One Hundred Years of AALL History
1956–1965
Prepared by Frank G. Houdek
Spring 2006
1956 | 1957 | 1958 | 1959 | 1960 | 1961 | 1962 | 1963 | 1964 | 1965
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1956
April 30 . . . Frederick Charles Hicks, law librarian at Columbia (1915–28) and Yale (1928–45) and the first academic law librarian to serve as AALL president (1919–21), dies at the age of eighty. A prolific scholar, Hicks is best known for his classic Materials and Methods of Legal Research, first published in 1923, and revised in 1933 and 1942. More than forty years after his death, in 2000, the Academic Law Libraries Special Interest Section will name its new award, to be presented annually to an individual who has made outstanding contributions to academic law librarianship, in Hicks's honor.
June 25–28 . . . AALL celebrates its 50th anniversary with a Golden Jubilee Meeting, held in Philadelphia, with President Carroll G. Moreland, librarian at the University of Pennsylvania, presiding. The event is also marked by a special Golden Jubilee issue of the Law Library Journal (49 LLJ 81–237), under the editorship of Dillard S. Gardner, which contains numerous articles describing the history and development of AALL, its programs, and its chapters.
June 27 . . . The Golden Jubilee Banquet, held in the Ball Room of the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel, features a menu of Philadelphia snapper soup with sherry, boneless Cornish hen stuffed with wild rice, broccoli Mornay, sweet potatoes with marshmallow, and, for dessert, vanilla ice cream bombe with cherries jubilee and petit fours.
Felicitations on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary were extended to the Association by Katherine Kinder, President of Special Libraries Association; Ralph R. Shaw, President of American Libraries Association; Robert E. Mathews, Past President of Association of American Law Schools; David F. Maxwell, President Elect of American Bar Association. George A. Johnston, Q.C., Chief Librarian of the Law Society of Upper Canada, served as toastmaster. Miss Margaret Coonan presented to Gilson Glasier, the Association's only active charter member, as a representative of the founding fathers, a silver tray in recognition of the services which that group had performed. (49 LLJ 482)
November . . . The first prize winner in the Golden Jubilee Essay Contest, “. . . Be Those That Multiply the Commonweale,” by Howard Jay Graham, bibliographer, Los Angeles County Law Library, is published in Law Library Journal. Essays were to address the subject of the American Association of Law Libraries During the Next Fifty Years (48 LLJ 395–96). Graham's fascinating piece is written from the imagined vantage point of someone in 2006, at AALL's Centennial Celebration, looking back on AALL's second half-century.
1957
February . . . The following announcement about a “new special stapler” appears in the “Current Comments” column of Law Library Journal, compiled by Lois Peterson, assistant librarian, Social Law Library:
Quick repairs to damaged periodicals and pamphlets are possible with the Bostitch B8S Saddle Stapler which automatically positions work to 12" wide. Its “roll up” feature holds pages in place to allow easy penetration through binding folds up to 128 pages thick. This inexpensive method of mending booklets and magazines, or almost any publication that is saddle stapled, uses the same supplies as the Bostitch 138 fastener. Local stationers should be able to fill orders and provide details concerning this new product. (50 LLJ 43)
June 24–27 . . . AALL holds its 50th Annual Meeting in Colorado Springs, Colorado, with headquarters at the Antlers Hotel. Social highlights of the meeting include Monday's “Chuck Wagon Dinner” at the Flying W Ranch, followed by a reception with square dancing to honor new members; Tuesday's day trip to visit the Shepard's plant, followed by lunch and “melodrama” at the Imperial Hotel in Cripple Creek; and a cocktail party on Wednesday followed by the Annual Banquet.
June 24 . . . The petition of the Association of Law Libraries of Upstate New York (at the time called the Association of Law Libraries of New York State) to become a chapter of AALL is unanimously approved. ALLUNY becomes the Association's eighth chapter.
October . . . The Ford Foundation makes a grant of $12,000 to the Association for the purpose of investigating the nature and feasibility of creating an index to foreign legal periodicals. In December, William B. Stern, foreign law librarian of the Los Angeles County Law Library and the individual most instrumental in securing the grant, will be appointed director of the indexing study by the Executive Board.
1958
March . . . Frances Farmer, law librarian of the University of Virginia, issues the following invitation:
All AALL members and their families who attend the Washington convention are cordially invited to spend the Fourth of July in Charlottesville . . . as guests of the University of Virginia Law School. Plans for the day include a trip to Monticello, the home of Mr. Jefferson, refreshments at the Colonnade Club and luncheon in the Rotunda on the Law of the University, followed by tours of the University Grounds and the Law Library. A special excursion round trip rate of $4.00 per person via the Southern Railroad has been arranged, one-half of which will be paid for by the Michie Publishing Company of Charlottesville. (President's Newsletter, 1957–58, no. 3, at 1)
May 31 . . . Treasurer Betty Hancock's annual report for 1957–58 indicates that AALL's membership has for the first time passed the seven hundred mark, reaching a total of 734 persons who are members in one of five classes: honorary, life, associate, institutional, or active.
July 3 . . . The Southwestern Association of Law Libraries (SWALL) is approved as AALL's ninth chapter. The Association was formed earlier in the year by librarians meeting at Southern Methodist University School of Law at the invitation of its director, Hibernia Turbeville. At the meeting, Mortimer Schwartz, librarian at the University of Oklahoma School of Law, was elected as SWALL's first president.
July 3 . . . AALL's By-Laws are amended to raise the dues for active individual members and institutional designated members to $10 a year. The annual assessment was formerly $8 a year.
1959
June 24 . . . William R. Roalfe, librarian of Northwestern University Law Library, is elected as the first president of the International Association of Law Libraries at its organizational meeting held at the Association of the Bar of the City of New York; he will serve until 1962. The AALL Executive Board, acting on the recommendation of its Special Committee on the Creation of the IALL, chaired by Roalfe, had invited all interested persons to attend this meeting for the purpose of considering the creation of an international group. Today, IALL has more than six hundred members in more than fifty countries on five continents. Its members represent all types of legal collections, ranging from academic law libraries of all sizes to corporate libraries, and from national and parliamentary libraries to administrative agency and court libraries.
June 25 . . . At the Closing Luncheon session of the 52nd Annual Meeting in New York City, President Ervin Pollack of Ohio State University presents special citations to Helen Newman, William Roalfe, and Miles O. Price for their “outstanding contributions and dedicated services . . . to the law library profession and to the Association” (52 LLJ 447).
August . . . Among the names of new AALL members listed in the “Membership News” column of Law Library Journal is “George A. Strait, . . . Harvard Law School Library” (52 LLJ 248). Strait will serve as assistant, acting, and associate librarian at Harvard for twenty years (1956–76), with breaks to build the libraries at Northeastern University School of Law (1967–69) and Antioch School of Law (1972–74). He then will serve as director of the law library at the University of Iowa from 1976 until his retirement in 1985. AALL will recognize his professional achievements by awarding him the Marian Gould Gallagher Distinguished Service Award in 1989 and naming its minority scholarship in his honor in 1990.
December . . . President Frances Farmer, librarian of the University of Virginia School of Law, appoints a subcommittee of the Executive Board “to study the ways and means of establishing a Headquarters with an Executive Director” (73 LLJ 802).
Also during the year, Law Library Journal Cumulative Index, Volumes One to Fifty, 1908–1957, commissioned by the Executive Board at its December 1957 midwinter meeting, is published by the Association. The author is Frances B. Waters, law librarian of the New York Court of Appeals. The book contains separate indexes to authors, subjects, personal names, and books noted or reviewed.
1960
February . . . The first issue of the Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals is published by the Institute for Advanced Legal Studies, University of London, in cooperation with AALL. The editorial staff consists of K. Howard Drake, secretary and librarian of the Institute, as general editor, and W.A. Steiner, assistant librarian, Squire Law Library, University of Cambridge, as assistant editor. They are ably assisted by AALL's Committee on Foreign Law Indexing, chaired by William B. Stern, which helped secure a Ford Foundation grant of $88,600 in summer 1959 to assist with start-up costs, and developed both the list of periodicals to be indexed and the subject headings to be used in the index. (53 LLJ 504–05) IFLP will continue to be produced by the Institute until 1984, when it will move to its present location in the Boalt Hall School of Law Library, University of California, Berkeley, under the general editorship of Thomas H. Reynolds.
April . . . The first two numbers of the AALL Publications Series appear, containing proceedings and materials of the 1959 AALL Law Librarians' Institute. The books are Cutting Costs in Acquisitions and Cataloging and Order Procedures: A Manual (by Viola A. Bird and Stanley Pearce); they are priced at $4.50 each (53 LLJ 146). Published for the Association first by Fred B. Rothman & Co. and now by William S. Hein & Co., more than seventy books will be included in the Publications Series from its beginning to the present day.
June 27–30 . . . The 53rd Annual Meeting is held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with Frances Farmer of the University of Virginia presiding. One of the prime topics of discussion at the business meetings is the wisdom and feasibility of adopting a program of certification of law librarians (53 LLJ 488–505).
June 28 . . . Entertainment following a buffet supper at the Lafayette Club in Lake Minnetonka features the AALL Players in “Six Characters in Search of A Law Librarian,” directed and cast by Albert P. Blaustein and Marian Gallagher. Gallagher also will serve as the toastmistress at the annual banquet the following evening (53 LLJ 487).
November 26 . . . AALL President Helen A. Snook, librarian of the Detroit Bar Association, is married to former AALL President William R. Roalfe. They are, to date, the only husband and wife to serve as AALL presidents.
1961
February . . . Among the new members listed in the Law Library Journal's “Membership News” column, edited by Mary Oliver of the University of North Carolina, is Marian Boner, “institutional member with the School of Law Library, University of Texas” (54 LLJ 51). Boner, who will remain at UT until 1972, when she will become the first director of the Texas State Law Library, will eventually serve AALL as secretary (1970–73) and president (1974–75). She will be posthumously presented with the Marian Gould Gallagher Distinguished Service Award in 1991.
June 29 . . . Members approve a bylaws amendment to raise the annual dues of active and institutional members to $15, based in part on the fact that “during fiscal year, 1960–1961, [Association] expenditures were over $1,000 more than income” and that “comparisons revealed that the new . . . dues is not out of line with those of other library organizations” (54 LLJ 441–42).
June 29 . . . When AALL President Helen Roalfe turns the chair over to Elizabeth Finley at the Closing Luncheon of the 54th Annual Meeting, held at the Sheraton-Plaza Hotel in Boston, Finley, law librarian for Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C., becomes the first private firm librarian to serve as president. When she joined AALL in 1939, only one other firm librarian was listed on the membership rolls.
Elizabeth was one of a kind. Never suffering fools gladly, she always gave as good as she got, was a tenacious advocate of any cause she loved as her long devotion to the work of the AALL plainly demonstrated. . . . [S]he started to work [for AALL] the minute she learned of its existence. . . . Beside her concern for this then relatively neglected group [of private law librarians], she willingly assumed many jobs earlier and later that were short on glamour but long on detail and hard work. . . . — Jack Ellenberger (73 LLJ 738)
September 21 . . . AALL's sale of the Index to Legal Periodicals to the H.W. Wilson Company for $16,000 is finalized by the transfer of title. The sale was ratified by the membership on June 26, 1961, after a unanimous recommendation of the Committee on the Index to Legal Periodicals and approval by the Executive Board. In explaining the recommendation, Committee chair Forrest S. Drummond pointed to the “continuous curve up and down [of income from the Index], out of and into the red,” and emphasized that
[t]he Committee will be relieved of the many frustrations it has experienced in the employment, supervision and control at long range, of editors and indexers. One of the most important factors [for recommending the sale] was the Committee's desire to eliminate this peril in its position and insure the continuity and quality of the Index by placing it in such reliable and experienced hands. (54 LLJ 321)
1962
May 31 . . . According to Treasurer William D. Murphy's report (55 LLJ 162), the Association increased its membership in 1961–62 from 955 to 967.
June 1 . . . On the eve of the Annual Meeting at which he is to take office, President-Elect Harrison MacDonald of the New Mexico Law Library announces that he “cannot serve as president for 1962–63” because of health reasons. Pursuant to provisions of the AALL Constitution, the Executive Board appoints Julius Marke of New York University to fill MacDonald's unexpired term as president-elect and to become president on July 5, 1962.
July 6–12 . . . Two conferences are held following the 55th Annual Meeting in San Francisco. The Mid-Pacific Conference in Honolulu, Hawaii, July 6–12, attracts twenty-five attendees. The Seattle conference (July 7–10), focusing on “Modern Trends in Law Librarianship,” has twenty-eight registrants who, along with attending sessions on “Office Management Principles Relating to Law Libraries” and “Business Methods in Law Libraries,” find time to visit the Seattle World's Fair and to observe ALA's “Library of the Future” exhibit. They also tour the new $4.5 million Seattle Public Library “which incorporates the latest in library architectural concepts and equipment” (55 LLJ 428).
Also during the year, the Manual of Procedures for Private Law Libraries, edited by Libby F. Jessup, is issued as number 5 in the AALL Publications Series. Many members of the Private Law Libraries Committee contribute to the development of this groundbreaking resource.
1963
May 31 . . . In his Treasurer's Report for 1962–63, William Murphy notes that “for the first time our membership has passed the 1,000 mark. As of May 31, 1963, we have 1,011 members. In ten years we have almost doubled in size.” He also reports that “[i]nstead of a savings account of $5,000, as was the case ten years ago, we now have $80,000” (56 LLJ 184–85).
July 4 . . . Upon a recommendation of the Executive Board, the application of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL) to become an AALL chapter is approved by a vote of the membership. CALL will continue as a chapter until 1971 when it will become an independent association.
July 5 . . . Highlighting the 56th Annual Meeting at Mackinac Island, Michigan—and soon to become an enduring part of AALL lore—is a skit by the AALL Players titled “The Rule of Law Goes West.” The takeoff on the popular TV western “Gunsmoke” is directed by Albert Blaustein and includes cast members Jim Kelly as Marshall Dillon, Roy Mersky as Doc, Della Geyer as Kitty, and George Skinner as Chester. Marian Gallagher, Fanny Farmer, Kate Wallach, and Margaret Coonan are dance hall girls. President Julius Marke, an “advance man” from AALL, memorably sings “The Meeting O’ the AA Double L” (aka “Ye Ought Ta Gae Thair”).
August . . . In her “Current Comments” column for Law Library Journal, Viola Bird, assistant librarian at the University of Washington, describes a Publisher's Weekly report that “[w]hile book prices as a whole increased more than two-thirds in the 13-year period [since 1949], the increase in law books is the highest of all areas. An average law book which cost $4.76 in 1947–49, now costs $10.60, an increase of 119.0%” (56 LLJ 268–69).
September 27 . . . President Harry Bitner announces that “the Association has approved in principle the program of four rotating institutes in basic areas of law librarianship which has been proposed by the Education Committee. . . . These institutes are planned primarily for new librarians, semi-professionals and others working in law libraries without formal training in law librarianship” (President's Newsletter, Sept. 27, 1963, at 1). The first institute, on legal bibliography, is scheduled to occur at the University of Missouri Law School in the week preceding the 1964 Annual Meeting in St. Louis.
1964
March . . . The first edition of the Biographical Directory of Law Librarians in the United States and Canada is published on AALL's behalf by the West Publishing Company. Bertha White of the Los Angeles County Law Library serves as editor. Data is provided for 533 professional law librarians. Later editions appear in 1971 (733 entries), 1977 (1220), 1984 (1800), and 1992 (2500).
June 16–17 . . . At a special meeting in New York called by President Harry S. Bitner, the Executive Board approves establishing a permanent headquarters for AALL, to be located in Chicago and staffed on a paid, full-time basis. Lucille Pelletier is hired as AALL's first administrative secretary. Later in the year, AALL will move into quarters on the 12th floor of the historic Monadnock Building, 53 W. Jackson Blvd., in the downtown Chicago loop, where it remains today (albeit moved to a suite on the 9th floor).
June 22–27 . . . AALL conducts the first in the scheduled series of rotating institutes designed to provide training in basic library techniques at the University of Missouri at Columbia Law School Library, preceding the Annual Meeting in St. Louis. The topic is “Legal Bibliography” and the director is Morris Cohen. Cohen reports that the Institute attracts “some 36 or 37 students largely from the group of new librarians or non-professionals,” and that the “faculty consisted of Mr. [Harry] Bitner, Marian Gallagher, Mortimer Schwartz, and myself” (57 LLJ 312–13).
June 29 . . . After approving for the first time a proposal to establish a permanent AALL Headquarters site in Chicago, the Headquarters Fund Drive to raise money for this purpose is officially opened at the 57th Annual Meeting in St. Louis. Its goal: to raise $220,000 by 1967. The fund-raising campaign is cochaired by Eileen Murphy, librarian, General Motors Corporation Legal Staff, and former AALL Treasurer William D. Murphy. In explaining the Murphy “pairing” at the Opening Business Session, Eileen Murphy stated:
At the December [1963] meeting in Los Angeles, Miss Murphy volunteered by opening her fat Irish mouth once again, to investigate, survey, and find out how we could run this drive. I inveigled the other Murphy by stomping on his left ankle when they were asking for another volunteer. I thought it would be a good idea to have the financial artist on the committee. My other reason was that, if you had a noisy, wild, imaginative, idealistic Murphy, she ought to be paired with a rather noble, levelheaded Murphy, and the combination ought to be able to do something. (57 LLJ 326)
1965
June 10 . . . Joseph L. Andrews, reference librarian of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York (1930–65), dies. His boss at the Association of the Bar, AALL President Arthur Charpentier writes of the man for whom AALL's Bibliographical Award will be named upon its creation in 1967: “If there existed better reference librarians or finer men than Joe, I never met them” (President's Newsletter, Aug. 20, 1965, at 1).
June 27–July 1 . . . AALL holds its 58th Annual Meeting in New York City, overlapping with the 1964–65 World's Fair held at Flushing Meadows Park in the borough of Queens. According to an advertisement in the February 1965 issue of Law Library Journal signed by Matt Bender IV, AALL members were “cordially invited to pick up . . . admission tickets, compliments of Matthew Bender and Company” so they could “visit the fabulous New York's World Fair” on Tuesday, June 29.
July 31 . . . Helen C. Newman, librarian of the U.S. Supreme Court and former executive-secretary and president of AALL, dies. The flag of the Supreme Court will hang at half mast for three days, and Chief Justice Earl C. Warren will later memorialize Newman in Law Library Journal (59 LLJ 162). President Arthur Charpentier will write of Newman: “It would take all of this letter to do justice to what Helen did for, and what she meant to, the world of law librarianship. I will only say here that she is one of very few people who come to mind when I think of those who were most persuasive in molding our profession and giving it depth and character” (President's Newsletter, Aug. 20, 1965, at 2). A scholarship honoring Newman's memory will be instituted through the efforts of Elizabeth Finley; it will be available to law librarians taking courses in law librarianship at any recognized educational institution or needing assistance in attending national or chapter institutes, courses, or meetings.