ghost from Ghostbusters. Remember I've never seen
all of Ghostbusters. It's at the very beginning question mark
up speak. They go, they go to the basement and
(10:06):
she makes the dewey decimal cards fly everywhere. Oh yes,
probably so pissed about, do we being a jerk? Anyhoo? Yeah,
So the original librarians were dudes. They were curmudgeons. They
were they were curmudgeon ly, as we have established. Um,
there's a great quote from an article about librarian stereotypes
(10:30):
and the development of them in American Libraries Magazine which
I wouldn't mind subscribing to, which describes these, uh, the
original librarian image as fusty, white male curmudgeons. Yeah exactly. Yeah,
So that's not even us slurring these these male librarians.
So it's sort of is Giles from from Buffy, Yeah, totally,
(10:52):
I mean cardigans. I don't think that they didn't wear
cardigans back then. But you know, basically, UM, so let's
travel back in time though to this male dominated library
era and this takes us back to the period before
the Civil War. Uh. We're going to specifically visit Peterborough,
New Hampshire in eighteen thirty three, which is where we
(11:14):
get the first free, public tax supported library. And it
was started by a man named Able Abbot. And I
seriously like, I couldn't get my internet to work before
I came into the studio, which is enraging. But I'm
seriously wondering if I'm related to him, because all of
my people when they first came to this country. We're
in Vermont in New Hampshire, and I have some Abbots
(11:36):
in my family tree. You could be the descendant of
all Able Abbot, which, by the way, that is a
great name. All Able Abbot. Well, when he arrived in Peterborough,
he was on this mission to of uplift, such as saying, like,
you know what, we should have a place with books
where everyone can come in and check them out and
(11:58):
read them if they want, so that we can all
become more virtuous and more virtuous Republican citizens. Um and
We should note that parochial libraries were established during colonial America.
But this is the big transition to people actually paying
to support libraries, which the small town of Peterborough voted
(12:21):
on in a town meeting. They were like, able abbot,
that's a terrific idea. We vote yea. We love places
with books. Yes. And then there was like one naysayer
in the corner. He was like nay, and all Susan, Susan,
all Susanan got all town. Um. But this makes sense
that this was happening in America at this time. So
(12:44):
this was the Peterborough Library open a eight thirty three,
and America was coming down with reform fever. Oh yeah,
this was the beginning of the reform era. So over
the next few decades you're gonna have the rise of
the temperance movement, labor reform, common schools, which you can
learn more about if you go back and listen to
(13:05):
our episode on teaching. They were also advocating for prison reform,
specifically not throwing debtors in prison. Uh, the suffrage movement
was coming about abolition. This was even when we get
the first vegetarian society. Yeah, and don't we have an episode.
We have an episode on vegetarian Yes, we did. Our
(13:27):
catalog is large, it's bursting. Yeah, I feel like this,
this is really Uh, everything's really coming together in the
library episode. We've been getting so many emails lately, which
makes makes me very happy from new listeners, and I
love being able to respond in the affirmative that we
do have episodes in our back catalog that they are requesting.
It's it's very fun and I enjoy I enjoy conversing
(13:50):
with these new listeners. We almost need a Dewey decimal
system for our seven hundred episode plus library, although of
course we would not call it the Dewey simal system
for reasons the listeners will learn in just a little bit. Yeah,
people are like, what is the deal with doing so
much dewing hostilities? Women are so aggressive? Um, yeah, so
(14:13):
as you might imagine, because you know, Kris and I
have definitely talked about this reform era and the progressive
era on the podcast before. But there were a lot
of ideas around virtue, people wanting to improve themselves help
lift others so that they could improve themselves, and free
public libraries were part of that. They were considered a
(14:37):
sort of democratic gateway for citizens to be able to
better themselves and thus the country. And then you have
the issue of common schools popping up. These were kind
of the predecessors to public schools happening around the same time,
but they really couldn't open these schools fast enough, so
(14:57):
libraries also became supplementary to public school education because another
background idea of all this and the whole push for
virtue was concerns that if they didn't educate this younger
generation of newly American citizens in the ways of you know,
(15:18):
religion and Republican ideals, then you might, oh, I don't know,
have something like a civil war that would happen. Even
though even though we got libraries, unfortunately they could not
prevent a civil war. Well, I mean, but if you
look at it from the other direction, it makes sense
because if libraries are part of a reform attitude and
(15:38):
abolition as part of that, and educating people in the
ways of you know, not being a jerk is all
wrapped up in that, then fighting to end slavery in
public libraries seem to go hand in hand. Very true.
I like that glass half full perspective. Now, Bostonians listening
(15:59):
right now might be wondering why we have not mentioned
their library, because Boston does have a claim to fame
of opening the nation's first large public library in eighteen
fifty two, and I would like to note that Boston
the same year hired a female clerk. Fancy. So good
(16:21):
on you, Boston, good on you. But the you know,
the the original is in tiny Peterborough. Yeah, I'm sure
I would love to go there. You know what, Caroline,
I think you can really Yeah, okay, I'll have to
look into this. You just rent a horse and carriage
from Uber. Oh yeah, and clippity clop of the East
(16:44):
Coast Cuber Cuber carriage uber or cuber for for horses. Here.
I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. Um. So, when these
first libraries were being established, we've already he said that
it was men running the show, running the books, running
(17:04):
the books. Um. But it was associated definitely with a
higher class element of men working as librarians. But it
was also associated with this idea that you were a
librarian because you had failed at something else. Perhaps you
had received a great education, but you were not able
(17:26):
to become a lawyer or a doctor. So that's where
we get the stereotype of the male librarian who can't
do so he libraries. Yeah, because it wasn't considered that
much of an actual profession because oh, you're just babysitting books.
I mean it sounds great to me, you know, right,
(17:48):
pushing a cart listening to music. I'm telling you, God,
if I had time to read. But in this time,
the masculine elite status was achieved through breeding, education, and gentility,
like hard work was not the name of the game.
So a leisurely occupation considered leisurely in quotes occupation like
(18:11):
librarianship was something that would have fit into that ideal
because there was also this paternalistic mission of educating the
poor through uh you know, all of these books that
you would essentially be babysitting for them to come in
and check out and read. Reading. Um so earlier, you know,
(18:33):
Kristen mentioned this, this shifting idea of masculinity and what
the ideal masculinity was. And this happens after the Civil War.
So rather than the ideal man being this genteel elite
who sits at home, I don't know, smoking a bubble pipe,
he probably calls up a humor every now and then
(18:56):
take a leisurely He probably owns huber while father's father
did you know when he first came to this country
and received a land grant um. But so that's how
we were class warriors. Now we don't care so much
about being those genteel men wearing tights, and instead we
(19:16):
get the ideal of the capitalistic, self made man. You know,
we're leaving the babysitting and preservation of books and culture
to the women folk. Because this is also the era
of separate spheres. You know, this is the Victorian era
is also coming in full steam. And this shift in
(19:39):
masculinity norms and the separation of those spheres really positioned
librarianship societally to become a female dominated occupation. But at
the same time, it also fostered a cultural and downright
sexist reluctance to consider it a bona fide profession like
(20:02):
being a doctor or a lawyer, for instance, because it
was still associated with gentility. So that left the male
librarians of the day in a little bit of a
pickle because they're like, okay, we we realized that this
is rapidly becoming women's work, but we want to be
respected for this, so, um, we're gonna professionalize it. Yeah,
(20:27):
and this is where Dewey finally comes out. All Melville
Melville Dewey, which is a really adorable name. It's a
shame it's attached to such a jerk able Abbott Melville Dewey.
There's some good names in this stuff. They all sound
like cartoon character do um. But yeah. So Melvill Dewey
and his book loving contemporaries, male book loving contemporaries, I
(20:51):
should say, wanted and therefore worked to professionalize the field.
They were like, we don't want any of this lucy
goosey librarian ng. Yeah, I mean and and Dewey was
also motivated by that shift into you know, the masculine
ideal of the self made man. So he was like,
you know what, I'm going to take advantage of this
(21:15):
passion I have for librarianship and this you know, mission
to build these communities. Um, but at the same time,
I need respect. So we're going to institute hierarchical organizing
and standardizing of systems. Because at the time you could
(21:35):
have a library in Peterborough, New Hampshire, which also doubles
as the general store and the post office which wonderful,
I know, right, a real one stop shop. Dudes love
a hierarchy, it's true. But you have something like that
which might be a little lucier goosier, and then a
Boston Public Library, which is obviously much larger and are
(21:58):
probably running on different kinds of st uxtures. So Dewey's
million dollar idea, although I don't think he ever made
a million dollars off of it, was too basically institutionalized libraries, Yes,
that's right, And we start to see the official associations
and organizations popping up. In eighteen seventy six we get
(22:20):
the founding of the American Library Association, so we do
have duty to thank for that. And he was member
number one because of course he was. Of course he
was um and like that. He's like the commenters on
YouTube videos. First. Yeah, really adding to the dialogue. Uh.
And in eighteen eighties seven, Columbia College establishes its School
(22:45):
of Library Economy. So schools are being established. The next
stop on this journey is surely, uh, the continuing trajectory
of librarianship becoming even more professionalized. Right, But no, no,
because the Columbia College was essentially like going to a
technical school because that's what you would be learning. It
(23:06):
would be getting more of an associate's degree rather than
a full bachelor degree. Partially because it was rapidly becoming
so feminized. Because you know, libraries, even from the very beginning,
as is the case today, did not tend to have
huge budgets. They were supported by taxes and also trustees,
(23:29):
and they were like, you know what, we need a
lot of cheap labor, similar as was happening in public
schools at the time, like okay, we need teachers and librarians.
Who is really cheap and does not have a lot
of job opportunities. Oh women. Women were a cost saving
measure in the same way that it's like let's use
the cheaper, you know, desks, or let's buy robots. I
(23:53):
don't know if those are cheaper. I don't know how
much of robots going for these days. Probably more than
I can afford um. But we are about we're on
now the precipice of the Dewey period, and we're gonna
introduce you more to Dewey when we come right back
from a quick break, Caroline, We've got some big news
(24:16):
for the small screen. On July Mr. Robot is coming
back to USA Network for its second season. That's right,
It's been hailed by Rolling Stone, is the number one show,
and named Best Drama by the Golden Globe and Critics
Choice Awards. Mr Robot follows a cybersecurity engineer who's recruited
by the mysterious leader of an underground group determined to
(24:39):
bring down the world's largest corporation. But when their hack
is a success, that consequences are far greater than they imagined.
Following the events of f Society's five nine hack on
multinational company Evil Corps, the second season will explore the
consequences of that attack, as well as the illusion of Control.
(25:00):
Starring Rommy Malick and Christian Slater, Mr Robot returns Wednesday,
July at nine Central, only on USA Network. So if
you're looking for something to binge on this summer, head
on over to USA Network on July and tune in
to Mr. Robot. So let's talk a bit more about Melvill,
(25:28):
Dewey and the whole Dewey period, which is the period
of librarianship from around seven to nine, because I mean Dewey,
yes was kind of the father of librarianship, but he
was an intense man. Yeah, that's I feel like that's
(25:53):
very generous. Yes, that is so please tell our listeners
more about just like the type of dude that Dewey was. Uh,
DoD we do we stopped trying to make fetch happen? Caroline? Um? Well, yeah,
he was intense. He For one, he absolutely hated the
idea of wasted time. He advocated for us, all all
(26:15):
of US Americans to not only adopt the metric system,
which isn't crazy, that's pretty smart. Um. But he also
advocated for shortening words and everyone using um shorthand. So
was do we kind of ahead of his time for
tech speak? Yeah? Was he totes ahead of his time?
(26:36):
He was tetes ahead of his time. Um. But part
of that uh tendency, I guess is that he literally
had his wife record how each minute of her day
was spent because he wanted to be sure that his
spouse was not, you know, twiddling her thumbs during the day. Well,
(26:58):
are there some contemporary scollers who suggest that do we
probably had some type of O C D. Yeah? So
we read this fascinating article giving a glimpse into Dewey's
background and the author's right that he very likely had
legit obsessive compulsive personality disorder, which briefly lets distinguish that
(27:20):
from O c D. So O c D is obviously
when you have obsessive and compulsive tendencies but they are unwelcome.
You have intrusive thoughts and intrusive compulsions, and you realize
it's terrible and you hate it, but you're powerless over it,
whereas O c p D those compulsions and obsessions energize you.
(27:43):
So in this article he's compared to like an earlier
Steve Jobs, and his very likely O c p D
is also associated with his extremely turbulent and questionable interpersonal relationships, which,
as we are about to dive into, we're largely with women. Yeah,
(28:04):
I mean, And and it sounds like from everything that
we've read about Dewey that his mind just never stopped because,
in addition to his librarianship passion, he was also an innovator. Generally,
he was always kind of trying to start up little
entrepreneurial side hustles that would never really take off. Um,
And when he really dove into librarianship, on the one hand,
(28:28):
he sounds really progressive at first, because in three he
hired six Wellesley grads to help him organize the Columbia
University Library, and of course Wellesley is a women's college,
and the Columbia University staff were scandalized at the idea
(28:48):
of this guy hiring women, that those vaginas were way
too close. Yeah, those vaginas out of here, well, I mean,
and how incompetent they must be, and how could you
be in such close quarters with them? And Dewey, you know,
is kind of championing them, being like, no, women, women
have brands and they're pretty good at using them. So
(29:09):
point for Dewey, that's all he That's really the only
point I can give him. Though. Yeah, I feel like
this is echoes of our look into Jay, Mary and
Sims where it's like, oh god, you contributed so much,
but you were also the work our our father of gynecology,
as he's called. So four years later, in eight seven,
Dewey insists that women be admitted to Columbia's newly established
(29:33):
library school, and again the trustees freak out, Oh my god,
we're gonna have all these hysterical women around us working
with books. This is crazy, and and that's actually a
little bit ironic for like people who are freaking out
to worry about hysterical women. Right. And also by this time,
I mean there were a lot of women working as
clerks and assistants in librarians, but of course Columbia University
(29:55):
at the time was exclusively male, and most of those
w then we're able to keep their uteruses from floating away? Well,
they probably had to kind of, you know, tighten their
corsets and they got you know, when you get the
balloon at the grocery store and they give it a
little plastic disc to wait it down. I think that's
what they were doing. They had waited gotcha. Um. Well, Dewey,
(30:18):
to his credit, was like, okay, listen to these trustees
are not going to officially let these women in. So
from what it sounded like, he kind of claimed a
little space like a closet. Yeah, basically he had a shed.
He found a shed on the Columbia University campus and
was like, ladies, come on, just come into the shed, ladies, ladies,
(30:40):
ladies that that doesn't sound shady at all. Dewey's shady shed, um,
But he was training these women under the radar essentially
until finally everything came to a head and Columbia was like, listen,
this is not okay. You have to stop, Like where
(31:05):
you gotta get out of this. She hate women, and
we hate that you're in this shed with them. Uh
so do He resigns in a huff, which again like
good on Dewey, Okay, he likes stuck by his guns.
And in nine he's like, peace out Columbia, and he
transfers the technical school to the New York State Library.
(31:29):
And as we'll talk about more in the next episode,
he did train during this period some superstar students who
became like pioneers in libraries, who created some of the
staples of libraries that we still use today. Well, sure,
I mean, like you said, Kristen, he he was absolutely
(31:50):
an innovator, and he did believe in women's abilities to
do this work. And he also, man or woman, had
incredibly high x spectations of the people who surrounded him.
And so if you were a like minded person who
also wanted to have a job, work outside the home,
wanted to work around books all day, I wanted to
(32:12):
push those carts um and wanted to learn from someone brilliant,
then it makes sense that some pretty brilliant women would
come out from under his tutelage as well. It makes sense,
But a lot of not so great things came out
of his working with so many women too. Yeah, they're
(32:33):
On the one hand, he really got along better with
women than he did. Oh yeah, with men. He was well,
he was surrounded almost entirely by women. He almost refused
to associate with other men. Um And in a way,
he's kind of the Florence Nightingale of librarians, because well,
because Florence Nightingale stepped in with nursing and was like, dudes,
get out of here. Women are better suited for this,
(32:56):
Like temperamentally, women are suited better to this job nurturing
and tender and men you just you can't. You don't
have any bedside manners, so get out of here. And
in the same way, Dewey thought that women were even
better suited than men for these technical jobs, more of
(33:16):
the assistant ships and doing all of the organizing rather
than the administrating. And the thing is, when he was,
you know, running his library school, he had some peculiar
application requirements for his female students, including um, their height, weight,
(33:37):
hair color, eye, color and a photo, which I have
a feeling that, like in eight eight ninety, getting a
photo of yourself seems like you would be kind of hard, right,
you'd like snap a selfie. Um, But in his words,
he wanted to know that they would be attractive enough,
because quote, you can't polish a pumpkin. What that has
(34:01):
to do with organizing books and classifying them, I don't know,
but he didn't want any pumpkins essentially. Yeah. And one
of these articles that we read in the Library Association
magazine by Joshua Kendall, you phemistically referred to do we
as a quote cereal hugger and kisser and a literary
(34:24):
lithario with quirks. Seriously quirks. I mean that makes it
sound like your dad's or your grandfather's, like creepy friend
who you know, Like we've all I feel like we've
all known that creepy Jim, Like why yeah, creepy Jim Batman,
why are you hugging me? Why are you? I don't
(34:44):
want the sloppy kiss on the cheek, Like this is gross?
It makes him sound like a harmless duttering? Is that
a word? Old fool? Who, like I don't know what's
what's bad and good. I'm gonna hug you. But he did.
He absolutely did, getting you know, all of those heights,
weights and um as Joshua Kendall emphasized, not their bust size.
(35:07):
He was like, there there's a myth that, uh that
Dewey wanted to know their bus size. That's that's not
true because he had the picture with which to judge exactly.
And this whole uh sexual harasser side of Dewey is
something that has only come to light in more recent
decades because earlier biographies of him, of course, didn't really
(35:29):
talk about They were like, um, that's a little system.
He was really smart and he had quirks, but he
I mean, he essentially sexually harassed many of his students.
He had two assistants that lived with him and his
wife in Albany, New York, both of whom were repeatedly harassed.
(35:52):
And Joshua Kendall I have a little bone to pick
with Joshua Kendall and the way he wrote this uh
Dewey profile in the A l A magazine because he says, yes,
Sarah records of him having unwanted contact with his assistance,
but they never reported it to authorities. I was like, WHOA, okay, well,
(36:14):
the term sexual harassment didn't exist for another century, Mr Kendall.
But even though that term didn't exist, there came a
point it was so egregious that he became known as
essentially a sexual harasser. However you would have called it
at that time. Um. And apparently things piqued and went
(36:36):
public in a Library Association meeting conference in Alaska, which
that seems like a pretty exotic trip to take um
where he made four librarians female librarians at the time,
I feel incredibly uncomfortable. And since they were already in
(36:58):
the profession, they aren't his assistance under his tutelage. They
were like, whoa, okay, uh, there's a problem here, and
it is your hands on my body without my consent. Yeah. Well,
I mean no, they didn't have the words sexual harassment
to use, but you did have Tessa Kelso, who was
(37:20):
the Los Angeles Public Library director, who said, for many
years women librarians have been the special prey of Mr
Dewey in a series of outrages upon decency. In other words,
he is a sexual harassing creep. Well, and Mary Wright Plumber,
who was one of his original students, who will talk
more about in our next episode, would eventually become uh
(37:43):
the president of the American Library Association in nineteen fourteen,
and once she got in that role, she refused to
meet with Dewey. Yeah, but not only for her sake,
but I got the impression reading the article that it
was also in solidarity with their women who had dealt
with his crap. Yeah. Then, like, I promise I won't
(38:04):
meet with this guy, Like I don't want to talk
to him, and I know y'all don't want to be
around him either. But as all of this was going
on in the background and sometimes in the foreground, the
library education that he and um other male counterparts were
architect ing at this time was really designed for essentially
(38:24):
training Yes, a lot of women. They were welcoming women
into the fold, but it was training them for lower
level positions of being clerks, assistance maybe the heads of
smaller libraries. To the point that publicly, librarianship was just
considered this, you know, kind of throwaway job for women.
(38:45):
They didn't get paid really anything at all. It didn't
have a reputation of being super respectable because you couldn't
go very far in it. So the American Library Association
was like, Okay, we need to kind of burnish our image.
So they said, you know what hybrid high level librarianship
(39:06):
being like a capital l librarian, like a Dewey, that
is something that you were born with. That's such crap.
I know when I read that, I couldn't believe it,
because how can you whether it's eighteen seventy, nineteen seventy,
or twenty seventy, Like, seriously, how can you read that
and believe it the librarianship. No, I just can't like
(39:30):
But that also, but that also speaks to the paternalism
of the occupation at the time too, because they really
did think they I mean they kind of had a
little bit of a christ complex about it. Sure well,
and I mean, who it's not like they were saying, uh,
you're born with it, whether you're a man or a woman,
and whether it's maybe lane, you are born with it
(39:53):
because you're a man. Yeah. And that's something that the
author of paper we were reading on the minization of
librarianship pointed out um sort of an outrage at this
idea of the suggestion that being a librarian was something
that you would be born with because, as she wrote,
because it also required being born with a penis. So yeah,
(40:16):
although maybe you come out of the womb with a
little book in your hand, well then yeah, maybe you
are born to be a librarian. Um. But with this
hierarchy that they were establishing, you have sort of a
pyramid structure with the much higher paid administrators usually men
at the top in place to kind of tamp down
(40:40):
on individuals being able to rise up through the ranks.
So unlike university faculty at the time, which would have
been mostly men, if you were a professor, you could
make a name for yourself as a professor and would
probably be better known than say the adminis straighter of
(41:01):
that university. But with librarianship and the same thing going
on with the development of public school teaching and the
feminization of that, you have these strict standards put in
place to essentially just like level the playing field. So
you kind of have to stay in these little boxes
(41:22):
and it's really hard to break through the ranks. You
kind of have to go around being a clerker assistant
and jump right into administration. But they weren't training them
in the library schools because again they thought that it
was something at that time that you would be born
with slash penis. And I mean, obviously in the next
(41:42):
episode we're going to talk more about women and feminization specifically,
but there was one source that we read that cited
a male librant, contemporary male librarian, who was saying all
of this stuff about how the fact that the lower
ranks in libraries were dominated by women is what ruined
(42:05):
essentially ruined the field, which is hilarious if it weren't
so depressing, because when you look at this stuff, like
things were engineered to basically, like you were saying, keep
women in their box or in their lane, keep people
from advancing up the ranks. And so if you establish
a system where the only people who are in those
(42:27):
higher ranked positions are like clearly born to be there
and they happen to be men, well, how how can
you break that that book ish ceiling? I mean, you
really can't. Yeah, I mean, it's also such an ironic
contrast of the lofty mission of you know, those top
library administrators of considering themselves really the arbiters of culture
(42:53):
and learning and virtue for all of these communities and
these developing urban centers, but at the same time keeping
women's work in the field devalued. And it's also worth noting,
if we jumped forward in our timeline, that in nineteen
thirty a seventy eight year old doing settled for two
(43:17):
thousand dollars a sexual harassment lawsuit brought against him. And
of course, again we don't have the term sexual harassment yet,
which should tell you something even more that before people
were literally and legally protected from issues of sexual harassment.
A woman sued him for his behavior, which is why
I suggested to Caroline that the Dewey decimal system should
(43:41):
be renamed to what. I'm not sure, but listeners, I
am open to suggestion, because there's so many amazing women
librarians that you could uh name it after. But of course,
I mean, that's never going to happen. But because we're
only just now really acknowledging the fact that Dewey and
his personal life was kind of a shady dude. Not
(44:02):
kind of he was a shady dude. Was a shady dudeum,
But in that regard, I really am interested to hear
from our librarian listeners. I know you guys have a
lot to tell us about Dewey, and so I'm interested
to hear, like, do you do you feel a degree
of conflict when you look at him as the father
of librarianship who was also shady in the shed? Yeah,
(44:25):
I mean, because that is the thing that his profiler,
Joshua Kendall, in that ail a magazine piece, was kind
of wavering between like the acknowledgment of like, Okay, yeah,
he was a quote serial hugger and kisser, but he
was so brilliant and he, you know, gave us this
thing which did revolutionize our learning, our public learning. Yeah,
(44:49):
I mean, Steve Jobs was also a creep. But we
all have iPhones, you know. I mean yeah, it's like,
do do the ends justify the sexually harassing means? Yeah?
And I'm and I'm not saying that Steve Jobs is
the harasser. I don't know about that. I just know
that he was incredibly difficult and and and tempestuous. Well yeah,
they seem to have similar temperaments for sure. Um, But quickly,
(45:12):
in terms of men and librarian stereotypes, because it was
so feminized so quickly, by the time you get into
the twentieth century, you get the stereotype of male librarians
having to be gay because how could a straight guy
(45:33):
want to do quote unquote women's work. And it seems
like from more recent research that the stereotype has fallen
away and that men don't feel, you know, uncomfortable being
librarians because they worried that people might assume that they're gay,
like they might have and say like nineteen fifty or sixty. Um.
(45:53):
But in terms of that administrative hierarchy, after World War Two,
there was I think from the American Library Association a
recruitment effort specifically for men to get more men in libraries,
but not as clerks for assistance, but into administrative roles
(46:15):
make libraries great again. Yeah, So it just it just
kept on going. So with this, we're gonna close the
book on dudes and librarians. Dudes and dewey dewey dudes,
UM and librarians. We absolutely want to hear from you
about this, and male librarians listening. We want you to
(46:36):
weigh into We want everyone to weigh in, UM and
also quickly thank you. Librarians like teachers, I feel like
they're always so undervalued in our communities but indispensable. So
mom stuff at how stuffworks dot Com is our email address.
You can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or
messages on Facebook, and we've got a couple of messages
(46:58):
to share with you right now. So I have a
letter here from Ella in response to our Boston Marriages episode.
She says, I think Boston marriages may be more common
than we think among young people. I'm not that aunt yet,
but I have every intention of being one eventually. My roommate,
(47:20):
that's her quotes and my ridiculous way of speaking. My
quote unquote roommate and I are both in our twenties.
We share a bed and a dog and often describe
each other as our girlfriend or partner to explain why
we have no interest in dating other people. But neither
of us is into ladies. Were just uninterested in traditional
romantic entanglements. I'm a sexual and she's elapsed straight person
(47:43):
who's disillusioned with men. And we save an awful lot
on rent by sharing a bedroom and a wardrobe. I've
never seen a reason why I would want to stop
living with a roommate, even if I could afford it,
other than that's what's expected of me. It's a sleepover
every day, and my ten year old self is really
and truly living the dream. Thanks really awesome episode. I
never knew what to call what we do before, and
(48:04):
it's genuinely a great relief to have a label to
apply to myself other than just weird. And if I
ever marry her for tax reasons, the invitation is absolutely
going to read please join us in celebrating our Boston marriage,
and everyone but you and me will just think it's
a weird reference to the fact that we lived in
Boston for a while, You're totally invited. Well, thank you,
(48:27):
Ella for that great story. So I have a letter
here from Francis also about our Boston marriages episode, and
Frances rites, I grew up in the Bible Belt and
never knew that lesbian couplings were so accepted. I don't
have a personal experience with a Boston marriage, but whatever
the male equivalent is, I do. My grandfather was originally
(48:48):
a New Englander, but after marrying my grandmother, they moved
to North Carolina, where my mother was born, and I
spent most of my life I didn't know anything about
same sex couplings, and growing up in the eighties and nineties,
we free when we visited Confirmed bachelor friends of my grandfather's.
Not until many years later did I realize those men
were actually long term, monogamous gay men. My parents are
(49:10):
extremely against homosexuality, but to hear my mother lovingly speak
of these men is interesting. I think a lot of
our society's issues come from not understanding the humanity of
people who are different than us and refusing to know
them as individuals with feelings and personalities. All that said,
is there a term for men in Boston marriages? I'd
(49:31):
be interested to know. I love the podcast and now
I forced my husband to listen. Well, thank you so much, Francis. Um.
I think that we could call male Boston marriages what
like um, maybe like a Philly marriage, Key West marriages?
Key West marriages? Yeah, what's a really like? Dudely City
(49:55):
San Antonio marriages? Sure? Well, keep your letters coming, mom,
stuff But how stuff Works dot com is our email
address and for links all of our social media as
well as all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts with
our sources. So you too can learn about Melville Dewey.
(50:15):
Head on over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is it how stuff Works? Dot com
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you From house top
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, And by very popular demand, we're
talking about librarians, not just in this podcast but also
(00:23):
in the next because there's so much to talk about.
There's so much to talk about, and you were just
going to listen to me over the course of two
episodes trying not to say librarians. And I'm not teasing anyone.
I'm not making fun of speech impediments. I'm literally concerned
about my lazy mouth. Well, and it didn't help that
the email I sent Caroline with all of my library
(00:46):
sources that I was reading was subject line library sources.
So now library is in my head. Yeah, well, librry
sounds like some kind of uh refreshing tonic, a liberry juice.
Really go for a library right now? What what flavor
would a library be? Um? Something sour? I bet like
(01:08):
lime and BlackBerry. Let's make that happen. Can that be
a cocktail? Throw some gin in there? I'm sure it could.
But um, but about specific actual human librarians? True? Um,
we we seriously did receive so many emphatic requests for
this episode. People out there who work with books, work
(01:31):
around books, they do tend to call themselves librarians. Um,
and yeah, we we couldn't not listen to you guys.
Your your request. We had to answer well because we
mentioned off handedly in an episode. I think it was
our episode about Hillary Clinton's early life that we should
revisit librarians, because there is a librarian themed episode of
(01:57):
Stuff Mom Never Told You from the Vault. I think
it came out in two thousand and ten. Um, so
we will be revisiting a little bit of that. But
I have a feeling a lot of listeners either haven't
heard that episode or it's probably been a while since
you have heard that episode, because I mean, children born
that year are like six now I know, so, so
(02:18):
six year olds. This is for you. Yeah, this goes
out to you, and also all the librarians out there. UM. If,
by the way, the two bossy Dames who are fantastic
librarians who send out a weekly newsletter that you should
absolutely subscribe to, if they're listening, because I think they
might know who we are. Hello, I thought about you
(02:39):
a lot during this episode, just pondered them. I'm picturing
you like sitting in your window looking out at the moon,
because they're rab librarians. I mean, And in college, Caroline,
I really wanted to work at our college library. So
as part of my student aid, I had an on
campus job and you could check off the ones that
(03:00):
you wanted, and the library was where all the cool
kids worked. Like a lot of townies worked at the library,
and it just kind of sounded cool, like, oh, I
just came from my shift at the library, and they
always had cool glasses and cool to tuos. And instead
I ended up working at the print shop, which had
(03:21):
its own you know, benefits hashtag free copies. But uh,
but still it was it was my dream to be
the college librarian. Well, it's funny that you mentioned like
the cool kids and the cool glasses and the tattoos
and everything, because that is sort of a latter day
librarian stereotype. You know. We over the course of these
(03:43):
two episodes, we will discuss stereotypes a bit. But um,
you know, we've always had the image of the old
spinster woman shushing children, but I feel like more recently,
the new stereotype it's been introduced is like it is
a lady job, and here I am the alternative librarian
with the tattoos and glasses. Yeah, and she has really
(04:05):
cool glasses, some great tattoos, She wears modcloth dresses, has
fantastic vintage decor in her home, and a record collection,
and essentially is just has really great aesthetic taste and
also so many cultural references. Because she's read so much
(04:29):
cultural and literary references. She sounds like somebody i'd want
to hang out with. She's kind of my ideal woman.
I think that's what I'm realizing right now. It sounds
like you still want to go work in a library
a little bit. I've also been thinking about librarians a bit, though, Caroline,
because I've been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer for the
first time, thank you Netflix. And Giles the Watcher is
(04:53):
a librarian and he fits the stereotype of your of
the he's the a curmudgeon, but he's a little bit fusty. Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
And it is interesting to see, and I mean it
makes total sense. It's pretty self explanatory. It's interesting to
see the evolution of the librarian stereotype and how it
(05:13):
exactly matches the trends that we see in librarian nging librarianship.
Oh sure that'll work as well. Yes, uh. And in
this episode we're going to talk about how librarianship used
to be a dude's job and how a guy named
Melville Dewey came along and changed all of that. And
(05:38):
he also is the one who created the Dewey decimal system.
And while he often gets praised for that, I mean
he's kind of considered this hero of librarianship, we have
we have darker tales to tell about Dewey. Yeah, sounds
like a he's a real joy. But the whole transition
(06:01):
of librarianship from being a man's job to a woman's job,
which it still very much is today, is a really
intriguing exploration of how masculinity, ideal masculinity changed in turn
of the century America. Yes, this is such a great
episode to encompass all of the themes that Sminty just loves. Like, what, so,
(06:28):
we've got women in the workplace, but we've also got
the professionalization issue surrounding gender. So very professional when it
comes to men, but less professional when it comes to
women and wages. Um, we've also got issues of the
spinster and marriage and relationships, and who is allowed to
(06:51):
be employed both like you know, legally and just socially,
what is socially accepted? Um? And just a boatload of stereotypes. Yeah,
Victorian womanhood, gender norms. These two episodes, folks have it all.
So in this episode we're gonna be focusing on men
(07:12):
in librarianship, and then in our next episode we're gonna
be talking about rad lady librarians and how it became feminized. Um.
And we should say that it is still very much
a feminized occupation. So, according to stats from the American
Library Association, as of two thousand ten, women made up
(07:35):
eighty two point eight percent of all librarians and of
all masters in library science students. Yeah, but it's not
as diverse a field as ideally it would be. Women
of color actually comprise less than sixteen percent of all librarians.
(07:55):
And so this is another very sminty esque tidbit. I know,
I do remember tidbits. They were little cheese snacks. I
don't think they make them anymore, but I ate them
so often as a child. I was about to say
that sminty esque tidbits sounds like like a British cookie.
So we've got the library Drink, Library Drink liberry to
(08:18):
eat with our Sminty esque tidbits. I'm sorry, I will
get back to the topic at hand, but basically what
I'm getting at is that, like teaching, and we discussed
this inner episode on teachers, if you want to go
back and check that out, men are disproportionately represented at
the top higher ranks of librarianship and library societies. So
(08:39):
men make up of all university library directors and they
earn a median a hundred and eleven thousand dollars. And
it's basically always been this way. Even when the profession
became incredibly feminized and the ranks were overwhelmingly filled by women,
men were still at the higher rank of running the libraries,
(09:01):
and the bigger libraries too, because of how Dewey and
his male cohorts professionalized librarianship. I mean, they essentially built
this structure so that men would stay at the top. Yeah. Yeah,
We've got a quote about that later in the episode.
Yea um, And really quickly, speaking to the issue of
(09:23):
diversity and librarianship, we are going to talk about women
of color and librarianship and also libraries during the civil
rights movement. In our next episode, stay tuned because real
red stuff to come. But first, let's talk about the
original librarians, who were fellows. They were well to do,
(09:46):
educated guys. That's right. The original librarian, contrary to popular belief,
was not the ghost from Ghostbusters. Remember I've never seen
all of Ghostbusters. It's at the very beginning question mark
up speak. They go, they go to the basement and
(10:06):
she makes the dewey decimal cards fly everywhere. Oh yes,
probably so pissed about, do we being a jerk? Anyhoo? Yeah,
So the original librarians were dudes. They were curmudgeons. They
were they were curmudgeon ly, as we have established. Um,
there's a great quote from an article about librarian stereotypes
(10:30):
and the development of them in American Libraries Magazine which
I wouldn't mind subscribing to, which describes these, uh, the
original librarian image as fusty, white male curmudgeons. Yeah exactly. Yeah,
So that's not even us slurring these these male librarians.
So it's sort of is Giles from from Buffy, Yeah, totally,
(10:52):
I mean cardigans. I don't think that they didn't wear
cardigans back then. But you know, basically, UM, so let's
travel back in time though to this male dominated library
era and this takes us back to the period before
the Civil War. Uh. We're going to specifically visit Peterborough,
New Hampshire in eighteen thirty three, which is where we
(11:14):
get the first free, public tax supported library. And it
was started by a man named Able Abbot. And I
seriously like, I couldn't get my internet to work before
I came into the studio, which is enraging. But I'm
seriously wondering if I'm related to him, because all of
my people when they first came to this country. We're
in Vermont in New Hampshire, and I have some Abbots
(11:36):
in my family tree. You could be the descendant of
all Able Abbot, which, by the way, that is a
great name. All Able Abbot. Well, when he arrived in Peterborough,
he was on this mission to of uplift, such as saying, like,
you know what, we should have a place with books
where everyone can come in and check them out and
(11:58):
read them if they want, so that we can all
become more virtuous and more virtuous Republican citizens. Um and
We should note that parochial libraries were established during colonial America.
But this is the big transition to people actually paying
to support libraries, which the small town of Peterborough voted
(12:21):
on in a town meeting. They were like, able abbot,
that's a terrific idea. We vote yea. We love places
with books. Yes. And then there was like one naysayer
in the corner. He was like nay, and all Susan, Susan,
all Susanan got all town. Um. But this makes sense
that this was happening in America at this time. So
(12:44):
this was the Peterborough Library open a eight thirty three,
and America was coming down with reform fever. Oh yeah,
this was the beginning of the reform era. So over
the next few decades you're gonna have the rise of
the temperance movement, labor reform, common schools, which you can
learn more about if you go back and listen to
(13:05):
our episode on teaching. They were also advocating for prison reform,
specifically not throwing debtors in prison. Uh, the suffrage movement
was coming about abolition. This was even when we get
the first vegetarian society. Yeah, and don't we have an episode.
We have an episode on vegetarian Yes, we did. Our
(13:27):
catalog is large, it's bursting. Yeah, I feel like this,
this is really Uh, everything's really coming together in the
library episode. We've been getting so many emails lately, which
makes makes me very happy from new listeners, and I
love being able to respond in the affirmative that we
do have episodes in our back catalog that they are requesting.
It's it's very fun and I enjoy I enjoy conversing
(13:50):
with these new listeners. We almost need a Dewey decimal
system for our seven hundred episode plus library, although of
course we would not call it the Dewey simal system
for reasons the listeners will learn in just a little bit. Yeah,
people are like, what is the deal with doing so
much dewing hostilities? Women are so aggressive? Um, yeah, so
(14:13):
as you might imagine, because you know, Kris and I
have definitely talked about this reform era and the progressive
era on the podcast before. But there were a lot
of ideas around virtue, people wanting to improve themselves help
lift others so that they could improve themselves, and free
public libraries were part of that. They were considered a
(14:37):
sort of democratic gateway for citizens to be able to
better themselves and thus the country. And then you have
the issue of common schools popping up. These were kind
of the predecessors to public schools happening around the same time,
but they really couldn't open these schools fast enough, so
(14:57):
libraries also became supplementary to public school education because another
background idea of all this and the whole push for
virtue was concerns that if they didn't educate this younger
generation of newly American citizens in the ways of you know,
(15:18):
religion and Republican ideals, then you might, oh, I don't know,
have something like a civil war that would happen. Even
though even though we got libraries, unfortunately they could not
prevent a civil war. Well, I mean, but if you
look at it from the other direction, it makes sense
because if libraries are part of a reform attitude and
(15:38):
abolition as part of that, and educating people in the
ways of you know, not being a jerk is all
wrapped up in that, then fighting to end slavery in
public libraries seem to go hand in hand. Very true.
I like that glass half full perspective. Now, Bostonians listening
(15:59):
right now might be wondering why we have not mentioned
their library, because Boston does have a claim to fame
of opening the nation's first large public library in eighteen
fifty two, and I would like to note that Boston
the same year hired a female clerk. Fancy. So good
(16:21):
on you, Boston, good on you. But the you know,
the the original is in tiny Peterborough. Yeah, I'm sure
I would love to go there. You know what, Caroline,
I think you can really Yeah, okay, I'll have to
look into this. You just rent a horse and carriage
from Uber. Oh yeah, and clippity clop of the East
(16:44):
Coast Cuber Cuber carriage uber or cuber for for horses. Here.
I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. Um. So, when these
first libraries were being established, we've already he said that
it was men running the show, running the books, running
(17:04):
the books. Um. But it was associated definitely with a
higher class element of men working as librarians. But it
was also associated with this idea that you were a
librarian because you had failed at something else. Perhaps you
had received a great education, but you were not able
(17:26):
to become a lawyer or a doctor. So that's where
we get the stereotype of the male librarian who can't
do so he libraries. Yeah, because it wasn't considered that
much of an actual profession because oh, you're just babysitting books.
I mean it sounds great to me, you know, right,
(17:48):
pushing a cart listening to music. I'm telling you, God,
if I had time to read. But in this time,
the masculine elite status was achieved through breeding, education, and gentility,
like hard work was not the name of the game.
So a leisurely occupation considered leisurely in quotes occupation like
(18:11):
librarianship was something that would have fit into that ideal
because there was also this paternalistic mission of educating the
poor through uh you know, all of these books that
you would essentially be babysitting for them to come in
and check out and read. Reading. Um so earlier, you know,
(18:33):
Kristen mentioned this, this shifting idea of masculinity and what
the ideal masculinity was. And this happens after the Civil War.
So rather than the ideal man being this genteel elite
who sits at home, I don't know, smoking a bubble pipe,
he probably calls up a humor every now and then
(18:56):
take a leisurely He probably owns huber while father's father
did you know when he first came to this country
and received a land grant um. But so that's how
we were class warriors. Now we don't care so much
about being those genteel men wearing tights, and instead we
(19:16):
get the ideal of the capitalistic, self made man. You know,
we're leaving the babysitting and preservation of books and culture
to the women folk. Because this is also the era
of separate spheres. You know, this is the Victorian era
is also coming in full steam. And this shift in
(19:39):
masculinity norms and the separation of those spheres really positioned
librarianship societally to become a female dominated occupation. But at
the same time, it also fostered a cultural and downright
sexist reluctance to consider it a bona fide profession like
(20:02):
being a doctor or a lawyer, for instance, because it
was still associated with gentility. So that left the male
librarians of the day in a little bit of a
pickle because they're like, okay, we we realized that this
is rapidly becoming women's work, but we want to be
respected for this, so, um, we're gonna professionalize it. Yeah,
(20:27):
and this is where Dewey finally comes out. All Melville
Melville Dewey, which is a really adorable name. It's a
shame it's attached to such a jerk able Abbott Melville Dewey.
There's some good names in this stuff. They all sound
like cartoon character do um. But yeah. So Melvill Dewey
and his book loving contemporaries, male book loving contemporaries, I
(20:51):
should say, wanted and therefore worked to professionalize the field.
They were like, we don't want any of this lucy
goosey librarian ng. Yeah, I mean and and Dewey was
also motivated by that shift into you know, the masculine
ideal of the self made man. So he was like,
you know what, I'm going to take advantage of this
(21:15):
passion I have for librarianship and this you know, mission
to build these communities. Um, but at the same time,
I need respect. So we're going to institute hierarchical organizing
and standardizing of systems. Because at the time you could
(21:35):
have a library in Peterborough, New Hampshire, which also doubles
as the general store and the post office which wonderful,
I know, right, a real one stop shop. Dudes love
a hierarchy, it's true. But you have something like that
which might be a little lucier goosier, and then a
Boston Public Library, which is obviously much larger and are
(21:58):
probably running on different kinds of st uxtures. So Dewey's
million dollar idea, although I don't think he ever made
a million dollars off of it, was too basically institutionalized libraries, Yes,
that's right, And we start to see the official associations
and organizations popping up. In eighteen seventy six we get
(22:20):
the founding of the American Library Association, so we do
have duty to thank for that. And he was member
number one because of course he was. Of course he
was um and like that. He's like the commenters on
YouTube videos. First. Yeah, really adding to the dialogue. Uh.
And in eighteen eighties seven, Columbia College establishes its School
(22:45):
of Library Economy. So schools are being established. The next
stop on this journey is surely, uh, the continuing trajectory
of librarianship becoming even more professionalized. Right, But no, no,
because the Columbia College was essentially like going to a
technical school because that's what you would be learning. It
(23:06):
would be getting more of an associate's degree rather than
a full bachelor degree. Partially because it was rapidly becoming
so feminized. Because you know, libraries, even from the very beginning,
as is the case today, did not tend to have
huge budgets. They were supported by taxes and also trustees,
(23:29):
and they were like, you know what, we need a
lot of cheap labor, similar as was happening in public
schools at the time, like okay, we need teachers and librarians.
Who is really cheap and does not have a lot
of job opportunities. Oh women. Women were a cost saving
measure in the same way that it's like let's use
the cheaper, you know, desks, or let's buy robots. I
(23:53):
don't know if those are cheaper. I don't know how
much of robots going for these days. Probably more than
I can afford um. But we are about we're on
now the precipice of the Dewey period, and we're gonna
introduce you more to Dewey when we come right back
from a quick break, Caroline, We've got some big news
(24:16):
for the small screen. On July Mr. Robot is coming
back to USA Network for its second season. That's right,
It's been hailed by Rolling Stone, is the number one show,
and named Best Drama by the Golden Globe and Critics
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by the mysterious leader of an underground group determined to
(24:39):
bring down the world's largest corporation. But when their hack
is a success, that consequences are far greater than they imagined.
Following the events of f Society's five nine hack on
multinational company Evil Corps, the second season will explore the
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(25:00):
Starring Rommy Malick and Christian Slater, Mr Robot returns Wednesday,
July at nine Central, only on USA Network. So if
you're looking for something to binge on this summer, head
on over to USA Network on July and tune in
to Mr. Robot. So let's talk a bit more about Melvill,
(25:28):
Dewey and the whole Dewey period, which is the period
of librarianship from around seven to nine, because I mean Dewey,
yes was kind of the father of librarianship, but he
was an intense man. Yeah, that's I feel like that's
(25:53):
very generous. Yes, that is so please tell our listeners
more about just like the type of dude that Dewey was. Uh,
DoD we do we stopped trying to make fetch happen? Caroline? Um? Well, yeah,
he was intense. He For one, he absolutely hated the
idea of wasted time. He advocated for us, all all
(26:15):
of US Americans to not only adopt the metric system,
which isn't crazy, that's pretty smart. Um. But he also
advocated for shortening words and everyone using um shorthand. So
was do we kind of ahead of his time for
tech speak? Yeah? Was he totes ahead of his time?
(26:36):
He was tetes ahead of his time. Um. But part
of that uh tendency, I guess is that he literally
had his wife record how each minute of her day
was spent because he wanted to be sure that his
spouse was not, you know, twiddling her thumbs during the day. Well,
(26:58):
are there some contemporary scollers who suggest that do we
probably had some type of O C D. Yeah? So
we read this fascinating article giving a glimpse into Dewey's
background and the author's right that he very likely had
legit obsessive compulsive personality disorder, which briefly lets distinguish that
(27:20):
from O c D. So O c D is obviously
when you have obsessive and compulsive tendencies but they are unwelcome.
You have intrusive thoughts and intrusive compulsions, and you realize
it's terrible and you hate it, but you're powerless over it,
whereas O c p D those compulsions and obsessions energize you.
(27:43):
So in this article he's compared to like an earlier
Steve Jobs, and his very likely O c p D
is also associated with his extremely turbulent and questionable interpersonal relationships, which,
as we are about to dive into, we're largely with women. Yeah,
(28:04):
I mean, And and it sounds like from everything that
we've read about Dewey that his mind just never stopped because,
in addition to his librarianship passion, he was also an innovator. Generally,
he was always kind of trying to start up little
entrepreneurial side hustles that would never really take off. Um,
And when he really dove into librarianship, on the one hand,
(28:28):
he sounds really progressive at first, because in three he
hired six Wellesley grads to help him organize the Columbia
University Library, and of course Wellesley is a women's college,
and the Columbia University staff were scandalized at the idea
(28:48):
of this guy hiring women, that those vaginas were way
too close. Yeah, those vaginas out of here, well, I mean,
and how incompetent they must be, and how could you
be in such close quarters with them? And Dewey, you know,
is kind of championing them, being like, no, women, women
have brands and they're pretty good at using them. So
(29:09):
point for Dewey, that's all he That's really the only
point I can give him. Though. Yeah, I feel like
this is echoes of our look into Jay, Mary and
Sims where it's like, oh god, you contributed so much,
but you were also the work our our father of gynecology,
as he's called. So four years later, in eight seven,
Dewey insists that women be admitted to Columbia's newly established
(29:33):
library school, and again the trustees freak out, Oh my god,
we're gonna have all these hysterical women around us working
with books. This is crazy, and and that's actually a
little bit ironic for like people who are freaking out
to worry about hysterical women. Right. And also by this time,
I mean there were a lot of women working as
clerks and assistants in librarians, but of course Columbia University
(29:55):
at the time was exclusively male, and most of those
w then we're able to keep their uteruses from floating away? Well,
they probably had to kind of, you know, tighten their
corsets and they got you know, when you get the
balloon at the grocery store and they give it a
little plastic disc to wait it down. I think that's
what they were doing. They had waited gotcha. Um. Well, Dewey,
(30:18):
to his credit, was like, okay, listen to these trustees
are not going to officially let these women in. So
from what it sounded like, he kind of claimed a
little space like a closet. Yeah, basically he had a shed.
He found a shed on the Columbia University campus and
was like, ladies, come on, just come into the shed, ladies, ladies,
(30:40):
ladies that that doesn't sound shady at all. Dewey's shady shed, um,
But he was training these women under the radar essentially
until finally everything came to a head and Columbia was like, listen,
this is not okay. You have to stop, Like where
(31:05):
you gotta get out of this. She hate women, and
we hate that you're in this shed with them. Uh
so do He resigns in a huff, which again like
good on Dewey, Okay, he likes stuck by his guns.
And in nine he's like, peace out Columbia, and he
transfers the technical school to the New York State Library.
(31:29):
And as we'll talk about more in the next episode,
he did train during this period some superstar students who
became like pioneers in libraries, who created some of the
staples of libraries that we still use today. Well, sure,
I mean, like you said, Kristen, he he was absolutely
(31:50):
an innovator, and he did believe in women's abilities to
do this work. And he also, man or woman, had
incredibly high x spectations of the people who surrounded him.
And so if you were a like minded person who
also wanted to have a job, work outside the home,
wanted to work around books all day, I wanted to
(32:12):
push those carts um and wanted to learn from someone brilliant,
then it makes sense that some pretty brilliant women would
come out from under his tutelage as well. It makes sense,
But a lot of not so great things came out
of his working with so many women too. Yeah, they're
(32:33):
On the one hand, he really got along better with
women than he did. Oh yeah, with men. He was well,
he was surrounded almost entirely by women. He almost refused
to associate with other men. Um And in a way,
he's kind of the Florence Nightingale of librarians, because well,
because Florence Nightingale stepped in with nursing and was like, dudes,
get out of here. Women are better suited for this,
(32:56):
Like temperamentally, women are suited better to this job nurturing
and tender and men you just you can't. You don't
have any bedside manners, so get out of here. And
in the same way, Dewey thought that women were even
better suited than men for these technical jobs, more of
(33:16):
the assistant ships and doing all of the organizing rather
than the administrating. And the thing is, when he was,
you know, running his library school, he had some peculiar
application requirements for his female students, including um, their height, weight,
(33:37):
hair color, eye, color and a photo, which I have
a feeling that, like in eight eight ninety, getting a
photo of yourself seems like you would be kind of hard, right,
you'd like snap a selfie. Um, But in his words,
he wanted to know that they would be attractive enough,
because quote, you can't polish a pumpkin. What that has
(34:01):
to do with organizing books and classifying them, I don't know,
but he didn't want any pumpkins essentially. Yeah. And one
of these articles that we read in the Library Association
magazine by Joshua Kendall, you phemistically referred to do we
as a quote cereal hugger and kisser and a literary
(34:24):
lithario with quirks. Seriously quirks. I mean that makes it
sound like your dad's or your grandfather's, like creepy friend
who you know, Like we've all I feel like we've
all known that creepy Jim, Like why yeah, creepy Jim Batman,
why are you hugging me? Why are you? I don't
(34:44):
want the sloppy kiss on the cheek, Like this is gross?
It makes him sound like a harmless duttering? Is that
a word? Old fool? Who, like I don't know what's
what's bad and good. I'm gonna hug you. But he did.
He absolutely did, getting you know, all of those heights,
weights and um as Joshua Kendall emphasized, not their bust size.
(35:07):
He was like, there there's a myth that, uh that
Dewey wanted to know their bus size. That's that's not
true because he had the picture with which to judge exactly.
And this whole uh sexual harasser side of Dewey is
something that has only come to light in more recent
decades because earlier biographies of him, of course, didn't really
(35:29):
talk about They were like, um, that's a little system.
He was really smart and he had quirks, but he
I mean, he essentially sexually harassed many of his students.
He had two assistants that lived with him and his
wife in Albany, New York, both of whom were repeatedly harassed.
(35:52):
And Joshua Kendall I have a little bone to pick
with Joshua Kendall and the way he wrote this uh
Dewey profile in the A l A magazine because he says, yes,
Sarah records of him having unwanted contact with his assistance,
but they never reported it to authorities. I was like, WHOA, okay, well,
(36:14):
the term sexual harassment didn't exist for another century, Mr Kendall.
But even though that term didn't exist, there came a
point it was so egregious that he became known as
essentially a sexual harasser. However you would have called it
at that time. Um. And apparently things piqued and went
(36:36):
public in a Library Association meeting conference in Alaska, which
that seems like a pretty exotic trip to take um
where he made four librarians female librarians at the time,
I feel incredibly uncomfortable. And since they were already in
(36:58):
the profession, they aren't his assistance under his tutelage. They
were like, whoa, okay, uh, there's a problem here, and
it is your hands on my body without my consent. Yeah. Well,
I mean no, they didn't have the words sexual harassment
to use, but you did have Tessa Kelso, who was
(37:20):
the Los Angeles Public Library director, who said, for many
years women librarians have been the special prey of Mr
Dewey in a series of outrages upon decency. In other words,
he is a sexual harassing creep. Well, and Mary Wright Plumber,
who was one of his original students, who will talk
more about in our next episode, would eventually become uh
(37:43):
the president of the American Library Association in nineteen fourteen,
and once she got in that role, she refused to
meet with Dewey. Yeah, but not only for her sake,
but I got the impression reading the article that it
was also in solidarity with their women who had dealt
with his crap. Yeah. Then, like, I promise I won't
(38:04):
meet with this guy, Like I don't want to talk
to him, and I know y'all don't want to be
around him either. But as all of this was going
on in the background and sometimes in the foreground, the
library education that he and um other male counterparts were
architect ing at this time was really designed for essentially
(38:24):
training Yes, a lot of women. They were welcoming women
into the fold, but it was training them for lower
level positions of being clerks, assistance maybe the heads of
smaller libraries. To the point that publicly, librarianship was just
considered this, you know, kind of throwaway job for women.
(38:45):
They didn't get paid really anything at all. It didn't
have a reputation of being super respectable because you couldn't
go very far in it. So the American Library Association
was like, Okay, we need to kind of burnish our image.
So they said, you know what hybrid high level librarianship
(39:06):
being like a capital l librarian, like a Dewey, that
is something that you were born with. That's such crap.
I know when I read that, I couldn't believe it,
because how can you whether it's eighteen seventy, nineteen seventy,
or twenty seventy, Like, seriously, how can you read that
and believe it the librarianship. No, I just can't like
(39:30):
But that also, but that also speaks to the paternalism
of the occupation at the time too, because they really
did think they I mean they kind of had a
little bit of a christ complex about it. Sure well,
and I mean, who it's not like they were saying, uh,
you're born with it, whether you're a man or a woman,
and whether it's maybe lane, you are born with it
(39:53):
because you're a man. Yeah. And that's something that the
author of paper we were reading on the minization of
librarianship pointed out um sort of an outrage at this
idea of the suggestion that being a librarian was something
that you would be born with because, as she wrote,
because it also required being born with a penis. So yeah,
(40:16):
although maybe you come out of the womb with a
little book in your hand, well then yeah, maybe you
are born to be a librarian. Um. But with this
hierarchy that they were establishing, you have sort of a
pyramid structure with the much higher paid administrators usually men
at the top in place to kind of tamp down
(40:40):
on individuals being able to rise up through the ranks.
So unlike university faculty at the time, which would have
been mostly men, if you were a professor, you could
make a name for yourself as a professor and would
probably be better known than say the adminis straighter of
(41:01):
that university. But with librarianship and the same thing going
on with the development of public school teaching and the
feminization of that, you have these strict standards put in
place to essentially just like level the playing field. So
you kind of have to stay in these little boxes
(41:22):
and it's really hard to break through the ranks. You
kind of have to go around being a clerker assistant
and jump right into administration. But they weren't training them
in the library schools because again they thought that it
was something at that time that you would be born
with slash penis. And I mean, obviously in the next
(41:42):
episode we're going to talk more about women and feminization specifically,
but there was one source that we read that cited
a male librant, contemporary male librarian, who was saying all
of this stuff about how the fact that the lower
ranks in libraries were dominated by women is what ruined
(42:05):
essentially ruined the field, which is hilarious if it weren't
so depressing, because when you look at this stuff, like
things were engineered to basically, like you were saying, keep
women in their box or in their lane, keep people
from advancing up the ranks. And so if you establish
a system where the only people who are in those
(42:27):
higher ranked positions are like clearly born to be there
and they happen to be men, well, how how can
you break that that book ish ceiling? I mean, you
really can't. Yeah, I mean, it's also such an ironic
contrast of the lofty mission of you know, those top
library administrators of considering themselves really the arbiters of culture
(42:53):
and learning and virtue for all of these communities and
these developing urban centers, but at the same time keeping
women's work in the field devalued. And it's also worth noting,
if we jumped forward in our timeline, that in nineteen
thirty a seventy eight year old doing settled for two
(43:17):
thousand dollars a sexual harassment lawsuit brought against him. And
of course, again we don't have the term sexual harassment yet,
which should tell you something even more that before people
were literally and legally protected from issues of sexual harassment.
A woman sued him for his behavior, which is why
I suggested to Caroline that the Dewey decimal system should
(43:41):
be renamed to what. I'm not sure, but listeners, I
am open to suggestion, because there's so many amazing women
librarians that you could uh name it after. But of course,
I mean, that's never going to happen. But because we're
only just now really acknowledging the fact that Dewey and
his personal life was kind of a shady dude. Not
(44:02):
kind of he was a shady dude. Was a shady dudeum,
But in that regard, I really am interested to hear
from our librarian listeners. I know you guys have a
lot to tell us about Dewey, and so I'm interested
to hear, like, do you do you feel a degree
of conflict when you look at him as the father
of librarianship who was also shady in the shed? Yeah,
(44:25):
I mean, because that is the thing that his profiler,
Joshua Kendall, in that ail a magazine piece, was kind
of wavering between like the acknowledgment of like, Okay, yeah,
he was a quote serial hugger and kisser, but he
was so brilliant and he, you know, gave us this
thing which did revolutionize our learning, our public learning. Yeah,
(44:49):
I mean, Steve Jobs was also a creep. But we
all have iPhones, you know. I mean yeah, it's like,
do do the ends justify the sexually harassing means? Yeah?
And I'm and I'm not saying that Steve Jobs is
the harasser. I don't know about that. I just know
that he was incredibly difficult and and and tempestuous. Well yeah,
they seem to have similar temperaments for sure. Um, But quickly,
(45:12):
in terms of men and librarian stereotypes, because it was
so feminized so quickly, by the time you get into
the twentieth century, you get the stereotype of male librarians
having to be gay because how could a straight guy
(45:33):
want to do quote unquote women's work. And it seems
like from more recent research that the stereotype has fallen
away and that men don't feel, you know, uncomfortable being
librarians because they worried that people might assume that they're gay,
like they might have and say like nineteen fifty or sixty. Um.
(45:53):
But in terms of that administrative hierarchy, after World War Two,
there was I think from the American Library Association a
recruitment effort specifically for men to get more men in libraries,
but not as clerks for assistance, but into administrative roles
(46:15):
make libraries great again. Yeah, So it just it just
kept on going. So with this, we're gonna close the
book on dudes and librarians. Dudes and dewey dewey dudes,
UM and librarians. We absolutely want to hear from you
about this, and male librarians listening. We want you to
(46:36):
weigh into We want everyone to weigh in, UM and
also quickly thank you. Librarians like teachers, I feel like
they're always so undervalued in our communities but indispensable. So
mom stuff at how stuffworks dot Com is our email address.
You can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or
messages on Facebook, and we've got a couple of messages
(46:58):
to share with you right now. So I have a
letter here from Ella in response to our Boston Marriages episode.
She says, I think Boston marriages may be more common
than we think among young people. I'm not that aunt yet,
but I have every intention of being one eventually. My roommate,
(47:20):
that's her quotes and my ridiculous way of speaking. My
quote unquote roommate and I are both in our twenties.
We share a bed and a dog and often describe
each other as our girlfriend or partner to explain why
we have no interest in dating other people. But neither
of us is into ladies. Were just uninterested in traditional
romantic entanglements. I'm a sexual and she's elapsed straight person
(47:43):
who's disillusioned with men. And we save an awful lot
on rent by sharing a bedroom and a wardrobe. I've
never seen a reason why I would want to stop
living with a roommate, even if I could afford it,
other than that's what's expected of me. It's a sleepover
every day, and my ten year old self is really
and truly living the dream. Thanks really awesome episode. I
never knew what to call what we do before, and
(48:04):
it's genuinely a great relief to have a label to
apply to myself other than just weird. And if I
ever marry her for tax reasons, the invitation is absolutely
going to read please join us in celebrating our Boston marriage,
and everyone but you and me will just think it's
a weird reference to the fact that we lived in
Boston for a while, You're totally invited. Well, thank you,
(48:27):
Ella for that great story. So I have a letter
here from Francis also about our Boston marriages episode, and
Frances rites, I grew up in the Bible Belt and
never knew that lesbian couplings were so accepted. I don't
have a personal experience with a Boston marriage, but whatever
the male equivalent is, I do. My grandfather was originally
(48:48):
a New Englander, but after marrying my grandmother, they moved
to North Carolina, where my mother was born, and I
spent most of my life I didn't know anything about
same sex couplings, and growing up in the eighties and nineties,
we free when we visited Confirmed bachelor friends of my grandfather's.
Not until many years later did I realize those men
were actually long term, monogamous gay men. My parents are
(49:10):
extremely against homosexuality, but to hear my mother lovingly speak
of these men is interesting. I think a lot of
our society's issues come from not understanding the humanity of
people who are different than us and refusing to know
them as individuals with feelings and personalities. All that said,
is there a term for men in Boston marriages? I'd
(49:31):
be interested to know. I love the podcast and now
I forced my husband to listen. Well, thank you so much, Francis. Um.
I think that we could call male Boston marriages what
like um, maybe like a Philly marriage, Key West marriages?
Key West marriages? Yeah, what's a really like? Dudely City
(49:55):
San Antonio marriages? Sure? Well, keep your letters coming, mom,
stuff But how stuff Works dot com is our email
address and for links all of our social media as
well as all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts with
our sources. So you too can learn about Melville Dewey.
(50:15):
Head on over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot
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