Collection Summary
Information for Researchers
Administrative Information
Biographical Information
Chronology
Scope and Content of Collection
Collection Summary
Collection Title: J. Periam Danton papers
Date (inclusive): 1928-2002
Collection Number: BANC MSS C-B 1012
Creators :
Danton, J. Periam, 1908-2002
Extent:
Number of containers: 11 cartons, 1 box
Linear feet: 14
Repository: The Bancroft Library
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, California, 94720-6000
Phone: (510) 642-6481
Fax: (510) 642-7589
Email: bancref@library.berkeley.edu
URL: http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/
Abstract: The J. Periam Danton Papers, 1928-2002, primarily consist of
professional correspondence regarding organizational activities within the academic library
and international librarianship professions. The collection has been divided into three
series: Professional Activities; Writings; and Biographical materials. Correspondence with
colleagues and publishers from throughout the United States and all over the world and with
former doctoral students constitute a vast amount of the Professional Activities series. The
Writings series includes notes, research materials, drafts and editorial correspondence for
Danton's numerous publications regarding librarianship. Biographical materials are limited
and include personal correspondence and newspaper clippings.
Languages Represented: Collection materials are in English
Physical Location: Many of the Bancroft Library collections are stored offsite
and advance notice may be required for use. For current information on the location of these
materials, please consult the Library's online catalog.
Information for Researchers
Access
Collection is open for research.
Publication Rights
Materials in this collection may be protected by the U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17,
U.S.C.). In addition, the reproduction of some materials may be restricted by terms of
University of California gift or purchase agreements, donor restrictions, privacy and
publicity rights, licensing and trademarks. Transmission or reproduction of materials
protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of
without permission of the copyright owner. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively
with the user.
All requests to reproduce, publish, quote from, or otherwise use collection materials
must be submitted in writing to the Head of Public Services, The Bancroft Library,
University of California, Berkeley 94720-6000. See:
http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/reference/permissions.html .
Preferred Citation
[Identification of item], J. Periam Danton Papers, BANC MSS C-B 1012, The Bancroft
Library, University of California, Berkeley.
Alternate Forms Available
There are no alternate forms of this collection.
Related Collections
Oral history recordings, 1978-79, concerning Sydney Mitchell, Bancroft Phonotape 1411 C
Dean and professor at UC Berkeley's School of Librarianship, 1946-1976: oral history
transcript, BANC MSS 2001/91 c
Indexing Terms
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the
library's online public access catalog.
Danton, J. Periam,
1908-2002--Archives
University of California,
Berkeley. School of Librarianship
Library science--United States
International librarianship
Library science--Study and teaching (Higher)
Faculty papers
Administrative Information
Accruals
No additions are expected.
System of Arrangement
Arranged to the folder level.
Processing Information
Processed by Lisa M. Monhoff in 2004.
Biographical Information
Joseph Periam Danton was born in Palo Alto, California at the Stanford University hospital
on July 5, 1908. His parents were German language educators George Henry and Annina Periam
Danton, who had both earned Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University. In 1916, the Danton
family moved to Peking, China to teach at Tsinghua University (now part of Peking
University), where they stayed for nearly ten years. The family also visited Japan during
their residence in Asia. Danton enrolled at Oberlin College in Ohio in 1924 to study German
and spent the 1925-1926 school year studying in Leipzig, Germany where his parents had moved
and held teaching positions. He graduated from Oberlin with a Bachelor of Arts degree magna
cum laude in 1928. Danton then moved to New York City to ascertain what career path to
follow.
Danton's love of books led him to first contemplate applying himself in the world of book
publishing. His parents had made several friends who were influential in the New York
publishing realm. Upon further investigation and reflection, Danton came to the conclusion
that, if he were to enter the publishing field, more time would be spent selling the books
than actually reading them. Eventually, he took the advice of his mother to visit her friend
Charles C. Williamson, dean of the esteemed School of Library Service at Columbia
University, and consider the field of librarianship.
The profession of librarianship, with its intellectual challenges and basis in public
service, strongly appealed to Danton. In 1928, he entered the library school at Columbia
University, graduating in 1929 with a Bachelor of Science degree in librarianship. While
attending Columbia during the day, Danton spent his evenings assisting in the reading room
of the New York Public Library.
Upon receiving the Columbia degree, Danton accepted employment as a night shift reference
librarian at Williams College in Massachusetts from 1929-1930. The lack of students
utilizing the library in the evenings and a deficiency of nighttime activities in the small
town allowed Danton plenty of time to engage in scholarly studies while on the job. In 1930,
he received a Master of Arts degree in German from Williams College and was soon drafted by
the American Library Association (ALA) to take a position at their headquarters in Chicago.
Danton was hired as secretary to the executive secretary of the American Library
Association, Carl Milam, 1930-1933. At this time, the field of librarianship was
overwhelmingly female-oriented and Danton recalled that he was recruited for the position
partly in an attempt to balance out the ratio. When he worked at the ALA office, there were
only three male employees out of the sixty total employees.
Concluding that he wished to pursue an academic career in the field of librarianship,
Danton applied to the Graduate Library School at the University of Chicago. He began the
program in 1933 and received his Ph.D. (in philosophy) in 1935. Danton took a position as
librarian and associate professor of bibliography at Colby College in Maine from 1935-1936.
Then Danton was offered and accepted the same position at Temple University, in
Philadelphia. In December 1941, Pearl Harbor was attacked and Danton enlisted in the Naval
Reserve to help with the war effort. However, he wasn't called to duty until late 1942 and
served as visiting professor at the University of Chicago's Graduate Library School in the
summer of 1942. Danton served as a Navy intelligence officer 1942-1945 in the South Pacific,
earning the rank of Commissioned Lieutenant.
Upon his honorable discharge from the Army in the fall of 1945, Danton began exploring his
career options beyond Temple University. As he was returning from the Pacific arena via San
Francisco, Danton was contacted by Sydney B. Mitchell, the long-standing dean of the School
of Librarianship at the University of California at Berkeley. Mitchell had been a neighbor
of the Danton's when they had lived in Palo Alto and had remained friends with the family
throughout the years. Mitchell wrote that he was retiring the following year and the school
would be looking for a new dean. Danton had considered library education as a profession,
but hadn't had much experience to this point. He interviewed and though it was a successful
meeting, Berkeley wasn't prepared to make a decision right away.
Danton returned to the East and accepted a visiting professorship at Columbia University's
School of Library Service. Not long before the semester's close in late May 1946, Danton was
offered a permanent faculty position at Columbia. A day after verbally accepting the
position, Danton received a telegram from the University of California at Berkeley offering
him the position of dean and associate professor at the School of Librarianship. Danton saw
this role as an opportunity to make a significant difference in a relatively new
professional field and at an institution with a growing progressive reputation. Danton
became Dean and Associate Professor of the school in July 1946, and became a full professor
the following year. He served as dean and professor until 1961, when he was forced to
relinquish the deanship due to new term limits the university imposed. He then acted in the
capacity of professor and library consultant until his retirement in 1976, whereupon he
became Professor Emeritus.
Upon retirement, Danton continued to publish and play a significant role in Berkeley's
School of Librarianship. He also fought to keep the school open, (along with other troubled
library schools - his alma maters at Columbia and Chicago), when budget cuts and a changing
economy forced the school to re-evaluate its mission and become the School of Information
Management and Systems in 1995. Though officially retired from teaching and administrative
duties, Danton continued to write and publish some of his most substantial books through
1999.
Danton was awarded several honors in his lifetime including the Presidential Unit Citation
with two stars, for his role in the United States Naval Reserve during World War II, the
Berkeley Citation in 1976, upon retirement from the University of California, and the Beta
Phi Mu in 1983, the American Library Association's award for service to librarianship. He
was extremely active in the literature of his profession, continuously writing in depth
studies and serving on the editorial board of the Library Quarterly. Danton was often
invited to speak at national and international library events and served on a variety of
University of California committees. He was a member of many library professional
associations such as the American Library Association, the International Federal of Library
Associations and the Association of American Library Schools. Danton was also an honorary
member of Vereinigung Osterreichischer Bibliothekare, an Austrian library association, and
Vereinigung Deutscher Bibliothekare, a German library association.
Chronology
1908 |
Born July 5th in Palo Alto, California |
1916-1924 |
Spends youth in Beijing, China |
1928 |
B.A. in German, Oberlin College, Ohio |
1925-1926 |
Student in Leipzig, Germany |
1928-1929 |
Reading Room Assistant and Stacks Supervisor, New York Public Library |
1929 |
B.S. in Librarianship, Columbia University |
1929-1930 |
Reference Assistant, Williams College Library |
1930 |
M.A. in German, Williams College |
1930-1933 |
Assistant to the Secretary, American Library Association |
1935 |
Ph.D., University of Chicago |
1935-1936 |
Librarian and Associate Professor of Bibliography, Colby College |
1935-ca. 1945 |
Married to librarian Emily Miller |
1936-1946 |
Librarian and Associate Professor of Bibliography, Temple University |
1939 |
Director of the Rockefeller Foundation-American Library Association "Books for
Europe" Program
|
1942 |
Visiting professor, University of Chicago |
1942-1945 |
United States Naval Reserve, Commissioned Lieutenant |
1945-1946 |
Visiting professor, Columbia University |
1946-1961 |
Dean of the School of Librarianship, University of California, Berkeley |
1946-1947 |
Associate Professor of Librarianship, University of California, Berkeley |
1947-1976 |
Professor of Librarianship, University of California, Berkeley |
1948-ca. 1972 |
Married to Lois King of Lakewood, Ohio |
1949-1950 |
President of the Association of American Library Schools |
1960-1961 |
Fulbright Research Scholar in Göttingen, Germany |
1961 |
Consultant through Department of State's American Specialist Program to Haile
Selassie I University in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
|
1961-1964 |
Consultant in Library Service to the Veterans Administration Hospital libraries for
the Western area
|
1963 |
Ford Foundation consultant on South East Asian library development |
|
Director of Multi-Area Library Program project, sponsored by the Department of
State and the International Relations Committee of the American Library
Association
|
1964-1965 |
Fulbright Research Scholar in Vienna, Austria |
1967-1969 |
Council on Library Resources grant |
1968 |
Ford Foundation [consultant on South East Asian library development survey, w/ Ray
Swank]
|
1976-2002 |
Professor Emeritus, School of Librarianship, University of California,
Berkeley
|
1983 |
Received Beta Phi Mu award from the American Library Association |
2002 |
Died November 12th in Oakland, California |
Scope and Content of Collection
The J. Periam Danton Papers primarily consist of professional correspondence regarding
organizational activities within the academic library and international librarianship
professions. Danton was extremely active in professional organizations such as the American
Library Association (ALA), International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) and
Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). Correspondence with colleagues and
publishers from throughout the United States and all over the world and with former doctoral
students constitute a vast amount of the "professional activities" series.
Danton received several grants and fellowships over the course of his career from
organizations such as the Rockefeller Foundation, Council on Library Resources, Guggenheim
Fellowship and the Ford Foundation. He was a Fulbright Research Scholar in Germany and
Austria. Many of the grant applications, acceptance letters and research that was achieved
during the course of the grant process are included in the "professional activities" series.
Danton's tenure included numerous invitations to guest lectureships around the world.
Documentation is included for many of these visits, including such institutions as
University of Puerto Rico, McGill University, Hebrew University, University of Belgrade,
University of Zabreb and University of Ljubljana. Prominent American library schools where
Danton lectured are also included, such as University of North Carolina, University of Texas
and University of Washington.
The collection includes correspondence relating to the University of California's 1949-1951
"loyalty oath" controversy. The university, compelled by the pressures of the era of
McCarthyism, required professors to sign an oath of loyalty acknowledging allegiance to the
state constitution and at the same time declaring no affiliation with the communist party.
Correspondence between Danton and the President of the University of California, Robert
Gordon Sproul, reflects Danton's dilemma with the loyalty oath requirement. An eloquently
crafted response to the president's second request to sign the loyalty oath form is included
in the University of California sub-series.
Notable correspondents include: Maurice Tauber (Columbia), Jack Dalton (Columbia University
School of Librarianship/ALA Director), L. Quincy Mumford (Librarian of Congress, 1954-1974),
William R. Eshelman (Wilson Library Bulletin, Scarecrow Press & U. of Oregon?), Sir
Frank Francis (Director of British Museum), Clark Kerr (UC Berkeley President), Robert
Gordon Sproul (President, University of California) Wilfred Saunders (University of
Sheffield), Eric Moon (Library Journal, etc.), Lester Asheim (ALA, Director of International
Relations Division), Raynard Swank, Edward Seaga (Prime Minister, Jamaica; formerly Minister
of Finance), Louis Round Wilson (ALA president, Dean of University of Chicago library
school, U. of North Carolina librarian, founder U. of North Carolina Press), Louis Shores
(Library School Dean at FSU and bibliographic...), Carl H. Milam (ALA/ Director of Library
Services, Department of Public Information, United Nations), Jesse Shera, Ray E. Held, Carl
M. White (Director of Libraries and Dean of the School of Library Service, Columbia
University), Bernard Berelson (University of Chicago, Graduate Library School, dean), Norman
Horrocks (Scarecrow Press)