Library School Oral History Series
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Introductory Materials
Legal Information
Since 1954 the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing leading participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of northern California, the West, and the nation. Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through tape-recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. The tape recording is transcribed, lightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The corrected manuscript is indexed, bound with photographs and illustrative materials, and placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and in other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable.
All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between The Regents of the University of California and Grete W. Cubie dated November 24, 1998. The manuscript is thereby made available for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley.
Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the Regional Oral History Office, 486 Bancroft Library, Mail Code 6000, University of California, Berkeley 94720-6000, and should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user. The legal agreement with Grete W. Cubie requires that she be notified of the request and allowed thirty days in which to respond.
It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:
Grete W. (Frugé) Cubie, "A Career in Public Libraries and at UC Berkeley's School of Librarianship, 1937-1975," an oral history conducted in 1998 and 1999 by Laura McCreery, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2000.
Cataloging Information
CUBIE, Grete W. (Frugé) (b. 1913)
Librarian
A Career in Public Libraries and at UC Berkeley's School of Librarianship, 1937-1975, 2000, xi, 198 pp.
Early life in Germany; emigration, 1930, and education at Lowell High School, San Francisco, and UC Berkeley; School of Librarianship, 1936-1937: founder Sydney B. Mitchell and early faculty, Edith M. Coulter and Della J. Sisler, students, coursework; positions at Sacramento, Oakland, and San Francisco public libraries, 1930s and 1940s; School of Librarianship faculty, 1947-1950s: changes in the school, teaching cataloging and classification with Anne Ethelyn Markley, Dean J. Periam Danton, the Coulter Lectureship, Loyalty Oath; 1960s-1970s: student movements, South Hall, curriculum changes, Alumni Association, deans Raynard C. Swank, Patrick G. Wilson; discusses online catalogs and other changes to the profession, censorship, stereotypes of librarians, the history of cataloging and the Library of Congress book classification system.
Introduction by Sheila Dowd, Map Librarian (retired), Main Library, UC Berkeley.
Interviewed 1998-1999 by Laura McCreery for the Library School Oral History Series. The Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
Acknowledgments
The Regional Oral History Office wishes to express its thanks to the following individuals and organizations whose encouragement and support have made possible the Library School Oral History Series
- Patricia Anderson Farquar Memorial Fund
- Morley S. Farquar, Patron
- Class of 1931 Oral History Endowment
- Alumni Association of the School of Librarianship and School of Library and Information Studies
- Corliss S. Lee
- In Memory of Patricia Anderson Farquar:
- John Baleix
- Willa K. Baum
- Robert L. Briscoe
- Irene Frew
- Jean E. Herring
- Lester Hurd
- Jean C. Marks
- Rebecca D. McIntyre
- Sharon A. Moore
- Corinne Rathjens
- Marlene B. Riley
- Juanita S. Vidalin
- In memory of Fredric J. Mosher:
- Ricki A. Blau
- Brigitte W. Dickinson
- Charlotte A. Tyler
Series Preface--Library School Oral History Series
The Library School Oral History Series documents the history of librarianship education at the University of California, Berkeley. Through transcribed and edited oral history interviews, the series preserves personal recollections of those involved with Berkeley's graduate library school since the 1930s. In the process, the interviews touch on the history of libraries in the Bay Area and California and on remarkable changes to the profession of librarianship over time.
Certain lines of inquiry are central to all the interviews. What were the changes to the School of Librarianship (later the School of Library and Information Studies) over the years? How were decisions made, and by whom? Historically, what is the proper role of and training for librarians? How has that changed? What, in the opinion of those interviewed, is the public's view of librarianship?
Library education at Berkeley spans nearly a full century. In 1901 Melvil Dewey, founding director of the New York State Library School and author of the Dewey Decimal classification system for books, wrote to University of California President Benjamin Ide Wheeler, encouraging him to start a library school on the West Coast. Berkeley offered the first summer courses in librarianship in 1902, and summer training continued intermittently until 1918, when library education joined the curriculum of the regular academic year.
In 1921, a Department of Librarianship was authorized for the College of Letters and Science, with instruction to begin in 1922. The state library school in Sacramento, which had offered courses since 1914, closed its doors in 1921, turning over the training of librarians to the University of California.
In 1926, Berkeley's departmental program became a separate graduate School of Librarianship, which existed until 1946 under the leadership of the founding dean, Sydney B. Mitchell. In the early years, with a staff of two core faculty members, Edith M. Coulter and Della J. Sisler, Mitchell offered both a graduate Certificate in Librarianship and a second-year course leading to the Master of Arts degree. Generally the school accepted only fifty students each year from among several hundred applicants.
In 1933, under new accreditation standards, the American Library Association named Berkeley a "Type I" school, one of only five so designated because of its graduate degree offerings. In 1937 an endowment grant of $150,000 from the Carnegie Corporation assured the school's place among American educational institutions.
After World War II, during the deanship of J. Periam Danton (1946-1961), the school grew dramatically in size of faculty and number of students, while expanding and specializing every area of its programs. The graduate certificate was replaced in 1947 with a Bachelor of Library Science degree (BLS) and in 1955 with a Master of Library Science degree (MLS); Ph.D. and Doctor of Library Science (DLS) degree programs were inaugurated in 1954; and the school developed its own Library School Library as a branch of the main Doe Library.
With the deanship of Raynard Coe Swank (1963-1970) came the school's first attention to computers and automation for libaries, an issue which eventually found its way into the curriculum and was taken up also through the school's Institute of Library Research. Swank's leadership culminated in the school's move from its quarters inside Doe Library to the venerable South Hall, one of two original buildings of the Berkeley campus (and the only one remaining). Throughout the seventies and eighties, under the leadership of Patrick Wilson and Michael Buckland, significant changes came to the curriculum and the faculty, as reflected in the eventual change of name to the School of Library and Information Studies.
In the late eighties and nineties, the school and its curricula were evaluated as part of a larger review of the campus and its mission as a research university. The school had only one permanent dean during this period, Robert C. Berring, who served half time from 1986 to 1989. Much of the assessment took place under a series of acting deans. Eventually the School of Library and Information Studies ceased admitting new students, while the campus administration contemplated whether it had a future.
Although the threat of complete dissolution was beaten back, in part owing to the efforts of alumni and their "Save Our School" campaign, the school was, in effect, compelled to close down its operations. It reopened as the School of Information Management and Systems (SIMS), which graduated its first master's students in 1999. Although a few faculty members have remained, the new school's curriculum bears little resemblance to the old, as it offers an electronically based, rather than print-oriented, training. SIMS did take over the library school's endowment and its location in South Hall. As of January 2000, SIMS also administers the alumni association that incorporates graduates of the former school. To date it has not sought accreditation from the American Library Association.
Meanwhile, schools of librarianship across the country have closed, changed their missions, or been subsumed under other graduate schools. The library systems devised so carefully by nineteenth and twentieth century founders have given way--in academic, public, and special libraries of every kind--to new ways of recording and managing collections and providing service to patrons. The Regional Oral History Office's Library School Oral History Series provides a strong narrative complement to written records of a key educational institution at a crucial time. With traditional education for librarianship fast disappearing, this series, like ROHO's broader University History Series, can serve as an enlightening case study of changes in education occurring throughout the United States.
A significant gift from Morley S. Farquar in memory of his wife, Patricia Anderson Farquar '53, allowed this series to begin in the fall of 1998. Additional gifts from the Class of 1931 Oral History Endowment and the Alumni Association of the former School of Librarianship/Library and Information Studies, along with important individual donations, have further supported the collection of interviews.
A key to creating this series has been the longevity of the individuals selected to be narrators. The first four interviewees for the series were born in 1914 or earlier and were between eighty-five and ninety years old at the time of their interviews. Two of them were students at the school in the 1930s, and their recollections shed light on the founding faculty members. Two of them had substantial experience in California public libraries. Three had long careers on the School of Librarianship faculty. Other narrators in the series will add their experiences as students, faculty members, and deans. Taken together, these oral histories will offer a rich history of librarianship education throughout the twentieth century and beyond.
Special thanks go to the wise and thoughtful team of advisers for the Library School Oral History Series: Michael K. Buckland, Julia J. Cooke, Mary Kay Duggan, Debra L. Hansen, Robert D. Harlan, J. R. K. Kantor (who also proofread every transcript), Corliss S. Lee, and Charlotte Nolan. Special thanks go also to those whose ideas, assistance, and goodwill helped the series come to life: Willa K. Baum, Sheila Dowd, Christine Orr, Shannon Page, Suzanne Riess, and Leticia Sanchez.
The Regional Oral History Office was established in 1954 to augment through tape-recorded memoirs the Library's materials on the history of California and the West. Copies of all interviews are available for research use in The Bancroft Library and in the UCLA Department of Special Collections. The office is under the direction of Willa K. Baum, Division Head, and the administrative direction of Charles B. Faulhaber, James D. Hart Director of The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
Regional Oral History Office
The Bancroft Library
University of California, Berkeley
Introduction
by Sheila Dowd
The compilation of a collection of oral histories relating to the School of Librarianship at Berkeley is to me, and to many librarians, a very welcome project. It comes at a moment when the school has metamorphosed, through one or two other titles, to become the School of Information Management and Systems, an entity whose relationship to libraries is yet, I believe, to be clearly defined.
Daniel Boorstin, then Librarian of Congress, in an address to the White House Conference on Library and Information Services, November 19, 1979, remarked:
While knowledge is orderly and cumulative, information is random and miscellaneous. We are flooded by messages from the instant-everywhere in excruciating profusion. In our ironic twentieth-century version of Gresham's law, information tends to drive knowledge out of circulation. The oldest, the established, the cumulative, is displaced by the most recent, the most problematic. The latest information on anything and everything is collected, diffused, received, stored, and retrieved before anyone can discover whether the facts have meaning...
Boorstin identifies libraries as among society's "knowledge-institutions." Certainly it has been the role of libraries from ancient times to collect and preserve the human record; and, increasingly over the centuries, to organize and analyze it for access and use. So information systems are among the tools, information management among the tasks of libraries; but their larger challenge is to provide a house of orderly and cumulative knowledge.
It is particularly timely, in light of all these changes, to record the ideas and perspectives of people who, through their teaching in the School of Librarianship, formed the profession over several decades--and so were instrumental in shaping American libraries.
There could be no better starting point for a history of the School of Librarianship than a series of interviews with Grete Frugé Cubie. Grete's knowledge of the school's aims, problems, and successes dates from her student days in the period of its first dean, Sydney Mitchell, continuing through almost three decades of teaching until her retirement in 1975. The value of such a span of experience is enhanced by the personal qualities she brings to her observations. Grete has a clear-seeing eye, consistently high standards, a tolerant acceptance of human diversity and frailty, an innate sense of proportion, and a glorious sense of humor--all wonderful attributes for a historian. She is also one of the most lucid minds and one of the most entertaining raconteurs that I know, gifts which must have made the process of interviewing her a lot of fun.
My friendship with Grete is of long duration, having begun as a teacher-student relationship. I was a student in the School of Librarianship in the 1947-1948 academic year, the year Grete began her work on the faculty as assistant to Ethelyn Markley and supervisor of the cataloging laboratory. I came all naive innocence to cataloging, never having imposed order on anything in my life. It is still a matter of some awe to me that Grete made clear the labyrinthine ways of classification, subject analysis, name authority files, and such, and imbued me with a conviction that it really is satisfying to place a work in its proper context. But it was only after I returned to Berkeley in 1953 to begin my years of service in the University Library that I came to know the remarkable person that Grete is.
I don't remember who brought us together again, or whether we perhaps first encountered each other across a reference desk, but it seemed to take no time at all to establish our common interests and delights. I'm sure Jane Austen must have been one of the first links. I am a lifelong reader of the canon, but Grete is much more--an enthusiast and book collector so knowledgeable about the whole Austen clan that she could serve as their family archivist. (It was really Jane who introduced Grete and Alex Cubie, too. Grete was struck by the fact that the pleasant Scot who spoke to her in the ancient theatre in Taormina one golden afternoon had been sitting there reading Persuasion --and thereupon was launched a romance that has delighted all their friends for over twenty years.) Henry James, Edith Wharton, and other favorite authors have played a vital part in our friendship, too; and a shared passion for European travel and European cultures (nourished, of course, by those authors) has animated our talk and led to some wonderful encounters. Grete will always go out of her way to meet a friend in some specially chosen spot: I see us on a terrace by the Rhone, and another overlooking the Pont du Gard; in the Forest of Fontainebleau; in a fresh-plowed pasture on a "short cut" to Jane's Steventon; in a horse-drawn carriage driven by a rather piratical Roman; and, especially, on the terrace of the Cubies' lovely little apartment on the Saronic Gulf in Greece--cherished memories all, even the muddy pasture. (Where others might have reproached the pathfinder on that one, Grete accepted the absurdity of our plight with glee.)
These and other shared interests have certainly played a substantial part in our friendship. We have found a community of spirit in discussing politics, social ills and issues, personalities, idiosyncracies (our own and others')--all the things friends do talk about. The pleasure of good talk with a mind so enlightened is inexpressible. But the value of Grete's friendship goes far beyond intellectual stimulation. She is the most understanding of friends, the most generous, and the most faithful. Her wide circle includes many of her former students, often foreign students whom she advised and helped with such open-minded integrity and such kindness that they cherish her throughout their careers. Just last week she told me with pleasure of an encounter in the Santa Cruz Public Library, where she was greeted warmly by a graduate of the school who recognized her immediately despite a name change and the passage of thirty-plus years.
Grete's loving relationships with her own family and friends expanded easily and naturally, upon her marriage to Alex, to embrace his wonderful clan. For a while the couple lived a splendid life in three homes on two continents, receiving friends wherever they were, and never, it seems, losing close communion with all their wide-spread circle. Now, when distant travel is not possible, their circle flocks to them; no household of my acquaintance receives more houseguests than does the ménage on Fair Avenue. The frequent visits of the Scottish family are generously shared with California friends, and have created a warm sense of extended family.
This grace of hospitality which characterizes both Grete and Alex deserves to be celebrated by a bard. I have sometimes suspected that Grete has the magic table of the Grimms' fairy tale ("Table, table, set thyself!"), so regularly and effortlessly do beautiful meals appear. Their guests are cosseted with early morning tea abed, entertained in a garden whose roses still bloom at New Year's (Alex's secret, that), and regaled with good music and carefully chosen films if a pause in the lively conversation around the hearth will permit such distractions. It has been my great good fortune to greet each New Year for about a quarter of a century in Grete's home, and in the Cubies' after that happy meeting in Taormina and its outcome. What was originally a simple neighborly gathering of four friends expanded, upon the Cubies' move to Santa Cruz, to become a house party of several days duration. The early addition of Alex to the group infused the occasion with certain customs and rituals; a Scot does not take Hogmannay lightly. The donning of our best bib-and-tucker, the trifle concocted by the master himself, the toasts in excellent champagne, the quavering rendition of Auld Lang Syne which always makes Alex wince a bit (but we don't spare him--it's all tr-r-radition, as Grete says), the midnight phone call from Edinburgh, the careful conniving to ensure that the first visitor crossing the doorstep on New Year's Day ("first footing") will be a dark man... the list of small ceremonies and usages has grown with the years. Beneath all our joking "tr-r-raditions" one truth is clear to me: to review the joys and sorrows of a year gone by and to contemplate the unwritten chapter of a new year in the company of friends so wise, courageous, and humane, is to get a renewed zest for the whole adventure. I pray that it may be my happy lot to welcome the new millennium in their good company.
The imminence of "Y2K" has unleashed a torrent of random information and miscellaneous misinformation on our society. In the midst of such intellectual disorder it is a pleasure to be permitted to "introduce" this project, which records Grete Frugé Cubie's orderly and cumulative knowledge of libraries, librarianship, and life.
Map Librarian (retired)
University of California, Berkeley, Main Library
Berkeley, California
Interview History
At the inception of the Library School Oral History Series in the fall of 1998, a chorus of voices expressed the view that interviews should begin with Grete W. (Frugé) Cubie. Though Mrs. Cubie had retired from teaching at the School of Librarianship in 1975, she was described by her colleagues as a delightful raconteur who knew important details of the school's history and who could share personal recollections of the original faculty.
Mrs. Cubie earned a graduate certificate at the school in 1937 and, after a period working in public libraries, taught cataloging and classification beginning in 1947. She was associate editor of the school's alumni newsletter, Calibrarian, predecessor to South Hall News, from its inception in 1950 until 1953. She was secretary of the alumni association from 1951 to 1954. She also knew the school's founding dean, Sydney B. Mitchell (who taught the courses in administration and in book selection and ordering), and the other two members of the school's first faculty, Edith M. Coulter (reference and bibliography) and Della J. Sisler (cataloging and classification).
On my first visit to Fair Avenue in Santa Cruz, California, in late October of 1998, Mrs. Cubie greeted me with warmth and enthusiasm. We decided that interviews would begin the following month, and we selected her living room couch (shaded by a magnificent magnolia tree in the front yard) as the site for recording our conversations.
Before taping began on the first interview day, Mrs. Cubie introduced me to her husband, Dr. Alexander Cubie, a retired physician of Edinburgh, who spent the morning painting in oils and then taking a long walk while our tapes rolled for two full hours.
I started by asking Mrs. Cubie to talk about her early life and her emigration to the United States from Germany in 1930, when she was sixteen. Having received a brief outline of topics ahead of time, Mrs. Cubie had organized her thoughts. Referring at times to handwritten notes, she was able to speak clearly and thoughtfully about the topics at hand with relatively little prompting.
In all, six tape-recorded interview sessions took place between mid-November of 1998 and the end of January 1999. Mrs. Cubie's memory continued to impress me, but as we made our way through complex topics I also became acquainted with her style. She willingly responded to any question I asked, and she took great care with her answers, occasionally lifting one hand high into the air as if to pluck an answer perched there. If the topic was controversial, she tempered her replies with diplomacy and humor to powerful effect. Her storytelling abilities were matched by her knack for relating personal events to the historical context of the times. As such, she proved a valuable narrator. She later edited the draft manuscript with a light hand, allowing the informal flavor of the original conversations to stand.
Since finishing this interview more than a year ago, I have come to appreciate still more the openness and grace with which Mrs. Cubie shared her story. I've learned much more about the school and its complicated history from others. As an interviewer, I can imagine no greater gift than to have begun the project in this way. Now others can discover for themselves why J. R. K. Kantor, Berkeley's archivist emeritus, read this manuscript and remarked: "The coda is a triumph. Her passion comes through."
Interviewer/Editor
Regional Oral History Office
The Bancroft Library
University of California, Berkeley
I Family Background, Childhood, Education
1. ## This symbol indicates that a tape or tape segment has begun or ended. A guide to the tapes follows the transcript.
Parents, Grandparents, and Early Life in Germany, From 1913
McCreeryToday is November 13, 1998. This is Laura McCreery, interviewer and editor for the oral history series on the library school at the University of California, Berkeley. I'm interviewing Grete Cubie at her home in Santa Cruz, California. Good morning. You've just had a birthday.
Cubie
Yes, ten days ago.
McCreery
Well, let's start with that. Can you state your date of birth and talk a little bit about where you were born?
Cubie
Ten days ago, the third of November, 1913, in Essen, Germany, an industrial sooty town in the Ruhr region. I remember it as being rather plagued by coal dust, the coal and steel capital of that nation.
My parents had lived there for two years at that time, a year and a half, actually. When I was nine months old, my father [Jürgen Wiese] was killed on his twenty-sixth birthday, so that my mother [Adele Müller Wiese]--it was in July, 1914, one week before the World War began--my mother was a widow. We then took on the life of a widow and small child.
Do you want me to go back now to my grandparents?
McCreery
Yes, please.
My paternal grandparents were from Hamburg, both of them. Both of them, but especially my grandmother [Wilhelmine Meyer Wiese], were very active in the political, or socially political, really, efforts of that time. Labor was, throughout the late nineteenth century, in a very difficult position. They were members of the social democratic party that, through very, very intense efforts, managed to persuade in some way the Bismarck government to begin some small scheme of social security. The employer/employee contributions were made in the way we do it now, but it was the first such effort in Europe, so that their political agitation must have made quite a bit of difference.
My grandmother's part in all this was that she was a journalistic sort of woman and loved writing. She wrote for the party newspaper. I don't think she wrote for the general news at all, but she did write for the party. She wrote poetry, she wrote essays, entirely concerned with this consuming interest in improving the lot of the working man, really.
And my grandfather [Wilhelm Wiese], I think to a lesser extent, was involved in this. He couldn't help it, with a wife like my grandmother. [laughter]
So that was an interesting focus that influenced me, I think, in my finding my grandmother such a fascinating woman. I loved being with her, I loved listening to her. My grandfather died when I was three, so that by 1916 she was a widow. When I would be visiting her, I felt that I was absorbing early, not so much the political interests--I was rather keeping aloof of that, probably rather afraid of it--but because by this time I was a very small child, an orphan. I think I was interested more in the literary implications of what my grandmother liked to do.
My grandparents on my mother's side were--I've mentioned Neuenrade where my mother was born; they lived in the mountain country of Westphalia. Do you know that part of the country at all? It's beautiful hill country of up to about a couple of thousand feet, very wooded, very beautiful, a small town where my parents met when my father worked there for a while.
And my grandmother, that grandmother [Wilhelmine Müller], was a very busy homemaker for a large household because my grandfather [Wilhelm Müller] had a large roofing business for that whole region. It meant that in their big house, they had their five girls, plus always at least a couple of apprentices who would be living in the attic, as young people still did in
So in a way, next to my mother, the grandmothers made a lot of difference in my early life. And I remember thinking how fortunate I was to have two grandmothers who represented all that women could do. [laughter]
McCreery
So different from one another. How far was it to Neuenrade?
Cubie
It would have been a distance of about thirty miles by train. Of course, everything was train in those days. Transportation was good. There was a network of a good rail transportation and within cities, of course, it was electric streetcars. Privately people would have their carriages still, and automobiles hadn't really come in, in any way, that early.
When my father was killed so tragically, so early, and my mother in deep mourning--women wore veils in those days--people thought my mother was a war widow, because it was exactly a week later that the war began.
We stayed for a while with my maternal grandparents, but a very short while, because my mother then felt that in order to make a living for herself and me, we would move to Dortmund, the near big city, in which I really grew up because Essen was only the beginning. Dortmund was an even [laughs] more grimy city, but also a stately city architecturally. They were beautiful cities, really, but they couldn't help being a bit dirty. My mother would have to launder the lace curtains at least once a month, you know, there would be little specks of coal dust.
So my mother, then, in order to be at home with me, did what you would have called French laundry for people. She was wonderful with the fine lace things and all that sort of thing. She did this at home to supplement the pension on which my mother and I lived until, of course, later some of this became more difficult because of inflation, but that gets ahead of where we are now. Let me see now, what you would be like to be hearing next?
You've mentioned your father was an industrial draftsman. Do you know much about his career?
Cubie
Only what he was, and also what he did in his very early years, since it stopped so soon. The firm for which he worked was one that built industrial chimneys that were used in the mines and the steelworks, particularly, and it was that specialty of building in which he was engaged. They sent him to Belgium, they sent him all over Germany. And once, several years before he met my mother, about 1910 perhaps, they sent him to Seville in Spain, where he built whatever chimneys they had to build for a new system of waterworks. There was a lot of travel and enjoyment of travel. This is something else I've heard a lot about, since I don't have a real recollection of my father. But because he was so much mourned by all the family for all those ensuing years, I felt I knew my father very well, and his love of travel was very much something else I liked incorporating in my future if I could.
McCreery
How was he killed at such a young age?
Cubie
He was asked on his birthday for some kind of inspection on something that was not quite right with the work. It was with a chimney. He climbed it, and it caved in with him. It was a terrible thing for my mother and all the family. And we had to go on from there. But of course, within a week, it became a terrible thing for the world, for Europe anyway, with the war beginning. And then of course came some very difficult early years. For the war years themselves, all that time my mother lived in Dortmund.
The Weimar Republic and World War I Recovery, 1918-1930
CubieMother married again when I was six, an ex-soldier from East Prussia [Karl Nicke] who had been very much involved in the war, twice wounded, and had gone through very difficult times, all in France. He had joined the police force, and in these early years, right after the war, continued to have difficulties--not so much personal ones--but it was economically and politically a very difficult period for Germany, of course. They had lost the war, they were economically bankrupt, there were revolutionary movements, all sorts of episodes that had to be borne and in the long run overcome. That whole period from 1918 into the early thirties was the one known as the Weimar Republic, and it really coincides with the years of my schooling--my grammar school
One of them was that my stepfather, one day--probably in about 1921, 1920, about that time--when there was an anarchistic movement going on that walked into the city hall one day and took prisoners and marched them out of town. When my mother heard this, she left me with a neighbor and went over there to see what she could do, but of course she could do very little. She even saw my father and said, "That's my husband." You see, they had taken the police and were ready to kill them. And they said "Yes, he's not your husband for much longer." And my father said, "Go home, go home!" And she did, realizing that she must come home and take care of me. The wonderful thing was, and I do remember this with great joy, that about two hours later my father came home. The government forces had come in from the north or the south, wherever they were stationed, and had overcome this particular incident. But it was those kinds of times, that quite naturally follow wars, and this was one of them.
Another difficult time was with occupation, the French occupation especially, because the problem after Versailles was that reparations had to be paid, and with runaway inflation in Germany they weren't paying it on time, so the troops came in to occupy, and there were difficulties. There were the usual, expected difficulties between the population and the occupying troops, at least there were some, and that was another uneasy period.
But one of the most difficult for everyone, ongoing, was the runaway inflation. Everyone has read about it, and it's perfectly true that people were carrying baskets of printed money to cover purchases. It was printed in millions and even higher figures. At the height of inflation the value of the mark dropped so steeply from hour to hour that people who received weekly pay tried to buy provisions on their way home on payday while their money still had some value.
Early Schooling and Family Life to Age Sixteen
CubieStill, I was secure in my home life, and I enjoyed school. I had my holidays in the mountains with my grandparents and in Essen with my now-widowed grandmother, and I enjoyed life. I had a good childhood in all the years I lived there. When I'd finished my fourth year of what we would call grammar school, the Volkschule that every child went to up to fourteen, that would be the compulsory part of education. At the age of ten, I took an examination to enter the high school.
Now there were two levels of high school in Germany at that time, a sort of middle school with a clerical and trade sort of orientation, and the academic orientation, known as the Gymnasium--everybody knows that name--and this was a girls' school. I took the examination just as a matter of course, I never questioned. It was as though it was so programmed that I would go to a school that I don't think there was ever any discussion about which school I would go to. [laughter] When the examination was given, I took it and I went, you know. It was rather interesting, because it happened again later on before I came to Berkeley. There was never much thinking about what I should do next, because I already knew what I was going to do next. It was like going on a trip and knowing that all your arrangements are made, and you just have to carry through. And that's interesting, you see, the way it went for me after that.
It was a wonderful school, really, academically very strong. All the teachers were of a good university background, all of them fascinated by the subjects they taught. And it was a very comprehensive program in which nothing one can teach children was not taught. And since we were a girls' school, there were even some aspects of the domestic arts, but that was minor in the total time. But we studied all the sciences that would be appropriate for a high school program, languages, literature, religion, history--religion, yes, because it was a matter of instruction in a way, but there would be a lot of history of religion, and philosophy would be all incorporated into that part of the curriculum. During that time, the students would be separated into three denominations. There were largely Protestants, because Westphalia was a Protestant region. There were some Catholics, and for them a priest would come in and they would have their hour. And there were two or three Jewish children for whom a rabbi would come. So this was a period in which social life was of a normal kind.
McCreery
And your own religious upbringing was--
Yes, that's right. Protestant. Lutheran. Because that part of Westphalia, that part of Germany, of course, was Lutheran.
What I haven't said, in talking about my school, was the interesting feature of how much time it covered. Children entered at the age of ten, and they graduated at the age of nineteen. And that was a really wonderful aspect, because the same teachers over the years were on the faculty; they never seemed to change. I don't remember people coming and going. The first history teacher we had when we were ten, who introduced us to mythology, largely, because we went through the Greek, the Roman, the Norse mythology. And it was a wonderful way, with a textbook that was illustrated with vase paintings, with Roman sculpture that would illustrate the life of these people. So that was a very good way of creating interest in ancient history. But the same teachers would be teaching--as time went on--adolescents and young adults, because by the time they were nineteen that's what they were, ready for university.
So the cohesion was really remarkable; a class would start of about thirty students and, again, I remember very little change. There were perhaps two or three students who would move away, as I did eventually, or two or three would come in. But the class with which I started of thirty students remained together for those nine years, so this meant great friendships. It was like part of your family: you knew them well, you were doing everything together. This was really a very interesting way of making sure that the children felt comfortable about what they were doing and that they would want to go on, because their contemporaries and their whole life was really bound up with what was going on in school.
McCreery
It sounds as if you loved school.
Cubie
I did. I did for all these reasons, because it was a very stimulating program, it was very thorough. One thing was clear, that one had to keep up academic standards. Because unless students really put a lot of effort into everything they were doing, it was understood that they would not stay, and so one did. And one was glad to do it, because there was a relationship with the teachers and with the other students that made it a sort of common enterprise, in addition to purely personal reasons for being there.
McCreery
It sounds as if you had broad interests. Were there particular subjects that you especially enjoyed?
History, languages, literature. Yes, history and literature. It was just that particular element, and it's not an unusual combination, is it, for a humanistic sort of leaning? And certainly, science was something I found generally interesting, but not of any deep interest to me. And so I took the courses. There was never a choice of courses. Everything was planned for you in that kind of curriculum, because at the end the nine-year Gymnasium course would end with a state examination, a very rigorous enterprise. I didn't experience it, because I left some years before, but I knew well what it was, because all the younger girls would, every year, be standing in awe and in support of the graduating class.
We would, for example, help with some of the catering because they would be kept in school for nearly a week, so far as I could see. I knew they all went home to sleep, but they were there for one solid week with examiners coming in every day--written examinations, oral examinations covering the total curriculum. It is known as the Abitur. And when people graduate with the Abitur, when they go to university, it means beginning more in what we would normally call the full studies of whatever field they were entering, rather than the undergraduate structure that we have in this country.
McCreery
Was it usual for boys and girls to be educated separately in the Gymnasium?
Cubie
It was then. It was when I was a child. That, of course, changed after the Second World War, but not when I was still going to school--girls' schools and the boys' schools. In the grammar school part, in the Volkschule, they were mixed from the beginning. Those few years, near my home, schools of course, as is generally the custom, were fairly near where children lived, and it was a class of boys and girls.
McCreery
Now, other than your two grandmothers, were there other adults that were particularly influential in your childhood?
Cubie
In my childhood life was entirely centered on family and school. Yes, of course there were neighbors. I knew my neighbors, and one had friendly relations with them, but they were neighbors; one didn't spend a great deal of time with them. But I had my mother's sister and her husband and their only child--my mother had no more children after me. My aunt, mother's eldest sister--mother was one of five girls--my aunt, uncle, and their daughter, just a year older than I was, lived about six or seven miles from us in Dortmund, so there was a great deal of coming and going between our two families. And the influence there, again, it was all family, you see. And my
But it was a very small family in my generation. There was that cousin, and then quite some years later, at the end of war, another sister of my mother's--a younger sister--married, and her husband joined my grandfather's business in Neuenrade. They had one daughter, too. There were three children in that generation, only children, and all girls.
Emigration to the United States, 1930
##
McCreeryYou were going to talk a little bit about the events leading up to your coming to America.
Cubie
The events began really by going back all the way to the beginning of the century when a great uncle of mine in 1904--my maternal grandmother's youngest brother, born in Neuenrade--came to this country, to San Francisco. He arrived, as all immigrants did then, in New York, didn't like New York much, and asked where else he might go, and someone suggested San Francisco. He was fortunate enough to be fairly fluent in English, because he had lived in England for a couple of years before he came. He went to pharmacy school and I think it was the University [of California] pharmacy school. And after that, for the rest of his life, he had a pharmacy in San Francisco. That was my great uncle, Ernst Debus.
My grandmother's maternal family were Huguenots who, via a long residence along the Rhine, went even farther east, and my great-grandfather settled in Neuenrade. When Uncle Ernst came to visit his German family--and he did this every year or two for quite a while--my cousin and I, very small girls visiting my grandparents, would be just fascinated by this American uncle. He would take us on his knee and read us American newspapers and show us those comics, which were absolutely out of our experience! So that was fun and very interesting to hear about what life was like in America.
In those particular years after the war--in '21, '22, '23--when things were particularly bad in Germany, he began to plant the idea of emigration in the rest of the family and offered to support them, sponsor them. And so they began to arrive, those on his side of the family--my grandmother's side. The first to come were a great uncle, Ernst Debus's brother and family, to
In 1929--well, you can see what happened. We exchanged one great depression for another. And what I can say about that is, that I felt depressions were a normal state of life. I had grown up in it, and I assumed things would be difficult and require unusual effort, more effort than if things are very good and easy, and that was normal to me.
So we came in 1930, living for a little while with one of my mother's sisters and then establishing our own house. My father, in this very difficult period of unemployment, worked part time but enough. He was a sort of engineer on the machinery side of engineering, the trades that he had learned when he was in the army.
Attending San Francisco's Lowell High School, 1930-1931
CubieSo there we were. In July of 1930 we arrived and within a week, my uncle Ernst took me down to Lowell High School to get me enrolled for the autumn term. And that was a wonderful thing to happen to me, because he rather insisted that I be accepted at Lowell High School. I hadn't told you when I talked about my high school education that we had had years of languages, and I was fond of foreign languages, but English was the last one to be introduced. In that curriculum of nine years, I had just entered my seventh year about a month before, and the English language was introduced at that time, so I had about a month of it. English was very much a problem to me still when I came. Having had six years of French and three years of Latin, and of course my own native language, I felt at home with languages. I enjoyed learning, studying, writing,
The principal said, "With a foreign student with almost no English,"--you might have said it was really almost none--"we send them to junior high school for a while. It's slower there, they have more time." And my uncle said, "That won't do, because she's come from this school in Germany. She's had everything that would qualify her for going to [UC] Berkeley next year, so only English is the problem. What are we going to do about it? She's got to stay here." The principal was persuaded. I was accepted, and from that moment, Lowell High did everything that was not only helpful but wonderfully planned for me.
They assigned two teachers to me who would interpret and get me settled in the appropriate courses because, again, it was a given--no one ever questioned--that I would go to Berkeley the next year. In those days you said you were going, and if you had the qualifications, you went. But English still had to be learned--I was enrolled in as many courses as you could take in the course of a day--and American history; those were the two things to be filled in. Very important. I spent about four days in a particular English class that worried me because the assignment was the reading aloud of "The Lady of the Lake," and I found this very trying and very unproductive. [laughs]
And about that time, all within a few days of having been admitted, I heard about another school across town, Mission High School, where there was an English class for the foreign-born. And of course I thought that was just for me. I asked one of my teachers who was interpreting for me to please take me back to the principal, I would hope to withdraw from Lowell High School and go to Mission High School. [laughter] And the principal laughed. He said, "Well, tell her that no one ever learned English in three days, but she has a good idea. She should go there every afternoon and in the morning come to us. And after a little while, when she's had whatever they have to offer and has taken advantage of it, she can come back full time." And that's what happened.
It was great. I came in the morning, I absorbed what I could in the English classes, and in the afternoon I went across town, and there of course was a very good school for beginners. Most of the immigrant students were a lot older than I was--by this time I was sixteen--mostly people who were ready for citizenship examinations and usually perhaps in their
After about six weeks, I came back and said that I thought I was ready to stay the rest of the day. It was very good for me, though. It was wonderful to have had that kind of beginning, with everyone marvelously cooperative and no red tape, no problems of any kind. We just went about our business. [Mrs. Cubie's husband enters the room, and the tape is turned off briefly.]
McCreery
What other students did you encounter at Mission High School?
Cubie
Students in the sense of student age, I was the only one, because it was extraordinary for a student to be allowed to leave his own school to take part in that course. The next in age, I think, was a young German fellow in his early twenties, but I'm sure he was well past school age. And most of the other people were--in fact, I think they were all men. I don't remember; I don't think there was a girl or a woman in the class at all. But it was very friendly, very pleasant. We concentrated on the basics, and we got them covered in a few weeks.
McCreery
Tell me something about your fellow students at Lowell High School.
Cubie
Very accepting and very, very good to me. Obviously in the beginning we didn't talk very much, but more and more we did.
Something new in my life, although it wasn't altogether new, was compulsory physical education. I'd had that in Germany in the Gymnasium--that also was necessary there--and I never really was fond of it. I was not at all given to sports as a participant. I found the gymnastics very boring, and there were many of them, and I found team sports off-putting. I felt I would make no contribution to it, and I'm sure I never did. And when I then came to Lowell High School, I was expected to play baseball of all things. [laughs] The little team was called the Safety Pins. I really rather hated it, was very worried about it. And I never got the hang of any of the game. But again, people were kind, and nobody ever put me out. And at the end of the year when we all graduated, the girl in charge of the team, whatever you call her, wrote in my class book, "To a good Safety Pin." [laughter] And I felt that was a misrepresentation of that part of my education. It troubled me.
When I came to [UC] Berkeley later, we still had compulsory physical education for the next two years, and then they gave it up. After they finished with me, they decided that perhaps it was time for more electives and not forcing children into this. I didn't really enjoy that phase of my education at all, at any time.
McCreery
While you were at Lowell, where in San Francisco was your family living?
Cubie
Not far away, on Sixth Avenue, just almost at the entrance, or very near the entrance, to Golden Gate Park on the Richmond side, just about a block or so down the street.
During that time, I made another interesting effort, again at the invitation of one of my teachers. She was a French teacher, but she knew German well, so that she was one of the two who helped me. She asked me if I wouldn't like to come to her house once a week so that we could exchange conversation. For two hours, we would speak German an hour and English an hour. And that, I think, was very good for both of us, because for her it was a brushing up on something she had done many years before. She was a woman of mid-thirties, I would say, and I was of course sixteen, going on seventeen. So that was another good experience.
Graduating from Lowell and Preparing to Enter UC Berkeley
CubieThe most interesting thing about my Lowell experience was, in addition to all the excellent help I got from teachers and cooperation all around, the way I graduated, because I think this is extraordinary. I was asked in due time, in the spring semester, what I wanted to do when I graduated and I said I'd like to go to the university in Berkeley. I knew I couldn't afford Stanford because I really had no income of any sort. But I hadn't yet given very practical thought to how I was going to live there, or any of this. I just assumed I would go. I was graduating without ever having proved in writing or with any sort of document of any sort that I had in fact done what I had done in Germany. The teachers who understood the Gymnasium curriculum made all the proper arrangements for me. I got my diploma without ever having proved what I had taken in anything but English courses and American history.
McCreery
Really!
Isn't it amazing? I don't suppose it has ever happened before or since, because things became very much more systematized, of course, with many more people involved, I suppose also, in the years after that. But it was extraordinary. They never asked for proof. I had it at home; I could have brought all these sorts of things I had done, but no one asked me.
The other teacher, the one with whom I had the conversation exchange was one, but the one even more influential was the teacher of German, Miss Martin, who asked me about a couple of months before graduation where I was going to live, what I was going to do, how I was going to support myself. And I said well, it was something I would have to do, and I would have to, in fact, support myself. And she said she knew a UC family who had just returned from Germany after a year in Munich. They had a small son of five, and they would welcome a student who would work for room and board, and the custom was that three hours a day was what the student gave of his or her time, and would I like to be recommended? I was recommended. Yes, I would gladly do that.
And now comes another astonishing thing. [laughter] On the day I had to come to Berkeley to take my Subject A examination, I made that day count; I also made arrangements to be interviewed by Margaret Dennes--William Dennes's wife. William Dennes was then on the faculty of the philosophy department and a very important man to the university later on. You've probably heard of his name, haven't you, because of so much he did in administration after that--a wonderful man, and just right for that. During World War II he served under [J. Robert] Oppenheimer at the Los Alamos project.
On the day of my examination and interview, I saw Berkeley for the first time. I knew I was going to the university, but I had never crossed the bay. I had not because, you see, the idea of taking a joy ride or even a half a joy ride with very limited income and while very busy in school and doing the things of today, it didn't occur to me to go to Berkeley to see if I would like it. Of course I was going to like it, and I looked forward to it.
I was enchanted with Berkeley. I came to the YWCA, or a building rather near it on Bancroft Way, where I took the examination. Incidentally, I passed it because there wasn't a problem about the compositions that were asked. There were some questions about grammar. Although I still felt at that time that English was something a bit self-conscious for me at that end of that year, I could deal with it in writing grammatically, and I could write a good essay. And so I passed
But as soon as I finished, I walked across campus--the very first time I saw the wonderful buildings of the University of California--out the north end, up Spruce Street to where the Denneses lived in a little cottage, a very small place they were renting at that time, having so recently returned from Europe. And I met Margaret Dennes. And when I asked her what she would like me to do in those three hours a day, she said, "I like to finish early in the afternoon with my work. Would you mind cooking dinner?" And I said I wouldn't mind, but I didn't know how to cook. And she said, "Well, I'll show you for a few days, and I'll give you a copy of Fannie Farmer." [laughter] And so I was pronounced to be the cook, and I cooked their dinner and stayed with them a year.
Undergraduate Years at UC Berkeley, 1931-1935
CubieAnd it was, again, just the right year for me, because I still had a closeness in a family environment. I had no friends in Berkeley. I really hadn't had the opportunity to have school friends. A few friendships in class formed in that first year, but to be with a family was important, as it was equally important for me to go home every weekend to be with my parents in that first year.
McCreery
How were they adjusting, by the way, to life in the United States?
Cubie
They were accepting and dealing with it. My father was employed a good part of the time. My mother dealt with things very economically, and the one thing that was very clear--I never even questioned--was that I would support myself from now on when I went to Berkeley, because the family didn't have money to help me that way.
But of course, you see, I was well launched with the help of all these really great people in Lowell High School. And the security, once again, of a home with a lovely family was just right for me in that first year.
At the end of the first year, there was a great change, and I burst out into something very much more social. I had taken a course in Spanish to add to some of my languages, and at that time met a young woman who was a member of a sorority, a
The house was a mansion--a wonderful place. It had its own ballroom, it had a great dining room and a marvelous kitchen. It was in the block between Bowditch and Telegraph on Channing Way. The Anna Head School was on Bowditch, and it was a very great residential building with an enormous garden. The center of that garden was shared with our garden, because the only other house in that block was our house, to the west--a beautiful place and wonderful for a group of girls.
The other special thing about it was that it was a cooperative house, at least up to a point. There was no staff except the housemother and all the girls would pay all the bills except for me. I didn't pay anything because I had no resources. I worked full time, and full time meant the three hours a day a student owed to his keep. The other girls, most of them at least, perhaps with an exception of a few, would pay part of the cost of the house and worked perhaps an hour and a half, you see. And so we were cooperating in that way in doing all the business of the house by ourselves.
Since I had become a cook the year before, I was now the cook, in charge of everything. I planned the meals, I did the shopping, and I did the cooking. I parceled out my three hours a day with a lot of help from my sisters. [laughs] In those days, of course, you know, you dealt with vegetables fresh, and everything came to the house. The important thing was the shopping. Before I went over those few blocks to the campus in the morning, I would stop to put in an order for the day, and it would be delivered by the time I got home. So I began cooking on a big scale. [laughs] Having had my first year
McCreery
You were very well rounded.
Cubie
Well, cooking became a very interesting experience for me. It was rather nice.
The rules of the house were to speak Spanish whenever we were together in the dining room and in things we did as a group, but we were allowed to speak English--by this time I could speak English. August Frugé, my first husband, later, was saying something--I guess it was to one of the faculty members who had been my English teacher, Arthur Hutson, who had helped me in turn by meeting me once a week. The first English course in my freshman year was not the literature course, as I wished it had been. That would have been very comfortable for me to absorb and listen, rather than to express myself every week with an essay, and that's what we had to do; I had to write. And once a week Mr. Hutson would ask me to come in--gave me his time--to talk over my essay as to idiom. In that first year, the first semester particularly--this was after one year at Lowell--I would occasionally translate a German idiom into English, but in other ways I had no problems.
And when we met Mr. Hutson many years later, my husband and I, he said, "Oh, yes, of course, I remember how there were these halting phrases and so forth." And my husband said, "It's no problem now. She speaks in paragraphs now." [laughter]
McCreery
Well, let's talk some more about your very first year at Berkeley when you were with the Denneses. Did you know what major you would take?
Cubie
Immediately it became clear that since my great interest was in literature, I felt at home with languages and literature. So from the beginning I took all the literature courses I could in English, in French, and in German. I took them early on. In my sophomore year German and French became the major languages because I did not feel very much at home in anything else so early on.
But an important thing happened with that. One course I took in the German department was entirely devoted to the early version of Goethe's Faust, called Ur-Faust. Do you know the field at all? In this course, because it was a graduate course--and of course I could take it because I knew the language, I was given permission to take it--I also got with
Not even so very much later on because, I think it must have been the end of my second year [the spring of 1933] when I became aware of the library school and went to the office to ask whether I might be admitted some day. And the administrative assistant said, "Yes, Mr. [Sydney B.] Mitchell will be glad to see you one of these times." And there was an interview. Dean Mitchell and I sat down and talked for maybe an hour about the school and how they ran the school. That is why I think I know so much about its beginnings, because I got it really from the first dean and being in that building [the main library]. I was in the right place. [laughter]
And what he then said to me: "Yes, we would be interested in someone like you, especially because you are so interested in languages, and it's important for academic libraries." It's one of the things that in those days were required.
##
McCreery
You were talking a little bit about what Berkeley was like when you were there as an undergraduate.
Cubie
As a young woman student, interestingly, with my peculiar ways of entering the educational picture in California, instead of losing time, I gained time. I was in Berkeley when I was seventeen, and so I was very pleased with that.
The women were still very protected. Women were expected to be under the Dean of Women's protection, and they were. The Dean of Women called every freshman student for an interview. I remember having a very pleasant hour with her early on.
McCreery
That was part of your admission process?
Cubie
It was part of--not admission to the university, but when I was a freshman. She just went right down the list of freshman students and asked them to come in. And I remember having a very good interview with Lucy Stebbins, the first full-time dean.
Women students were expected to live in an environment where there was a curfew. It was at a certain very comfortable time of night--as a matter of fact, it was something like two o'clock in the morning. [laughs] But women had to account for themselves at some time in an evening and be safely lodged wherever they were.
That never came up for me because I was with a family in my first year and in a sorority in my second. I think it was the first two years that women students had to have a curfew, not in the last two years. I think it was only true for the first two years. It was still true when I was in the Casa Hispana my second year. We had to make sure that we were all tucked in at some point. We had to have a housemother, and it all went very well.
There were about 10,000 students at my time, so that life was--the campus looked rather neat and tidy. People dressed well. Women, particularly, were expected to look, oh, about the way you [the interviewer] do now, you know. I remember my aunt making something of a wardrobe for me when I went to Berkeley and it had pleasant blouses and skirts, but they would be the sort of a thing a businesswoman would wear. The men were still in the lower division garb. They would have--I think the freshmen wore jeans and the second-year men students wore cords. Is that what they call them? Corduroy. Yes, of course, corduroy. After that they were on their own. But there were all these conventions. But it all added up to something very agreeable to the eye. [laughter]
And the campus--obviously many new buildings went up since, but even at that time there was Wheeler Hall and the whole complex around the center looked pretty much the way it does now.
McCreery
Were there professors who were particularly memorable in your first year or your second?
Cubie
Well, they certainly were important to me at the time. And you'd think names would come to me really very easily. I can visualize them now, since I took so many literature courses. There was one man, particularly, and some time later, I'll see if I can't get back to his name.
McCreery
Okay.
Cubie
It was a course in Chaucer. He was a delight. He started the course by--just very softly in very, very lovely tones of Middle English--he began The Canterbury Tales and he went on
McCreery
Okay. What size were the classes?
Cubie
The classes for most of these courses, of course, were not very large. And for the larger English courses, the first year, particularly, there would be teaching assistants meeting with sections. So there was a lot of intensive work done in the first year, the writing course in the first half and the literature in the second half. And after that it was up to the student how much more he wanted to add. There were certainly electives after that. You know how it was set up. There was little that was absolutely required. There was a range of subject matter that we were all expected to take, but--Caldwell. I think I have it. I think his name was [James R.] Caldwell. I think that was it. He was wonderful because, as I say, it was entirely Chaucer and we were all enchanted with it. I mean, teachers devoted themselves to these specialized subjects.
And in all these languages in which I was interested, you know, it was really quite wonderful to be able to concentrate so much on all of these in German, French, and English. There was a French professor--Professor Dondo--[laughs] a visitor who taught French poetry of the nineteenth century. That was a good thing. I'd had enough grounding at least in French and of course German, too, because in Berkeley it was a foreign language, and English--these three I knew well enough that I could enjoy the specialized courses very early on.
Effects of the Depression; Applying for Citizenship
McCreeryYou've talked about how you coped economically yourself. Overall what were the effects of the Depression on the university community, do you know?
Cubie
It's funny, you know, that as you go through your daily life as a student, you're not really so very aware. It's all so beautifully organized at this level of the state, and academically within the structure that to a young student, at any rate, it seemed to all go very well. All the restrictions and the problems that were created for the faculty--I think there was a long period when faculty had to take a big cut in salary--none of this came across to undergraduates.
That's understandable.
Cubie
And they were stimulating. The subjects I took, obviously, were the ones I already liked, had liked for years, so I was having a very happy time of it and was not aware--oh, I was aware, because as I say, I had grown up in a milieu of depression. And the Depression years went on; they were only beginning to change by the time I was a graduate student. But whatever the faculty was aware of, as breadwinners and all that, in my earliest years in the university was not so apparent to me. The Dennes family was doing very well because Will was a very appreciated member of the philosophy faculty. And the ones I knew certainly did not have anything resembling difficulties economically.
McCreery
And as you say, your own family in San Francisco was getting by fairly well?
Cubie
They were getting by fairly well because there had been, on the strength of Great Uncle Ernst's patronage, a large family unit of aunts, and uncles, and brothers, and sisters who helped each other through those many years. There was a solidarity there, and of course with it came the reassurance that, you know, no one was ever going to be in any real difficulty.
McCreery
And you all came from Germany with the intent of staying here?
Cubie
Staying, that's right.
McCreery
What did you do about citizenship as time went on, you and your parents?
Cubie
Applied for it as soon as we could. That is an interesting feature of immigration--this gets us away from library school, but it was an interesting feature. I was sixteen. When I went to Berkeley, I was seventeen. [laughs] My mother, having remarried when I was a small child found that my father's application for citizenship did not cover me, though it normally covers minor children, because he was my stepfather. This is a peculiarity of the law, but that is how it was. So his application could not cover me. My mother's application could not cover me, because of her second marriage--in those days, the system seemed to attach a peculiar incapacity on the woman, because she no longer was really in charge of me, so that the stepfather didn't count and neither did my mother. In my citizenship application I had to wait until I was eighteen.
Now that brought on a peculiar problem about paying the cost of my first year because I had to wait until I was
McCreery
Did you miss Germany?
Cubie
Not very long. I was very active, I was very busy. I had, fortunately, a whole community of family and their friends and our friends. Many of them were German, of course, in the very beginning. I missed it right in the very beginning, but not very long, really, not very long. But as I've already said, I did long to go home on weekends when I was in my first year at Berkeley. And that meant that I was still very close to my parents and therefore close to my own beginnings and my own community.
The second year when I entered the sorority, quite a social life began. It was very social. We not only had a ballroom, we used it. All these South American students would come, you see, and almost every Friday night there would be a dance. We used the ballroom well. That was a very new picture. I then had to say to myself every two or three weeks that it's time to go home, [laughter] my parents will miss me. But not until then; the first year was very different. Yes, in the beginning it's always rather hard to make that break.
Inquiring at the School of Librarianship, 1933
McCreeryYou mentioned at the end of your second year at Berkeley you went to see Sydney Mitchell to inquire about library school.
Cubie
Yes.
McCreery
Tell me about that.
Cubie
Well, he told me a little about the school and the beginning of the school. It's well known, of course--you'll get this from other sources--but the fact that he had come from McGill University, worked at Stanford, and eventually in the order department of the UC university library, as he was a Canadian when the war began, there was obviously uneasiness of the foreigner. He was not an American citizen. I don't know
And of course with faculty appointments, this makes no difference. He began to look with some rather personal interest into the whole developing need and interest in establishing the school, because as you know there were, earlier in the century, these few state library summer schools for young librarians or people wanting to be librarians. And more schools existed in the east. It all sort of fell together, but Sydney Mitchell had a rather personal interest in establishing a school. And I don't mean that was the reason he established it, he couldn't have done this single-handedly, but it was one more element in furthering this cause of establishing the school. I think the time it actually was established was in 1918, at least formally. Is that the date you have?
McCreery
Yes, as a course of study in the College of Letters and Science. Then in 1921 as a department in the College of L&S.
Cubie
Yes. It added up to a course here and there and then it became a department in the College of Letters and Science and became a graduate school later, in 1926, with the faculty having been drawn from Stanford and Berkeley. Miss [Edith M.] Coulter was reference librarian then. Miss [Della J.] Sisler was in the catalog department, wasn't she? And they were really the three, each representing the elements of librarianship--the administration making the whole thing go round, and then of course the two major activities in organizing and serving the collection.
In 1926 the graduate School [of Librarianship] began. And in the beginning the idea of having a limited number of students was quite obvious and there probably were fewer than fifty students. This is what Mr. Mitchell said to me at the time of my first interview, that they then kept it down to fifty students because with the Depression, they couldn't hope to place their students very well, not for some years. But there was always a great effort to enter into that part of--all through the school, placement was taken very seriously to the extent they could in these different areas of the school. So the fifty-student limit was a natural one. It took some years to build up to that number and then it was kept on purpose until the end of the Second World War, and then the student enrollment just mushroomed. It just burst wide open because there was great need for the returning veterans, and a great need for librarians.
So Sydney Mitchell was telling me all this about the beginning of the school and why he had come and how he had brought in--I think it was actually Miss Coulter. Let me see if I get this right. Miss Coulter had recommended Mr. Mitchell to the administration, in the first place. Mr. Mitchell came from Stanford to Berkeley because Miss Coulter knew him and had worked with him there. I think that's the way it went.
McCreery
What else do you remember from that first meeting with him?
Cubie
The other thing of course, since I was there to ask about could I be considered as a student in the school, he said, "Yes, I think from what I know about your background and your curriculum and your interest in languages, I think we would be very interested." And then the obvious and the only admonition that follows after that: "Be sure that your grades are good, because we have every year into the hundreds of applicants." You see, that would have been the case even then--particularly then because of the Depression years. "And we take fifty."
So with that bit of a message, I was sent about my business. And I didn't even apply immediately when I graduated because at that point it seemed important for me to take a little time and work before I would come to the school. So that while I graduated with my A.B. degree in 1935, attending as an undergraduate '31 to '35, I entered the school in '36.
McCreery
Okay. So that whole interest in librarianship on your part was from being physically in the stacks?
Cubie
Yes, of course, being in the stacks and having an enormous interest always in language and literature. As I said, it was something with which I grew up, listening to my grandmother. That one grandmother made a lot of difference in my life in that way. And then again, after that it all followed naturally.
We had a school, I inquired, and I was admitted. It was all very much there. Always. Before that Lowell High School was there. My uncle took me there. I'm forever grateful that he rather insisted that I stay and not be put into another situation where just getting out of it would have wasted a bit of time. I was terribly lucky. I was terribly lucky with the help I got, really always, in those early years--from my own family to begin with and after that teachers. And Mr. Mitchell.
In the library school, being the size it was, any prospective student, or anyone who was asking the kind of
Miss Coulter took on the history of libraries course when they became a graduate school. She went to Europe to be properly prepared for her new duties in teaching history of libraries when the school became a graduate school in '26. With her sister [Mabel Coulter], she spent the summer having a wonderful time visiting libraries in France, Italy, Germany, and England--with a little side trip up to Scotland, because they came from very cherished Scottish heritage. That was her preparation. She came back loaded down with photographs and paintings. Photographs were the visual aids of that time.
So that was the curriculum--you had the basic staff of Mitchell, Sisler, and Coulter, but you would go outside, into the field, for children's literature, school and county libraries--county libraries were very important. The bookmobile was beginning to be used, but before that got very active there were stations. I remember when I was in library school later, one of them was on a chicken farm. There was a bit of space in a chicken coop and there would be a little library. One was in a service station--they were sprinkled about the county, wherever people could reach them easily. It wasn't assumed yet that everything would be brought to the patrons--not then. At any rate, there would be someone representing counties and schools from the field, who would come in to teach part time, of course. There would be a teacher of children's literature, and that was the faculty.
Of course Miss Sisler had a laboratory assistant, and I think of particular interest from my point of view [laughs] was the fact that from the beginning she had laboratory courses accompanying her own lectures. And that is where Mrs. [Dorothy Bronstein] Thorne came in very early. I know we talked about her before. She was the laboratory assistant in my student year and in the years before and for some years afterwards.
McCreery
Do you have any other recollection of Mr. Mitchell from when you met him while you were still an undergraduate?
Cubie
Well, of course I have the recollection in my mind. And you know it's just to picture him and to think of him--a very
He married, I think in the time when he was still at Stanford, and built a little house at the very crest of the hill where you looked out one window on Alameda County, and on the other side you looked down this enormous slope of iris gardens, as it happened to be, because that's what he had put in by that time, to Contra Costa County. It was a little cottage of a house with a large garden. The garden was important. And he was always in touch with the iris breeders in England. And Kew Gardens were a second home to Mr. Mitchell, so that was a very important element of his life and interest.
Living and Working Arrangements, 1933-1935
McCreeryWell, let's return to your undergraduate years. After your sophomore year living in the sorority mansion how did you proceed?
Cubie
Yes, then it came time in my last two years to live a little more privately. Now, with a sorority sister, for the following year we moved into a little apartment and stayed there until she married at the end of that year. And I had to again make some changes, but always living in small private situations.
And I did most of my additional work to get me through the next school year in the summers, you see, so that I no longer had the arrangements of working for my room and board, as I did for the first two years. In my third year, then, we lived over on Channing Way in the tiniest apartment. It was all very pleasant. But life then became very much more normal on the one hand because there were no longer large numbers of people every day. But of course we kept in touch with all the other sisters and--to the extent there was time and we wanted to--with fellow students.
In my fourth year, again, I was then having a room of my own way up on Piedmont Avenue, just a little bit away from International House to the north. It was a private home where
McCreery
Did you keep up with your sorority sisters?
Cubie
Yes.
McCreery
If you even called them that. [laughs]
Cubie
That's right. Not for many years. As I say, with one of them I moved away, and we kept our apartment together, but I did not keep up--I think it was largely because I did not then stay in Berkeley. You see, my last two years we were very much in touch--both of us. Sue Ralston was my roommate's name, who was a sorority sister. But after that, very soon I moved away and left town and in my first job went to Sacramento, and so some of these threads were broken over time.
II Graduate Study at the School of Librarianship; Public Library Jobs
Taking a Year Off to Work, 1935-1936
##
McCreeryYou graduated from UC Berkeley with an A.B. in 1935.
Cubie
That's right.
McCreery
What happened next?
Cubie
Well, next I thought I had better accumulate some funds so that I would not--I knew the School of Librarianship would be a fairly rigorous program, it was known to be. Will Dennes said to me one time, "You know, it's a good school, that library school, but they're very hard on their students. They're very demanding. We had a couple of nervous breakdowns a year or two ago." [laughs] And I'm sure that was the only time it ever happened. There had been a problem at one point. But it was demanding. It was a professional course and they took it all very seriously, of course, as they should have.
But I knew that I should prepare for this financially. And I was then casting about--not very hard; again, it just happened to come to me, what to do with that year, how I would save some money to come back next year. And I met a fellow student on campus one day who said, "Oh, I'm looking for some help for my mother."
Her mother was an invalid with a heart difficulty. And in those days there was very little that could be done about therapy--for her, particularly. She had an embolism--a leg embolism--as a result of a heart problem, and she was a beautiful woman in her forties but couldn't walk.
Her husband was Artur Argiewicz, the first violin of the San Francisco Symphony, a Pole and an immigrant who had been
Now their daughter--the wife's daughter--a young married woman by this time, said, "My mother needs someone to come and keep house for the family: herself, her husband, and the thirteen-year-old boy." The older children were away and married in San Francisco, all of them. It was a matter of looking after the household and giving a bit of minimum nursing to the mother, who was in bed.
And I said, "Just for me. I'm looking for something for the next year and I'd be delighted to do that."
And of course it was fun for me. I mean, I knew how to keep house. And I had a delightful year with the Argiewicz family. It was really quite wonderful, because now we had music, chamber music, friends coming to the house every two weeks on a Tuesday night, and it was glorious.
And that is how I delayed, then, coming into the library school until 1936. And since at that time the course for the certificate in librarianship took a year, I was well prepared for giving my total time to what the school asked me to do. And I didn't have to work as I had in earlier years.
McCreery
What was your living arrangement then, during your graduate year?
Cubie
An apartment with a friend. The first one was a student I met in Armstrong College, because [laughs] at that time Miss Sisler, who taught the cataloging courses, and teachers of cataloging generally would expect their students to know how to use a typewriter and use it well, because original cataloging for libraries generally was still done in all kinds of libraries--public libraries to a large extent, of course, but particularly in university libraries--much original cataloging and all that goes with it, was assumed. And that meant that there was the importance of not only how to use a typewriter, but to produce perfect copy that could be used and remain in the catalogs (without envisaging that someday card catalogs would be closed up [laughs]--at that time they were the instruments in every library.)
So it was assumed that you knew how to type, and not necessarily terribly well and fast, but you knew how to use a typewriter. And I didn't know how to use a typewriter. In my undergraduate years there was no such requirement. You did it by longhand and if you had a very long paper, you might peck out something on a typewriter, taking twice as long, but that was as much as was expected. So I had to learn how to use a typewriter, and I went to Armstrong College for a few months and took typing, I guess. I don't think there was anything else for me, but you know the college.
McCreery
Yes.
Cubie
Is it still going?
McCreery
Yes.
Cubie
And there I met a young woman who was really preparing for more clerical work in her own future, and we shared an apartment for the first half of that year until she went to Idaho. She was in Berkeley only for a few months. And the second half I shared an apartment with one of my schoolmates in the library school. I think I mentioned her name before, Katherine Root Morrison, her married name is Morrison. So I was well settled in an apartment of my own.
Graduate Study at the School of Librarianship, 1936-1937
McCreeryNow at the time you entered the library school, was there a particular aspect of librarianship that you were drawn to?
Cubie
What I knew was, I think probably I would have been drawn in the beginning to the idea of academic librarianship because of my interest in literature and languages, and that would have been the obvious connection. It did not immediately occur however, because in placing the students at the end--remember this is now still the Depression period, and the school tried mightily to place its students--they offered me--as a matter of fact, when I graduated, and I think I must go to this point for just a moment to explain what I'm about to say about my interest--
In our second half of the library school course, we were expected to get the feel just a little of what it was like to work in a library, to at least have been behind the desk somewhere. And they arranged for us some library experience of
McCreery
Where was the [San Francisco] library then?
Cubie
The main library, during my practice days. But also, very quickly, I was working part time out in a branch in the Richmond District in the reference department, or at the desk, really. At the branch I would usually work in the evening, because student help was welcomed in the evening. So after this introduction, during the school year, the SFPL asked me if I'd like to stay on and join the staff--but all subject to a later examination that would be given some time in the future. But that didn't actually happen because, after a couple of months of my staying on in San Francisco, Miss Sisler called me to say she'd like to recommend me for a cataloger's job in Sacramento, in the city library. So you see, city libraries were a very easy and obvious connection for the library school students at that time, because those libraries would bring them in and give them a chance to learn something about the work.
And it so happened that public libraries were my experience in my first years. I'll tell you about that later, however, because we don't want to get ahead there.
McCreery
Okay.
Cubie
But that accounts for the--what does it account for? [laughter] Whatever you asked me a little while ago. Yes, the focus on a particular kind of library. It began quite naturally with public libraries, for me. For August Frugé, whom I married a couple of years later when I could come back down to Oakland--again, a public library: this time it was reference work in a public library--he, from the beginning, was a part-time employee of the university library, so they knew something about him when he graduated, and he worked for the order department there.
How exactly did you meet him?
Cubie
In the school. Exactly, because he was a schoolmate, and we were, you know, right together in a class of fifty. And there were several--four or five friends who just happened to like each other and did everything together--maybe five or six friends, but that was about the group. And very quickly, even during the school year, we were having thoughts toward being married when we could afford to do this, because, you see, immediately he was working for the university library, I was working in Sacramento, and visiting was on weekends, and it had to go on from there.
But when we were married, fortunately, Oakland Public Library asked me to join their reference staff. And I did that until, in turn, my husband took an examination for the state library, to be head of the order department. This gets us out of context, but I think I might as well do it now. It was interesting in this way. I had come down now to join the reference staff of Oakland, liking it very much. And he was, by this time, responsible for a lot in the UC library order department because of the long absence and illness of the head of the department, where some reshuffling had to be done to cover their work, and he fit into that very well. When the state library asked for applications for head of their very small order department, actually, compared with the university. It was a head, and an assistant, and some clerical people, you see.
But they asked--remember this was all before the war, and the requirements were high--they asked for I don't know how many years of experience before one could apply. He did apply, however, pointing out that what he was doing now for the university perhaps would qualify him. And it did. He took the examination, he was chosen, and we went to Sacramento. That meant that after having been in Oakland only about six months, I went back to Sacramento for some more time. But that gets ahead, however, about types of libraries.
McCreery
Well, when you were taking your courses, then, you and he were in the same one-year class. Tell me about some of the courses that you were required to take and who was teaching them.
Cubie
I think I said to you last time we met that there were some very, very central structures to the curriculum, and they involved the dean and the two full-time teachers. All the rest were people who were coming in from the field for special courses.
Interestingly, and I must say this, too, because although I saw Mr. Mitchell early on, and even in our first interview felt I really, in recollection knew him, I didn't really know him very well, having seen him such a short time. Because in my actual school year [1936-37] he was not there; he was on leave in England, and the librarian who came in to take his part was Katherine Anderson from Seattle Public Library. She taught for that year the administration courses and selecting and ordering of books, courses that Mr. Mitchell would have taught and did teach in all the other years. Later on I became close to Mr. Mitchell, but that came in later life.
That particular year he was away. Miss Anderson, then, was his substitute and taught administration, and book ordering and selection--that was an important subject. And of course the two fundamentals: classification and cataloging, Miss Sisler taught with the help of a laboratory assistant, and that I'll come to in a moment because it was well organized and greatly structured for the needs of that time, and remained so for many years to come, with variations. Miss Coulter was there to teach the reference courses, a delight to everyone because she made such an interesting job of it. That was it. There was Coulter, Sisler, and Miss Anderson and visitors for special courses.
For instance, the course in children's literature was taught by that delightful and very gifted woman Frances [Clarke] Sayers. She was also a writer of children's books. She was at that time working as children's librarian in Marin County, in one of the little towns in Marin County, and would come in once a week, twice a week, whatever time was given to children's literature and children's librarianship. She attracted some of the most gifted young women to her field, because it would be young women who would be taking these courses. One or two men took it also. Miss [Jessie E.] Boyd from the Oakland school system came in, and Mr. John Henderson from the State Library. They taught anything to do with county librarianship. And so these were all people who would come in part time.
Recalling the Student Body and Faculty, by Gender
McCreeryOkay. You mentioned one or two men taking these courses otherwise of interest mainly to women. Just let me digress for a moment and ask you how many men were in your class of fifty, about?
Yes, I'm glad you said that because I had meant to say something about that. There were exactly ten men in our class. And this was considered a great increase all at once beyond the sprinkling of men for quite some years, when in the beginning it had been largely women's classes and with men just beginning to come in. In '36-'37, then there were ten. It could only increase a little more in the next few years, because then of course came the war with all the changes of that, when the whole school had to shrink because young people were away. But when they returned, the next class would be '46, '45, even, wouldn't it be? There was this tremendous influx of men this time. They were the majority. Well, not quite, but I think they were pretty equal. One year soon after men outnumbered women. There were many of the young veterans coming in, so that changed the picture forever after.
And when I said to you some time ago that Mr. [Joseph Cummings] Rowell, in being appointed university librarian when he graduated in 1874 [to begin in 1875] said, with some satisfaction to himself, that he was entering a profession of gentlemen,
2. Mr. Rowell's remarks were made in an address to the catalogers' section of CLA about 1938.
It was so small, you know. They moved in from South Hall, after whatever time it took to build Bacon Hall with a tiny staff. But when he said he was entering a profession of gentlemen, the university libraries were entirely staffed by men but a great change was about to come in the other direction, to be reversed again after the Second World War.
So in my class, to get back to that, it was exactly ten men, and that was considered quite an increase.
McCreery
Okay. Do you owe that to the Depression, as well?
Why there would be fewer? Why the men came back, really, rather than why they disappeared. Yes, I would think that it was probably just one more area that could be entered with hopes toward some growth, by men as well as women. I think it is really the Depression that brought them back, I would think, yes. Because it was quite amazing how it changed from being all men at one time--especially in university libraries--to all women, and then back again abruptly in the mid-forties.
McCreery
Did you feel that men and women were equally welcomed in the school?
Cubie
Oh, yes. Well, I should put it this way. Women were--since there were many more of them in the beginning, were very much welcomed. But because men were the ones they were coaxing to come back, there would always be that edge of special interest.
And I think there was something personal, here, too. Mr. Mitchell, a man without children, rather looked at some of his young graduates--he liked them particularly and he might have--he was a very warm, welcoming man--he looked at them in a fatherly way. He liked the idea of having more men in the school. He certainly was seeking them as much as possible. So I think as an applicant, everything else being equal, probably one had a better chance as a man at that time, [laughs] though I don't think it made a serious difference. The selection was done, you know, quite honestly on all the required qualifications, a couple of foreign languages and a good scholastic record and all that.
McCreery
And as you say, during the year you were there, Mr. Mitchell was away, so the entire faculty was women.
Cubie
He was away. Yes, that's right. The faculty that year was women, with all the visiting staff. But Mr. Mitchell had made the selection. And I would say--I'm certain I was never there, but I would say that there were no faculty meetings of the sort of collegiate type that developed later with more faculty, with much more activity in all directions. But Mr. Mitchell and a very able administrative assistant would go over the applications and make their decisions. He would occasionally refer to Miss Sisler and Miss Coulter because they were the staff. Those were the three who for the first decade, or through the early twenties--in '26 they became a graduate school, but then they were there from the beginning.
And through the thirties and half of the forties, there were no formal meetings. Mr. Mitchell was a very self-sufficient man. I think he didn't feel that he needed help
But again, he was very interested more in the careers of his young men, decidedly more. He followed them more. There were more women and therefore it wasn't really quite such an interesting subject to him. And I think because he had no children, and probably he would have liked to have sons and didn't have children, this meant something quite personal.
McCreery
Okay. Well, let's stop there for today. Thank you.
Origins of the School Under Sydney Mitchell and Edith Coulter
When we left off last Friday, we were talking about the period of time, 1936-37, when you were attending the library school as a student. What more did you want to tell me about that time?
Cubie
Only just a little antecedent because, as a historical exercise, perhaps it's of interest that we always said, and everyone knows, that the School of Librarianship was started under the deanship of Mr. Mitchell. And it might be thought that that was the real beginning, as it was, but the real antecedent goes back to Edith Coulter, who to some extent, at least, made the conditions possible.
Edith Coulter graduated from Stanford University, I think it was in 1906. When she was casting about like all intellectually inclined young graduates for what should come next and preparing herself for some graduate study. At the time the state library had just begun a program of educating librarians, public librarians mostly, in summer courses. More important to Miss Coulter, Melvil Dewey had a flourishing school at Albany, New York. That seemed right for her, and she applied.
Her first application was turned down because of lack of space, but within a very short time--before she made new plans--she got a telegram: "We have room for you. Can you come and be here by the end of the week?" So there was Miss Coulter, who shared a house with her widowed mother and her sister in Salinas, where Miss Coulter and her sister Mabel were born (Mabel, a few years older than Edith, also a Stanford graduate). They now hurried to get her travel ready, which meant to raid the family box of gold coins--that was the banking system at that time--and give her enough of these so that she could buy her train ticket across the country.
The first stop, I think, was at Chicago where she had to pull out sufficient gold coins to buy the rest of her ticket to Albany, New York. (Miss Coulter, as has been said by many people who have known her, was a woman of wit and a wonderful raconteur and liked to tell these old stories of how she got there.) They gave her a list of boarding houses and she went down this list and one of the ladies--the first lady who asked her in--said, "And from where have you come, my dear?" And she said, "From California." "Oh," she said, "Do sit down." [laughter] And it was the way Miss Coulter, you see, would project these bits of implied fun that made her so very successful as a teacher later on.
She also liked to talk about their student life at Albany. And one of the things she particularly liked to remember was that Mr. Dewey was very cordial with the students and there was much interchange between instructors and the students. Sleigh-riding in the winter with Mr. Dewey's sleigh was one of her fond recollections.
Now why do I say all this about Miss Coulter? She came back to Stanford after she graduated--I think it was a two-year course--and went to work as a reference librarian. Not long after that, Mr. Mitchell, Sydney Mitchell, came from McGill University where he had graduated and worked I suppose for some time, but not very long, and joined the Stanford staff as an order librarian. Miss Coulter after a few years transferred herself to Berkeley and the University of California reference department. I think she, after a while, became head of that department. It was her recommendation that brought Mr. Mitchell into the University of California sometime after 1919, the year that Mr. [Harold] Leupp became University Librarian. So you see, if it hadn't been for Edith Coulter and all these earlier professional appointments, they might not have had a library school at UC.
Now we know of course, as we said the last time, that during the ensuing years and even during the war years, more and more the need was felt for more library instruction--especially in academic libraries. And the school was established. The date here is 1922 in your outline?
McCreery
Yes, '26 for the actual school, '22 for the department.
Cubie
'26 for the graduate school.
McCreery
The separate graduate school of librarianship.
Cubie
A professional school--and yes, I see, so there was a period of some seven, eight years of the school just really getting itself under way. And they did this with a very small faculty--only the three really: Mr. Mitchell, Miss Coulter, and Miss Sisler, but all of them were from the university staff, people with large experience in the fields they were going to take up to teach and with great devotion to what they could do for students and for librarianship.
This whole time in which they were establishing schools--and it was still true some years later when I became a student--one might rather describe as the age of confidence in what had evolved. Libraries were well developed by then. Instruction in librarianship was well developed. The expectation was that the instruments--catalogs for libraries, classification systems, bibliography and reference services--all these could only be refined, but were not ever going to change in fundamental ways.
And so we had Mr. Mitchell at the time I entered the school in 1936 away for that year, but in the years preceding and for some years after--another ten years after--he taught administration courses and of course what he'd do best, ordering and book selection. Book selection courses had to be concerned rather more with public libraries because in a university the responsibility for selecting books is shared with the faculty. In public libraries it is necessary to offer some real help in selecting the books for a library, where to buy them, and how to select in the various areas of knowledge. So Mr. Mitchell made sure that public libraries were included in the instruction in ordering and administration.
McCreery
Was that one of the main ways that public librarianship differed?
Cubie
It differed in that way. It meant that librarians and library school students had to have some guide to what was being
It was important that the school--and it was always assumed that the school would--prepare people for librarianship with a capital L. Every student was expected to be grounded in everything that could be taught in what libraries did and what their responsibilities were. So from the beginning it was assumed that, for example, in the cataloging courses, Miss Sisler's experience in academic librarianship, academic cataloging and classification, was doing just that: we were given everything available and possible. And it was assumed, then, that if one became a member of some library that needed a lesser level of cataloging, one would just adapt to whatever was the need. But one started out at the top and everyone was thoroughly prepared to enter into any kind of library.
This was particularly true because in those early years, the student body was very young. Not only the majority, but almost everyone was a young graduate, just out with the undergraduate degree, and in most cases going right on to library school--with a few exceptions: people who had worked a few years, perhaps. But the oldest were likely to be, as in my class for example, I think the oldest was thirty or thirty-one. "Let's offer everything we know and then they will use it according to wherever they're going find themselves"--that was the policy.
McCreery
Okay. Can you just review for the tape the so-called four pillars of librarianship?
Cubie
Well, the four pillars [laughter] which had to be held up by three individuals.
McCreery
Yes. [laughs]
Cubie
Mr. Mitchell, you see, was covering administration and the great field of ordering and selecting books.
McCreery
So those are two.
Cubie
Those would be two fields. Then cataloging and classification was the third and reference and bibliography the fourth.
Della Sisler's Early Connections to the School
McCreeryOkay. Let's talk some more, then, about classification and cataloging. Do you know much about Miss Della Sisler's background and how she came to Berkeley?
Cubie
I don't know that at all. No, I do not. I wish I did, but--I know that she was selected by Mr. Mitchell from the UC library staff. In fact, whenever they came to the conclusion that it was desirable to have a school, I'm sure that both Miss Sisler and Miss Coulter were by that time very much in the planning phases and had been asked to be the ones to be the first faculty of the school.
McCreery
Now, you did take her course?
Cubie
I took, as everyone did, all the courses the library school had to offer in these basic areas. As I have mentioned, we all did. The reason I know so much more about Miss Coulter is that Miss Coulter was a very much more communicative person who liked to talk about her story and was easily, in class presentations, referring to things in her life. But also I knew her well as a friend later when I came back to the school to assist Miss [Anne Ethelyn] Markley. Miss Coulter was still at that time with us for two years before she retired, but she never really left us because after she retired Miss Markley and I kept a desk for her in our office, to which she came daily for almost all the years she lived after that. She never separated herself. She carried on a bit of bibliographical work, hoping to perhaps someday finish a work she had started on advanced bibliography.
But what she did finish in all these years and what was probably even closer to her interest was books in California history, and so that she had a desk in The Bancroft Library and in the library school in our office. And every day she came first to one or the other and by the time lunchtime came, we had had her around for at least a couple of hours and we would often go to lunch together, so that it was natural that I should know so much more about her life and the earlier background.
McCreery
I see.
Cubie
Miss Sisler was a very conscientious and really devoted teacher, but very much more private in anything concerning herself. There was never a reference to her own life in any way. Cataloging didn't suggest this quite so easily anyway
McCreery
What do you recall about her cataloging course as a student?
Cubie
Let me answer a question you asked earlier about what were the quarters of the school, and then I can tell you something about the way she conducted her several courses, because that is of interest.
McCreery
Yes, please.
School of Librarianship Quarters Inside the Main Library
CubieThe library school quarters took up the entire south wing of the second floor of the main library, so that it was on a level with the reference department and the loan department and the catalogs in the halls that stretched out from the main loan hall. That wing, which stretched from west to east, on the west side had the faculty offices--very small space, really. But at the time I was a student, there was Mr. Mitchell's office, of course, though he wasn't there, having his place taken that year by Katherine Anderson--I'll talk to you about her later--but the faculty office, the dean's office, and the administrative assistant--secretary. A very small part of that office space was for Miss Coulter, Miss Sisler or any part-time teacher who came and went, and next to that the classroom, which held exactly the fifty students we had for so many years.
In the early years, undoubtedly--that is, from '26--there were probably fewer, but by the 1930s it had reached fifty, but as I told you last time, deliberately kept to that number until after the war. Beyond that was a vast room filled with desks for fifty students. They were office-sized desks--not huge office desks, but very comfortable office desks--that had room for a typewriter on one side--you know, on one of those shelves that could fold in the desk to get it out of the way--and a comfortable space for students to make their study space for the whole time they were in the building.
Della Sisler's Instruction in Cataloging and Classification
CubieThere was a reason for all this equipment. Cataloging instruction assumed that librarians would be empowered to take over their duties in whatever library was going to hire them in building into a catalog that was a vastly important instrument for all the library did. And because it was cumulative, because it was ongoing, because it was going to grow and grow, it was assumed that what new entries librarians, young catalogers, or catalogers of any age added to this were going to be as faultless as possible, so that the ideal was a kind of perfection. It was assumed to be right to be a perfectionist, because one would be doing something that was going to last and that was going to maintain the best possible quality of the catalog.
In the instruction in cataloging, particularly, we had classes three times a week, in the morning, early. I think it was actually--we had Miss Coulter's lecture hour in the morning, also. There were classes from eight to ten. One for Miss Coulter's lecture, since there was only one hour needed.
The laboratory work for Miss Coulter's course was away from our quarters, mostly in the reference room and in the stacks. But in Miss Sisler's lecture she would present to us whatever she felt she could best cover on a particular day in introducing the particulars of classification and catalog construction. And that was followed by two laboratory sections of two hours' duration. With a class of fifty that meant twenty-five students at a time going to their desks, Miss Bronstein wheeling in a large truck of books carefully selected to illustrate what had been introduced in that morning's lecture lesson, and we would go to work to do that particular segment of classifying or cataloging, whatever was the lesson of the day. And that would be true for the first semester and the second semester until we had built up what was considered and what Miss Sisler called a model catalog--that is, a sort of miniature catalog filling about the length of a shoebox that held all the cards we had produced in the course of the year.
We started out with a big pack of blank cards, three by five catalog cards-to-be, and these then incorporated at the end of the year all that could be taught about assigning classification numbers according to codes then used and of course still largely used--the Library of Congress classification, the Dewey Decimal system. And all the problems of entering and giving the headings to the different cards and the set of catalog entries, and all descriptive cataloging was
McCreery
Now were all of those several classification systems given equal time? Were you expected to master all of them?
Cubie
Yes, they were given equal time. From a practical point of view, although there was a building up of the whole catalog record, in fact, in order to teach classification it meant that a certain amount of time--over, let's say, some weeks even--at the beginning would be given to analyzing the contents of books and, according to the codes, assigning classification numbers and selecting subject headings. We would be devoting ourselves to that for a while, but always keeping notes for the ongoing records to be composed. For the subject headings we used the Library of Congress list of subject headings; it is a very unwieldy huge volume, but we used them. We also used the Sears List of Subject Headings for smaller libraries. We could buy a copy of that and we could keep it at our desk, and much of the techniques of using lists were practiced on that list.
After we had dealt with classifying and assigning subject headings, we then turned to the building up of the descriptive records, choosing the best possible form of a name of an author--personal authors, corporate authors--noting all the reference structures that were to make connections and keep works of authors together, and all the descriptive details, the bibliographic details in the make up of a book and some of the other records that libraries maintain.
McCreery
So there were a certain number of choices that you had to make in classifying each book?
Cubie
Yes. Well, in classifying each book, one would have to pick that classification number that would most closely represent the totality of that work, because it had to sit next to other works most closely related to it in subject matter, so when one goes to the stacks, one finds like books together.
McCreery
Is it easy to give me an example of a good choice or a bad choice or the subtle difference between two number choices?
Cubie
The classification codes are so arranged that one can distinguish the proper number by having a good look at the table of contents and looking at some chapter headings, generally, or an introduction in some cases, if it becomes a
But sometimes it is more difficult because there are several subjects covered in one book, and all these difficulties were discussed in cataloging instruction--how best to meet the somewhat less tidy arrangements of an author's presentation. But a book has to have a particular physical place in the stacks and so the cataloger uses his best judgment in placing it by using classification schemes--both the Dewey Decimal system and the Library of Congress are vastly detailed for making these choices.
McCreery
This is kind of a side question--I read somewhere that the earlier university librarian, Joseph Rowell, had developed his own classification system.
Cubie
Yes, he had.
McCreery
And it, I think, was not being actively added to, but--do you know much about that?
Cubie
I don't know the system because the system really was not added to and had long since been replaced by the time I was a student in the mid-thirties, since he retired in 1919. But he was a man of early wisdom. I told you the last time that he was appointed librarian only a year after he graduated and he went east to acquaint himself with the meaning of librarianship and to meet colleagues. And on the basis of what he learned he devised a system for the University of California.
But in those next few decades of his service the Library of Congress had become large, and its own schemes had grown on a tremendous scale. And since the Library of Congress began selling its cards in 1901, sets of cards began to be placed in all the different access points of the library catalog. These printed cards included LC classification numbers. Mr. Rowell, anticipating rapid growth of the UC library, decided to adopt the always up-to-date Library of Congress classification to replace his own system. And so it never came up as late as in the 1930s. Mr. Rowell gave it up for the greater need of joining the more national standards and practices. So where are we now?
Well, we were talking a little bit about Miss Sisler's cataloging course.
Cubie
Yes.
Role of the Reviser in Cataloging Courses
##
McCreeryNow, to continue about Miss Sisler's cataloging course.
Cubie
Miss Bronstein, as I said before, would be wheeling in the carefully selected books. Now how were they selected? Miss Sisler, with the generous opportunities she had in the library stacks--I think they were always, as they were later on when Miss Markley and I were putting together a practice collection--the library made its duplicates available. Miss Sisler brought together the best possible variety of works to illustrate all the problems that she would want to present to the students.
These then were brought in by Miss Bronstein, who would be available for questions when things got really difficult. But I don't remember that we really asked her very much. I think that Miss Sisler's presentation slowly built up, step by step, descriptive cataloging, classification, and subject cataloging in her lecture and we would immediately--at least some of us [laughs] who had first laboratory section--proceed to our great desk space and go to work. And the other section in the afternoon would do the same. But it would be fresh in our minds what we were to look for, how we were to proceed. At all times, the virtue of this kind of instruction was that it made it clear how you should proceed. There wasn't very much uncertainty very often.
On the other hand, obviously when mistakes were made, especially in constructing the catalog cards, that is where Miss Bronstein's work came in, in revising what we had done that day. And so on our neatly presented entries on the cards we would find a lot of red marks--or, some of us would; it depended on the number of mistakes we made or didn't make. She would correct them. They in turn would be--and this was really quite a few things to do, several times a week--they would go back to Miss Sisler, who would also review them, and on the basis of what we had found troublesome and what we had not done quite well, she would go on with her own review in our next class and go on building from that. It was a very thorough process.
What kinds of things would the reviser find? I mean, was it a whole array of different corrections or were they commonly in one or two areas of the process?
Cubie
The full cataloging at the level of a Library of Congress record would be bibliographically very detailed in order to differentiate among the works and the editions of works of all the total holdings of the Library of Congress. The more detail available, the more you could make a differentiation. Since Library of Congress cards had become the standard and since they had become available, there was no--let me see, I seem to be losing what I'm going to say here--
McCreery
We were talking about the complexity of the record.
Cubie
The complexity was deemed necessary. That meant as long as we were being instructed in that high-level kind of cataloging that was the practice of the Library of Congress, and for all the reasons I gave you earlier, these standards were to be at every graduate's command. There were mistakes in not observing or observing too much of what should be described. One of the examples would be the whole area of accounting for pages, leaves, illustrations--discriminating among types of illustrations: plates and text illustrations, and colored, or black and white. There were many details which would be observed or not observed by the beginner. Or mistakes would come along in choosing what, in a publisher statement about the firm, should or should not be transcribed. So it was really the style.
But there was no published style manual. What Library of Congress did was to announce their style developments through bulletins for their own use; these they generously shared with all libraries all over the country so that cataloging instructors could get all this material. But it was up to instructors to present it to their students in their own way and so it meant that cataloging instruction, particularly at that time, made considerable earlier experience in the field quite necessary.
The only published code available for us in the rules for descriptive cataloging was by Charles Ammi Cutter, whose Rules for a Dictionary Catalog were incorporated in the Library of Congress way of doing things. They came out in the last edition in 1904. By the time I was in the school in 1936, this was all we could buy, the rest was up to the instructor to get across. And that is really why it was essential that the course was as elaborately prepared as it was.
Now, you didn't know at the time that you would later become a reviser and be involved in teaching this very area--
Cubie
No, that's right.
McCreery
But when you were there as a student, did you enjoy cataloging?
Cubie
Yes, I did. I think it's a matter, isn't it, for every person that some things suit them particularly and others do not. I enjoyed really rather the intellectual stimulant of dealing with a whole vast body of knowledge first of all. I thought it was great fun to learn something about things I had never really thought about before and doing it in this way. You know, the idea of lifelong learning was presenting itself in a particular way, in a rather technical way, but a way nevertheless by which a cataloger would have a chance to expand his own knowledge beyond what he would normally do on his own.
But when you just touched on "what you knew when you were in school," most of us, because we were very young, really didn't know what we were preparing to do. And that was exactly the attitude of the school--that because we were young and did not know where we would be employed--.
In the course of the year, quite a few would become interested in children's librarianship, who liked for example the--Mrs. Sayers, Frances Sayers's courses. The people who developed enormous liking for storytelling and all that, they might have started in some cases--I know one especially, Miss Brambilla, Miss Yvette Brambilla, who thought for a while that cataloging would be of greatest interest to her because her mind did go along these lines, but Frances Sayers's course in the second semester just ran her over into children's librarianship. And she went to work for the Oakland Public Library and became head of the children's department with great enthusiasm. So that's how these things came about.
Reference librarianship, of course, was very much sought by many students, they thought. Again, the opportunities of employment were very few and they would wait to see what would happen later. But Miss Coulter was one of the immensely popular teachers because of her particular style of presenting things.
McCreery
Shall we move on to that a little bit then?
Cubie
Let me see, we could go on to Miss Coulter in a moment, unless I--could you turn it off one moment? [tape interruption] Before I say anything more about why the reference courses were
As we did our practice work, thoroughly revised in the course of a year, we were ready now to construct a model catalog that incorporated all we had done, properly revised, and it became rather a source--[laughs] we all took it home happily, and if we ever needed advice on some thorny problem, we would probably find the answer there. And that was true for several of my fellow graduates over the years. They said, "Oh, Miss Sisler's model catalog is very important to me," at one time or another.
The very last assignment in that catalog was to put all these cards together in proper filing order, again according to a code that followed the Library of Congress dictionary catalog system. And we carried it away, having got the blessing of Miss Sisler at the end. And it was according to the quality of our catalog that some of our grades were based at the end. There were examinations, but the laboratory work was the most important.
McCreery
What form did exams take in that class?
Cubie
I think I'll just take that back for a moment. There were no formal examinations covering theory because it did express itself entirely, I think, in what we did in the laboratory sections in that particular time; I'm getting a little bit ahead there in some things that happened later on. But Miss Sisler also taught--and I think this is what for a moment I was reflecting--Miss Sisler also taught the course in the history of the book.
Instruction in History of the Book
McCreeryOh, yes, we talked about that just a little bit last time.
Cubie
When the library school alumni association established the Della Sisler Memorial Book Prize in her honor, their choice was most fitting in reflecting Miss Sisler's deep interest in the whole field of book arts. Her course in the history of the book and its care in library collections took students through the evolution of the printed book since the invention of printing in Europe, to its physical makeup and maintenance in library collections.
Miss Sisler, in teaching the history of the book, had that joy of presenting to the class examples from the UC library's rare book department and letting us handle them. She said it was very important that they be handled, that the leather covers stayed in better shape if they got oiled a bit.
She introduced us to the type designers of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries and shared with us her special pleasure in the work of the Venetian Aldus Manutius and the English printer William Jepson, who designed types of elegance and lasting influence.
She devoted to that course a great deal of special kind of love. And, no, it was in these courses where we had examinations. It was all rather historical and got us into just everything that could ever be said about the book that librarians were expected to know something about.
To illustrate the physical make up of books Miss Sisler took the class to a bindery in San Francisco, the firm of Foster & Futernick, where we were shown how signatures are assembled and volumes stitched and covered. It was a very large bindery specializing in rebinding for public and school libraries. Library books were all hardcover then--paperbacks for library use were still in the future--and rebinding copies after heavy use kept them available for years to come.
The Card Catalog
CubieIn her two courses Miss Sisler took her students through the making of books, their maintenance in library collections, and most of all the construction and maintenance of the card catalog and the high duty of keeping it in good shape and as error free as possible.
It was understood that errors did occur, but they very carefully did all they could to guard against it. For example, a young librarian in a library situation would be sent to file cards. Now filing was not left to clerical people; it was again a librarian's duty to understand what was filed and why it was filed as it was filed. But it would be filed at first above the rod. It would be the reviser, or the head of the department, or someone with more experience than the beginner who would then remove the rod and let the cards into the tray for permanent placement. These efforts, of not taking the chance to make avoidable mistakes, were taken very seriously,
McCreery
That's a vivid image, the difference of "above the rod" versus the authority to actually file the card in for good. Very interesting. Well, shall we talk a little bit more then about Miss Coulter and her courses?
Edith Coulter and the Teaching of Reference and Bibliography
CubieYes. She was a much enjoyed and admired teacher because her zest for California history and for the challenge of giving good reference service was passed on to her students in all of the decades in which she taught. We enjoyed, of course, especially her wit and her rather intriguing presentation in the classroom, but as much the weekly assignments, in which she gave us a problem of trying to find a solution of a reference question that would take us to the stacks--not in any obvious way. A question would be asked that seemed to have an obvious answer and then very quickly it turned out not to have one, so that reference works were not the whole answer. And then off one would go to the stacks. And that, you see again, is why finding one's way about the classification system and knowing what to expect from the stacks was very important. And that is why I said reference librarians and catalogers were very mutually appreciative of what they all did.
Probably once a week she would divide the class into--well, they were individually assigned, but there would be perhaps four or five questions like this passed around, and we would be trooping off to the stacks to see what we could do. The strategies of how to proceed, of course, were covered very carefully in class, so we knew what to do and at the end of sometimes considerable time, we would find the answers to a particular question, but occasionally we did not. And students would eagerly combine into little troops and take turns looking rather beyond where they had perhaps originally looked and still couldn't find the answer. When they got back to Miss Coulter she would say, "Oh,"--she'd laugh and she'd say, "I'm sorry. I know I've given you a lot of extra work, but I'm still looking for the answer myself." [laughter]
Because over the years, she had made up a list of the things that had been presented in her work and that she had found particularly illustrative of a reference librarian's work--and that it turned out to be because we loved doing these assignments. It was a weekly assignment so we could take plenty of time over it. And most students accepted her explanations with good humor--not always, because there were some who felt that it was something of a waste of time. But it was altogether very intriguing and certainly served the purpose.
In other ways--there was, of course, a vast number of reference works and national bibliographies with which the reference librarian to be had to familiarize himself, and that meant a certain amount of memory work. It meant, for instance, that in the national bibliographies, which by this time had been gradually developing over--by 1930, well, about a century, nearly a century and a half--it was important to be very aware of the chronologies and make the chronologies one's unquestioned immediate recall, so that when a person came to a reference desk, it would occur to the librarian to say, "Oh, yes, that was 1795 to 1802." And so this instant tuning in on where you would look for the answer was something that was part of reference instruction.
Fortunately because that kind of memorizing, though very necessary, was not as interesting, it was so beautifully balanced by Miss Coulter's sharing with us from her experience of interesting questions. At least the searches would turn out to be interesting.
One amusing one I must tell you about. [laughs] It was a simple question--it sounds simple enough. The question was, "Are the monasteries of Buchsheim still standing?" And that's it, that was the question. It was one that was never found. Again, it was never answered. It was one of the few Miss Coulter sprinkled about to make things particularly intriguing. And she kept asking this one over the years. When [John] Barr Tompkins was in the class--he must have been a student in the early forties, something like that--he happened to get this particular question. So he came back after doing what he was expected to do and said, "Miss Coulter, you know, I could have got you the answer because I found myself at a crossroads in Bavaria (I think it is) with my brother (or brother-in-law) and we had to make a decision. One sign said to Buchsheim and the other one said to something else and we took the latter, so I could have had the answer for you if I'd only taken the other road." [laughter] That's as near as Miss Coulter ever came to that--with the help of her students.
Other teachers--let me see. Oh, yes, of course, then also it's important that Miss Coulter--because they all had these different subjects to which they did great justice. One of them was history of libraries, as against history of the book. Miss Sisler had history of the book; Miss Coulter had history of libraries, for which she thoroughly prepared herself by taking a long summer trip to England, Germany, France, and Italy.
McCreery
Was that the one with her sister?
Cubie
With her sister. She visited national libraries--big national libraries like Bibliothèque Nationale, and the great libraries, the great old famous libraries like the Laurentian Library in Florence. And she brought back from that trip the sort of things one likes to use for illustration--lots of photographs--so that was a particularly enjoyable course that rounded out a librarian's appreciation of the work, of the total work.
Were there others--I've mentioned children's libarianship, and all year Miss [Katherine] Anderson, who took Mr. Mitchell's part that year--Miss Anderson was a public librarian from Seattle Public Library, so perhaps because she was such an expert on the public library side, the book selection course was given a particularly big emphasis in our year. But she also took Mr. Mitchell's place teaching administration.
In being responsible for the school for that year, to be the acting dean, that again was passed back and forth between Miss Coulter and Miss Sisler. Mr. Mitchell was away at least twice--perhaps more, but at least twice for a whole year at a time--so that Miss Coulter had had that duty probably in the early thirties. Miss Sisler had it in our year, and that meant that her additional duties had much to do with placement of the students later on. In all those years of the Depression and unemployment being such a problem, placing people was considered a duty to the extent that the school could possibly do it. It was all carried out by the administrative assistant, the dean, or the acting dean, and with whatever advice other teachers could give in the matter. So they were a very--
McCreery
So for the years that Mr. Mitchell was gone, his replacement kind of followed through on those tasks of attempting to find placements for students and so on?
Cubie
Yes, I remember that when I was first recommended, it was Miss Sisler who telephoned to say, "Would you like to go to Sacramento as a cataloger?" You see, I hadn't specifically said that that is what--you know, I was ready for any
Faculty's Role in Obtaining Jobs for Students and Graduates
##
McCreeryWe were talking about the placement function of the faculty during the time you were a student.
Cubie
In my particular year, because Miss Sisler was the acting dean, that was particularly her duty. But all through the preceding years, and for all the years after that, for all the time after that, the school took a very active part in placement. There came a time after the war where there was such a demand for librarians that employers came to the school and consulted about "Whom do you have to fill my positions?" But in the earlier years there was quite an effort made in finding placement for the students.
We were librarians with the all-encompassing idea of being prepared to go into wherever we might enter as young assistant librarians, as they were called then. Let's see, what was it again? Yes, I think so--assistant librarian was the first qualification. You were the beginner and then you were promoted to whatever other classifications came along.
My case is a good example. I was working part time in my whole second semester for the San Francisco Public Library because I entered that system by doing some practice work as a kind of apprentice for the period of the Christmas holiday. That was, again, a requirement. The school placed all its students in some library situation to give them some idea about what library work was like.
McCreery
Yes, I think you mentioned that.
Cubie
And this would be based, if possible, in the public library of the hometown. In my case that was San Francisco. So when I graduated, they offered me a full-time job if I wanted to stay and placed me first in one of the branches as a reference librarian--as branch librarian, really, so that most of my work there was reference work for the period I was there. But it was understood that I had the option of staying on and I was given full-time duties in the Richmond branch of the San Francisco Public Library. My work as a student preceding that was at the loan desk.
I would go over in the afternoon, about four-thirty, to catch a train--this is now before the bridges became available--to catch a train and a ferry boat and a streetcar, to as near the library as I could get, and have a small meal at a cafeteria nearby, and would begin my work at six o'clock and finish at ten o'clock. At ten o'clock I would reverse the process of catching the streetcar and ferry boat and train and local streetcar and got myself home along about midnight. So back to Berkeley.
After graduation I worked as assistant reference librarian in the Richmond branch as long as I was there, but very shortly, within a month, Miss Sisler telephoned to ask if I would like to be recommended to go to Sacramento to be assistant in the cataloging department.
The department was a small one. The head was a graduate of our school of only a few years before, I was the assistant, and there were about a couple of clerical people, and that was the department. So you see how easy it was to begin first one assignment and then another, and without any obvious commitment at the beginning for most of us. While a few students in my class certainly came with the idea of why they came and where they were going back, that was on the whole rather unusual.
Working Relationship of Professors Coulter and Sisler
McCreeryOkay, well, I do want to hear more about your job in Sacramento. Perhaps before we do that, we can just finish up with a couple more questions about your student life at the school. You've indicated the great importance of Miss Sisler and Miss Coulter to the faculty and to the program. Now, my research has revealed that those two were somewhat at odds with one another. Were you aware of that as a student?
Cubie
They were very discreet. I do not think that "at odds" would be anything at all obvious to us. As for the great difference in personalities--what they had in common was devotion to and commitment to librarianship. All these qualities I've been talking about they completely shared, but as individual people, their interests, their ways of communicating with other people outside the classroom, were very different. I can easily imagine that there wouldn't have been very much of an accord that was arrived at easily. But the interesting thing is that while that was probably true, it didn't ever seem to affect
I think this is probably true because of--also, probably--if I would guess what might be behind that--they were given a lot of administrative responsibility that went beyond their particular spheres of teaching. The dean would lean on them in some ways, but in other ways would make his own decisions his own way. I don't think there was such a thing as weekly faculty meetings and a sort of a democratic way of running things. I think that Mr. Mitchell's own personality just naturally expressed itself in being the dean and doing what he thought a dean did, especially because administration was his field. But there were times when much was asked of the other two, but the other two did not then necessarily follow quite the same pattern of behavior in carrying out their duties.
How did you come to this kind of history about them?
McCreery
Well, you might remember my saying that there were some oral history tapes made of different people giving their recollections of Sydney Mitchell and those tapes were made about twenty years ago. One of the people interviewed at that time was the former dean, Professor [J. Periam] Danton, and that was something that he discussed a little bit. And of course he would have had a different viewpoint--he came along later. But he was aware, perhaps, from a different perspective than any student would be.
Cubie
I think his awareness, though, must have been a very overall one and conclusions he drew, perhaps from Mr. Mitchell's recollections and then his own interpretation of it, because he was never there. When he came and with an almost complete change in 1946, with the great exception of Miss Coulter, who still carried on for a while, I think that his interpretation was perhaps based on something that came entirely from Mr. Mitchell or what he thought came from Mr. Mitchell.
Mr. Mitchell's own references at any time to his two important [laughs] faculty members on his team were always of appreciation for what they did and stood for. It's very likely that there might have been a bit of reminiscing on Mr. Mitchell's part of the things he had to live with [laughs] in all the years he was dean.
McCreery
Okay, well, I appreciate your thoughts.
Cubie
I'm not disputing that there was something there. It's very likely because of their great personality differences--and
Recalling Other Courses, Students, and Faculty
McCreeryOkay, well, thank you. Now just to finish up about your own student life, did you feel that you had a particular mentor while you were in school?
Cubie
No, I think--you mean, you're talking about my undergraduate years, now?
McCreery
Oh, no, sorry, in the library school.
Cubie
In the library school. No. I think that we all shared what was freely and generously given and presented to us as a whole student body. We were expected to make the most of it and we mightily strove to do that.
And I, for one, rather enjoyed what each of these instructors could give. I was rather interested in the reference course, obviously because Miss Coulter was a particularly enjoyable teacher. But I did appreciate Miss Sisler. I liked cataloging, and was very glad to go into that when I was recommended later on. I didn't, myself, take some of the other courses, of course, that other people enjoyed, like children's librarianship, because I didn't--well, I knew I wasn't likely to be a children's librarian with that particular emphasis.
But we all as a student body rather shared the common experience and we learned much from each other. I feel that I know a lot about Frances Sayers by--I even sat in once or twice on her classes and agreed with my fellow students what a good teacher she was, and how enjoyable it was to listen to this creative woman present her great joy in authorship, in children's literature, and reading to children. But I think that the students rather supported each other in two ways: in sharing the total curriculum, but at the same time also supporting each other in the rather heavyweight requirements of doing the coursework well, because it was not easy to really cover what each instructor considered, quite rightly, to be very important to effective librarianship. It was demanding. The students were more than busy trying to fulfill all the expectations.
Did you ever have an opportunity to compare your experiences or your curriculum with library students from other schools?
Cubie
No, because we were never near other schools. You see, our school was--the way it was built up and its particular history meant that it was the only one on the Pacific Coast. It took the postwar periods for other schools to really develop--especially UCLA and all that. We were the only one, and there was no comparison of any kind within easy reach.
McCreery
I suppose as a student you had no opportunity to meet others.
Cubie
No, that's right, we did not. We met the librarians who came to instruct us, who came as visitors. We had a field trip sometime during the spring semester: a whole day at the state library to learn all we could about what the State of California did for library services.
But beyond that, there were no schools, there was really nothing to compare with at the level of being a student, except the few, of course, who had not library schools to compare with, but the very few students in my class who had a little library experience. I notice the name Mrs. [Frances] Kehrlein. Now she was a woman--I think, oh, well, considerably older when we were--who for various reasons felt that she wanted to take these courses. But I think the students beyond the age of twenty-one were probably a handful altogether, and so that the experience with libraries and where to make comparisons and with whom hadn't occurred to most of us. There was no way of doing it.
McCreery
Okay. Well, we were talking about the placement function. Now, the Great Depression, of course, was continuing throughout your undergraduate and graduate career. Do you know much about the placement of students in the classes that preceded yours? Was it difficult for them to find work?
Cubie
Even more difficult than for my year.
McCreery
That's my impression.
Cubie
For my class a little turn was coming about in the total economic picture. Graduates in the year 1933, at the depth of the Depression--I mean, that year for librarianship was perhaps the worst. One student out of the class of fifty got a job right away. I think he went down to Pomona--what is it now, the School of Pomona, University of Pomona--
McCreery
Pomona College?
It was either Pomona College or University of Southern California; it was one of these universities where he was expected to take a job. He was the only one placed immediately. Other people who became very successful librarians later--a person like Neal Harlow, who later became assistant librarian at UCLA and head of the special collections department and went off to Canada as dean of a library school--his first placement came only after a few years--although not perhaps more than a couple, but it did take that long--was at the state library. But Neal, I think, went to work for a dairy for the first year. It was an absolutely dead situation for a while for students in those earlier years, in the depth of the Depression.
In 1937, the changes brought about by the national efforts, the efforts in Washington to give people employment--all of these were beginning to make a difference in libraries, so that very likely, very obviously when we graduated in 1937, a fair number still were unemployed for a while, but on the other hand, a reasonable number were placed right away. So things were really improving over that short period of time. Since the Depression began--along about 1930, I would say the first years--one, two, three, and four--the first five years must have been particularly difficult. Then it got better.
Then of course the war came, and the school shrank for a while because young people were otherwise engaged. After that it mushroomed out into a great activity because of returning veterans and a whole lot of new interest among people even returning from other professions into something else. I mean, that is when the great change came about.
It's an interesting coincidence that the retirement of the earlier faculty--they stayed, one or two of them, actually a little longer than they would have because of the war, but when they retired, it really coincided with conditions in library education changing. It wasn't entirely brought about because of them, but they changed because of the great demand. And that meant that specialization began to develop more, courses were developed to answer the interests of particular specializations in librarianship. There were a lot of changes that developed under Mr. Danton's period of being dean and from that time on.
Working at the San Francisco and Sacramento Public Libraries
McCreeryOkay. Well, returning now to the time after you graduated. You described your job, going once again to the San Francisco Public Library. When did you actually--
Cubie
I just stayed on, you see. I was employed part time as a student, and they asked me to stay on and wouldn't I like to come and work for them. I accepted this, provided that it was understood that I might be placed elsewhere if something came along that would interest me. But it was only about a month that I stayed working full time for the library.
McCreery
So was it in 1937 that you got the post in Sacramento?
Cubie
It was 1937. We graduated in May. And by the end of May--it was about a month--I went up to Sacramento.
McCreery
Oh, really. Okay. Now who hired you there?
Cubie
The librarian of the public library. Yes, I'll fill the name in for you later. I have a blank on it for the moment, but I'll fill it in later.
McCreery
Was that a difficult decision to make the switch to Sacramento?
Cubie
No.
McCreery
Why?
Cubie
It was instantly attractive to me, because when Miss Sisler telephoned to ask if I would like to be recommended, what attracted me was that here was a good-sized public library, but the department was going to be a small one and there would be some opportunity of putting to work what I had just learned to do, rather more than being on the staff of a branch library in a vast public library system. San Francisco was larger, but the quality of that very large library--at that time it had problems that I had observed when I was working at the loan desk as a student. I preferred the opportunities of being part of a very small department. There were really only two of us--the head and the assistant--who were in charge of the cataloging for that library. And that turned out to be the case; that gave me very quick opportunities to develop and enjoy the practice of cataloging and classification.
McCreery
Can you describe your duties a little bit for me?
Since there were two of us--and something I probably should have said earlier on when I was describing the assumptions in the library school--that original cataloging of some sort--that is, producing the catalog records on homemade library cards was still generally assumed. That is why they put us through so much preparation. Library of Congress cards were ordered by my library, but it might be months before they would get to us. [laughs] There was something a bit slow about that kind of service. The collections of public libraries demanded fairly immediate availability so that as new books were bought by the order librarian, it was important that the whole technical process was performed quickly and the books would be out, so I went to work cataloging right away--just on everything that came in that was new, in all fields that were appropriate to the public library collection.
So there was an immediate use of everything that I had done before, and fortunately with the head of the department having graduated only a few years before, we understood what it is that Miss Sisler had tried to teach us, and we were working along similar lines.
But I also, in that time, because it was a public library, was called down to the reference department to substitute any time someone was away. I would feel quite at home in that service because I found it really quite natural that these two functions should be performed by the same kinds of people.
McCreery
How did you like the job?
Cubie
Oh, very much. I enjoyed the books and the people. The idea of preparing people for librarianship as an overall function was something that seemed the right one to me and it was something that was kept always. It wasn't discussed in the library school, but it was obvious that that is what they were doing. And so it was very enjoyable to participate in the cataloging function, in the reference function, to be very close in a rather small department to the order librarian--to discuss with her what was coming in--and the totality of what was going on in a public library of that size was really very inviting to a young person, you know, just entering the field, because it was comprehensible.
McCreery
Did you have a particular philosophy of public librarianship, over and above what you'd learned in school?
Cubie
I don't think one can develop a philosophy without having really participated in a very active way and to develop some sense of what the value really is.
Good point.
Cubie
--whether what they said was true. And I must say, I never really saw any reason for disagreeing with them. It was an era of very active, developing public librarianship. And the reaching out to the citizens--for instance, in our library all the devices for bringing people to the library were used and constantly improved. For the first time--these things were fairly new because in the past these institutions were there, buildings were opened and people knew that they could use the library. But inviting the public in was a development very active in the thirties--we placed at the corner of the county library building--you know about county libraries?
McCreery
Yes.
Cubie
Ours was one, and in one of the main intersections of downtown Sacramento we had a little showcase illustrating new books that had come in that week, or maybe it was held a little longer, but the display was changed very frequently.
The order department had something to do with it, the reference department did, but all of us were involved in it. I would be asked, for instance, to annotate the books for that particular display in this showcase: "Come and see the library. this is the new stuff we have." And I would put together descriptions of what they would find if they would take the trouble to come and use it. So there was a great enthusiasm for making governmentally supported libraries at all levels of real use to the public. And in public libraries that was particularly true.
McCreery
Okay. And did Sacramento have any branch libraries at that time?
Cubie
Yes, it did. It had several--about three or four, I would say. I was never working in a branch because of course my job while I was there was to do the cataloging for all of the collection.
But I was there two years when I was married to a classmate who was also in this list of alumni and whom we've mentioned before--August Frugé.
When we left off last week we were talking about your time employed at the Sacramento Public Library in the late 1930s and I thought we might return to that a little bit this morning,
Cubie
Yes, Miss Sisler telephoned me within two or three weeks after I had taken up my duties in a branch library of the San Francisco Public to ask if I would like to be recommended to a new opening in Sacramento, an opening for a cataloger. Of course I was interested. She had already made my appointment. And when I got on the early train on the appropriate day, I was painfully aware that she had made appointments for three other classmates of mine--an illustration of how the unemployment problem was really very much with us. Though in my class more students were placed than in the ones preceding, it still was very difficult to count on employment immediately. As an example of that, Lawrence [Clark] Powell, who later within an astonishing few years became university librarian at UCLA, was actually unemployed for his first year and only gradually worked himself into that system.
The interview, then, was for the four of us, with perhaps half an hour or forty-five minute intervals. We didn't actually see each other. It was handled in a very discreet way. In my interview I was, of course, introduced to the head of the department. And Miss Taylor--Grace Taylor, the librarian--said, "Now I won't ask you anything about your qualifications because Miss Sisler will have told the head of the department, Margaret Dinsmore, and you can chat with her for a little while about the work, but about yourself, what do you do with your free time?" And I said, well, one of the things that I most liked to do with my free time had to do with mountaineering and getting away from cities. "Oh," she said, "That's lovely. We have a member of our staff, Margaret Klausner, a member of the reference department, who is a big mountaineer, and you'd get along well."
When we parted and I'd taken my train back to San Francisco, I went to work immediately on my scheduled evening duty, and within the hour my mother telephoned to say there was a telegram offering me the job, so it was all done in the course of one day.
My duties were expected to be interchangeable--reference as well as cataloging--though I was a member of the catalog department. It was a small one: one head, one professional assistant, and one or two clerical people to do all the rest. Whenever the schedule required it, and that was often, there would be a telephone call from downstairs: "Please come down and spend some time at the reference desk." It was expected that the library school had prepared us for this kind of going
It made for very interesting assignments, especially for young librarians, because they could quickly see how the two functions were so very interdependent. The reference librarian could do his or her job most fully by having a very good understanding of what the catalog had to offer and the cataloger had, in a particular situation like mine, really the opportunity of seeing what good reference service did--[laughs]--that it was actually true that it was of use to the public and to the staff. So this same closeness of interest of catalogers and reference librarians exists in all kinds of libraries, but especially for staff at the levels of working at the desk it is a particularly attractive feature when one works with the whole, much more than is possible in large public as well as research institutions.
McCreery
So this just backs up your earlier point that a standard librarian's education was assumed of Cal graduates.
Cubie
That's right. They would fit into a public library with all of its concerns and all that meant, even for being quite ready to take over a branch and do whatever needed to be done there in the overall comprehensive picture, and to do this at any time without much special preparation in that institution. That was added to whatever library school could do for one, but the preparation was assumed. And of course the library school did then, through its visiting and part-time staff from the field, really make this possible.
McCreery
Were there any surprises in the job?
Cubie
No, I don't think so. I don't think that--again I think the representatives from the public library in my particular student year--as I've said Miss Anderson was herself a public librarian and would let us know whatever a teacher could impart. And the state library and the county library system were so very active, still. Mr. Henderson, John Henderson, came down in the spring semester to represent the interests of county libraries and we all had an opportunity to visit the state library and to visit county stations, as I've told you before. But at the same time, since no one knew what these young graduates would actually do in the future, every attention was given to the needs of university libraries, of research libraries. And that attitude that one does not know (one did not at that time, particularly, know since most students were young graduates and wide open to the future)--it
McCreery
Do you recall your salary at Sacramento Public?
Cubie
Yes, at Sacramento Public my salary was $115 a month. I remember that August Frugé, to whom I was married within two years, got $125 at the University of California. These sums, of course, were--you know, they're not great salaries, but it was possible to live on them. I remember as a student, if one put oneself--made a budget for a student for room and board, for whatever that took, a modest sum would be fifty dollars, but it was possible to live on fifty dollars.
Marriage to August Frugé; Working at Oakland Public Library
CubieSo with marriage two years later and my applications to the Oakland Public Library came an offer rather soon in the reference department. And once again, I remember in my interviews there, the fact that I had been a cataloger at Sacramento Public was a real recommendation to them.
But unfortunately, from the point of view of the work I was doing--which I enjoyed hugely because now I had full-time duty at the desk and, you know, the things that came to me were interesting questions. Working as a full-time staff member didn't last long because within six months my husband had an offer to become the order librarian at the state library, and back we went to Sacramento. I had hardly said goodbye--in fact, I hadn't said goodbye to everyone--when I said hello again. And we lived in Sacramento then for five years.
McCreery
Before we leave Oakland, could I hear just a little bit about the public library there and your position?
Cubie
My position as a member of the reference department was made especially interesting in carrying out the daily work by the fact that we were still in a very old and awkwardly arranged building. It was on Fourteenth Street, in a building that so far as I know still stands, or at least it did the last time--oh, some few years ago, now--a bus took me through that part of Oakland. A new library was hoped for but was not close to becoming a reality, so that meant that the stack arrangements, where to put an ever-growing collection, was a great problem. The books classified according to the Dewey Decimal system (the one most obviously adopted by any public library of any size),
The library was at that time headed by John Boynton Kaiser, who had come from the east and later went back to the East Coast--not so very long after that, as a matter of fact. It was a larger system than the Sacramento system, but in the short time I was there I did not think of it as being quite so lively and enterprising in extending itself toward the public, in publicizing its books and doing all the things--as I told you last time, like placing a display box on the corner. That seemed a very revolutionary idea. [laughs]
McCreery
In Sacramento.
Cubie
In Sacramento. So I felt that there was a difference that way in Oakland--very largely probably because of the constraints of being in a building that presented real problems.
McCreery
Were there other Cal alumni that you were acquainted with at Oakland Public?
Cubie
I can't really remember any. I think there should--I would expect there to have been and yet, not among the staff with whom I worked immediately. It's interesting, isn't it, because you would think that it would be so obvious. But Oakland had its own particular sort of civil service system. Like San Francisco, there was less immediately and less obviously a turning to the school as naturally as a library like Sacramento did, where appointments were made because the librarian made them on the recommendation of the library school. These things were very simple.
McCreery
Can you just expand on how the civil service system made it different for Oakland and San Francisco?
Cubie
Well, for one thing, civil service systems asked for examinations. You brought up state certification at some point. That question arose in the later years, years in which I was not active. But the requirement of a civil service examination, regardless of the sort of degree, certificate, or whatever a student brought, that put everything into rather a
McCreery
Now you said John Boynton Kaiser was heading the Oakland--
Cubie
Was the head of the library at that time, at the Oakland Public.
McCreery
Was that the person who hired you?
Cubie
No, I think--yes, certainly John Boynton Kaiser hired me, but I don't think I saw him personally. I think I was interviewed by the head of the department. I know I was. And when I had to say goodbye quite regretfully after a few months, since I was really just getting fully into the picture, there was a formal separation in which Mr. Kaiser actually took part and said a few kind words about my having to leave so soon. But the time wasn't long enough for me to really establish many lasting relationships to the staff in Oakland.
Returning to Sacramento, 1939; World War II Years
McCreeryWell, what happened next?
Cubie
Well, with coming back to Sacramento, then in December of 1939, my son was born and I was not for quite a long time--for years to come after that--actively seeking employment. But because the Sacramento library knew me well, I was asked, often enough, certainly, in most of those years for perhaps a week at a time, and at one time rather longer, to substitute for people who either got sick or were on leave. This was mostly in the reference department, again, but one time I remember Margaret Dinsmore, the head of the cataloging department, taking a leave of absence for as long as three months and I went back to help out during that period.
Had I sought employment--this is an interesting thing, again illustrating the problem about employment then--had I sought employment, I don't think that would have been possible
McCreery
Yes, I actually wanted to ask you about that very thing because events were building towards the war during this whole period we're talking about. What was your own reaction when war broke out in the fall of 1939?
Cubie
[sighs] Terror. I almost became sick with worry overnight because the news of the war--that is, not of our entering yet, but when the war broke out in Europe--because after that it seemed rather a foregone conclusion that at some time or another we would be involved.
It was a day at the World's Fair, at the fair on Treasure Island where we spent a whole lovely sunny September day, and right in the middle of this day there were loudspeakers announcing that the Germans had gone into Poland and Europe was at war. My reaction, of course, was one of terrible worry and apprehension because I was born nine months before the First World War, with all I told you before that that meant in my life, so I had a terrible impression and fear that this was the beginning of years of war. As it turned out, it was about the same number of years that the First World War had been carried on.
We just left the fair. I was too upset to stay. I don't mean I went to pieces, but I no longer could enjoy the fair. We went back to my parents' house in San Francisco and then went back to Sacramento. But as you know, then, there were two more years in which the war didn't actually--it wasn't brought home to us until Pearl Harbor and all that meant for civilian defense and all the things that one got involved in immediately.
And it also meant that it changed overnight the picture of women's employment. [laughs] New attitudes came about.
McCreery
How much of your family was still in Germany?
Cubie
No close family, except on my father's side a cousin, who had been a boy of two when we left Germany in 1930 and who was now in their military before the war ended. He was quite a young person even by the time the war was over. And an aunt and
McCreery
Yes. As a German immigrant, now living here--and were you a citizen by then?
Cubie
Yes, I was a citizen. I became a citizen after the prescribed number of years of applying. I was sixteen when we arrived, and I was twenty-one when I achieved my citizenship after the proper number of years of application. I couldn't actually apply, even, before I was eighteen because of some quirks in the law.
McCreery
Yes, we talked about that.
Cubie
Which I told you about before. So I became a citizen at just the right time for me, when I was in the library school, you see. And it was an important point--without citizenship I could not have worked for any city as I did after that, or any government jurisdiction, really. The university would have been different, later, but that was many years ahead.
So that worked out well. I was a citizen.
And as for public attitudes toward Germans, Italians--especially to Germans--in spite of the dreadful behavior, especially of the Hitler regime, the attitude toward people who were no longer part of that nation was not a bad one. There was a certain maturity about the whole problem, unlike the situation in the First World War when as I was told, anyone with a German name, even, would meet problems. I think it's probably the nation had gone through this experience once, and people rather learned that people must be met according to their present circumstances.
McCreery
Was there any change in those attitudes after the U.S. entered the war?
Cubie
Only for those who were not citizens. You see, that was very carefully differentiated. They were considered enemy aliens and there were curfews about their movements, but it was,
It was much worse, of course, for the Japanese-Americans. When we entered the war, it wasn't so much that citizens were going after citizens, but the great movement of preparing for concentration camps. We had in the library in Sacramento then a young Japanese-American girl working for us, a good friend of everyone. It was a very painful situation when she had to leave for the camp.
McCreery
Was there any talk of Mr. Frugé being called up?
Cubie
There was, and he was actually disqualified for health reasons. There was an examination and on the basis of that examination--he had a heart condition, which is a bad one now. It began to manifest itself somewhat later in life but was already apparently recognized by the examiners when he was called in and they classified him for the time being, at least, as--I think the classification was 4-F, which sent people back to civilian life for a while.
McCreery
Now you lived in Sacramento throughout the war, is that right?
Cubie
Not quite. In 1944, when my husband became interested in some extension of his book interests, bookish interests, he asked Mr. [Samuel] Farquhar what the possibilities might be for a librarian with considerable experience with the book world--whether there might be any possibility of being employed by the UC Press. And Mr. Farquhar said right away, "Yes, indeed. It's a very good connection. We already have people on the staff who are librarians and they fit very well in our editorial department, sales department. At the moment our sales department doesn't have a head and your experience is particularly right for that, but I'm also looking for an assistant manager who will share with me the many administrative duties." So he was asked to become assistant manager of the University Press. He started in October of 1944, so you see, it was still a considerable period before the end of the war. It was about nine months before, I think.
McCreery
Well, before we leave Sacramento--
Cubie
More than that! It was--yes, nine, ten months.
Life in Sacramento; Husband's Job at California State Library
McCreeryYes. Can you just tell me a little bit more about his job at the state library at Sacramento and whom he worked for and so on?
Cubie
He worked--it was a department directly under the library head--Miss Gillis, Mabel Gillis. He was independent as head of that department, again, rather like--for very different reasons--the small department for which I worked as a cataloger in Sacramento. There was the position as head of the department, one librarian as assistant and a lot of clerical help. And his duties were to select the books for the state library and to order, buy, and support the development of the collection. There were, of course, specialized departments like the California section. And all the historical specialties--the buying for them were influenced but not entirely the responsibility of that department. It was all, you know, the joint work of the head of the order department and the department heads of the different sections.
Neal Harlow, another graduate of our school of only a few years before us, was one of the people with whom he worked most intimately at that time. It was an encompassing job that, again, was so concerned with the whole, but with a small staff in total numbers quite unlike what he had done in the university library, with very much larger total holdings of the library and the way the work was carried on. The process of ordering and receiving and selection was comparatively small--but that was, in a way, the most attractive part of that job in Sacramento, that the job was complete in involving selecting the books and buying the books.
##
McCreery
I wanted to ask you what the city of Sacramento was like when you were living there in the late thirties and the early forties.
Cubie
Well kept, with rather a sense of being the state capital. That means well maintained in its landscaping, in the physical appearance of downtown streets, downtown buildings, city parks. There was a rather traditional pride cities took in looking good. And all the city departments--all the services of the city were really very well maintained under the city manager, who kept the city looking right and worthy of being the capital of the state. High-rise buildings were few at that time. I remember only two really large state office buildings having
Only the two new office buildings at that time had air-conditioning. That was something that was a new idea, very much appreciated by the people who worked there. But none of us--certainly the state library was not part of this; no one tried to introduce this kind of thing into the old buildings at all.
McCreery
Now Culbert Olson was the governor during much of that time you lived there. Was he much of a local figure, do you recall?
Cubie
Not really. I don't think--well, he may have been in many circles of which I was not aware, but in the general life of the city, you know, one hardly knew he was a governor [laughs] because it didn't much matter. The bureaucracy carried on very nicely--well organized, carrying out its function with some sense of a full-time participation and with a sense of its own dignity. It didn't seem to go very far outside the governor's --that is, the state capitol building, itself. And I really don't know enough about the staff of the state capitol to know what the feeling was there about the governor.
McCreery
Well, you mentioned I think in one of our early meetings that you and Mr. Frugé were involved in some kind of small publishing operation?
Cubie
No, we were not, but the library school--it was Mr. Farquhar's generous offer over some years, even preceding our class--and I think with Miss Sisler's active acceptance of this--that the book publishing process--the selection of a manuscript and preparing it for the press and producing a beautifully designed work--could be introduced to the students in their course, sort of as a side activity during their course in the "History of the Book" that Miss Sisler taught.
And so when it came to our year, we went through that same process with enthusiasm. The whole class entered into it because it was in a way part of the course, and we all took the "History of the Book" course. Our manuscript--let's see now, was that one of the--no, that was literature. Now, I'm mixing this one up with a later one.
Some years later when Charles Hamilton was in the school after I became a member of the staff, when he had been a member of the language school created for preparing personnel for possibly taking the war to Japan--in other words, the language school for the military. Because of that he knew a lot of Japanese and found a manuscript on Japanese papermaking. But that was at a later time. It just shows that we still carried on for some years this very nice custom of library school students learning something about publishing. That is, creating a book to be sold.
In this case of course it wasn't sold. The copies went to the members of the student body. In my year, interestingly, I can't remember what we produced; I only remember that a manuscript was found, and it was up to the student body to produce one and then Press staff was made available to take us through this process with different members of the class doing different things.
McCreery
Okay, well, we were talking off the tape a moment ago about the book collectors club that you belonged to in Sacramento, so perhaps I was mixing those two things up. That was really just a social group you described.
Cubie
Yes, yes, it was. It was a social group of bookish people, who much enjoyed talking about books. [laughs] But the activity and the amount of participation became reduced because of the demands of the war years. But, I should also say that that didn't mean that the war put an end to that club--it flourished for many years after that, but I was no longer in any way a witness to what was going on.
McCreery
Are there any titles that stand out in your mind?
Cubie
You mean in connection with the book club? No, because I don't think that we were involved with individual books or kinds of literature. It was really the idea of furthering the causes of publishing, of selling, of disseminating, of reaching the public. These things would be discussed informally, but it didn't then concern itself with actual collections or actual titles.
`
III Early Years on the School of Librarianship Faculty, 1947 to 1950s
Returning to the Bay Area, 1944; Publishing Job; An Offer to Join the School of Librarianship Faculty, 1947
McCreeryOkay, well, let's move on then. You've described how Mr. Frugé came to return to the Bay Area to work for UC Press, and maybe you can just describe when and how you moved as a family.
Cubie
We returned to Berkeley in '44. We changed houses within two years, having bought a house in order to live in Berkeley. And it was in the spring of 1947 that one night we had a dinner guest--a good friend, who quite recently resigned from the UC library staff--Barbara Cowles, a member of the serials department over many years. She had resigned to become the manager of a newly established rare book business carried on by Samuel Hume. It was called The Palindrome and it was operated by mail from his home.
The home was a fabulous and fascinating place known as "The Castle" on the very top of Buena Vista Way. It was built as one might almost say a copy--of no particular but in a general way architecturally put together like a Norman castle. To keep the illusion of the internal arrangements of a castle, bathrooms would be wedged nearly into walls and carefully hidden from view. It was furnished with antique furniture brought in from Europe by Mr. Hume and his wife all through the thirties as they built and furnished this place.
Barbara Cowles then said that among the books to be sold was a large collection from Sam's days as a theater director. There was a large theater arts collection, a working collection, and also of course representing his own interest in that whole field. It went back to the days of being a director in--I don't know, really where this was, except for our own Greek Theatre, which he directed for some years [1918-1923].
And so I began walking--partly going by bus on the Spruce Street bus that was still running--not bus, I'm sorry, streetcar--on Spruce Street, from our home on Vassar Avenue in Kensington. But much of this remained to be done on foot, straight up the hill from Spruce to Buena Vista Way and coming within a very short distance of Miss Coulter's house on Hawthorne Terrace. And when I happened to see her one morning and we stopped to chat, she asked me why she had seen me walk up the hill so many times recently. I told her why. And so probably about as soon as I had finished this job--and it took several weeks of going up just for the morning to unpack the books and compile my catalog--my husband returned one day to say that Mr. Danton had asked him if I might be interested in joining Miss Markley in the teaching of cataloging. The position of laboratory assistant was not permanently filled; they were still looking for someone. Miss Coulter had wondered, since I obviously had been working, whether I might be interested in entering more permanent employment.
So with that recommendation and that offer coming to me informally, we talked about it and I thought the whole idea was really quite wonderful, especially because we could wait until the fall semester began, this being probably along about May of 1947. And so that is how I came back into the school roughly ten years after I had graduated.
McCreery
Oh, now, just to make sure I understand--since returning to Berkeley, other than this publishing project, you had mostly been staying home caring for your son and had not been working?
Cubie
That's right. My first entry into any kind of employment, and this was of course very much part time but a very interesting job, was in the spring of 1947. But there had been in the intervening years in Sacramento a fair number of times when I was asked to come and help out in the library. At no time was I asking to do it, but because they knew me well I was a natural person to turn to. And I was glad to do it. So there was never any break altogether with keeping somewhat connected with libraries, but it was very intermittent, of course. And it was all, again, in the public library picture.
Had you missed working?
Cubie
Had I missed working? No, because like all young mothers--and especially in my case with a son whose care was rather more demanding; he had a birth brain injury that gradually revealed itself as being a special problem--I was really very much taken up by home duties and not actively thinking about what I wasn't doing until I entered it, whenever that was. Whenever I was asked to come and substitute in any of these roles I had before at the library I was very glad to do it; I stepped simply from one role to another whenever that was indicated.
McCreery
Well, thank you for setting the stage. Well, tell me about when you went to see Miss Markley about this job. Were you meeting her for the first time?
Cubie
No, upon the retirement of Miss Sisler and Mr. Mitchell in 1946, the new faculty--at least the core faculty, then--assembled in 1946 and all interested librarians had a chance to meet them at the California Library Association annual meeting. It was at Coronado that particular year, in the great hotel at Coronado. And of course my interest and ongoing social involvement with librarians continued, very largely because now my husband was still very connected with the library world because of his work as a publisher. And we not only had librarian friends in Berkeley and around other parts of California, but we always attended the meetings of the California Library Association. And that particular year there was great curiosity about the new people in the library school.
The connections between the people in the field and the school were always very close. It was certainly true in the years up to the war--but even more so as the school grew in the post-war years--that California librarians relied on the library school for new blood and in turn the library school had very close relations with the field.
So there was a reception. And the library school faculty was on view, so we all met briefly. I had seen Miss Markley and Mr. Danton and in the course of the year Mr. [LeRoy Charles] Merritt came as associate dean, right along with Danton that year, so we had all met.
Status of the School After Ten Years Away
CubieBut then after it was suggested by Miss Coulter that I might be interested, after I said yes I would be, I had a little visit with Miss Markley, who made me very welcome. And when I then actually appeared in the autumn of 1947, I felt that the situation was physically very familiar.
The school was in the same quarters, there was the same enormous room with fifty desks, but immediately it became obvious that there were more people. There were more students, there was more faculty, and the offices were shared. Miss Markley's office in that wing I described to you had her desk, a smaller desk appropriate for the assistants--the revisers--that was the technical description of what I was doing--was right next to hers; opposite was Miss Coulter's desk, facing. Miss Coulter was still with us two years until her retirement. On that side was Mr. Merritt, and next to me over there was Barr Tompkins. All the new faculty, except for the dean, who had his own office and administrative office, were all very close together. And except for Mr. Carleton Joeckel, for whom an office was made. Really a little wing was created for him--well, a small office, fenced off, so to speak--I can't think of a better word--off that great room, in one corner.
This was one of the immediate changes after 1946, that public librarianship was going to have its own full-time representative on the faculty. The California public librarian continued to have plenty of attention, and it was now a full-time appointment. And later when after only a few years Mr. Joeckel left for health reasons, Edward Wight took on that role--
McCreery
Representing public librarianship?
Cubie
Representing public librarianship with very happy relations with the librarians in the field. So, a lot of full-time attention was now given to that phase. At the same time, research libraries, academic librarianship, was the primary interest of the dean, of the associate dean.
And as no doubt Mr. Danton will have told you and will tell you again, this was an entirely new era of student body expansion. The employment picture changed so completely between before the war, and again during the war when all efforts went in another direction, and now after the war. Great growth was planned. The restriction to fifty students had been dropped for some time, because really for a while
The Ph.D. degree was to be introduced when possible. And this meant also that among the manifestations of that great effort to grow and to add--but at the same time to give full attention to all the different phases of librarianship as before--but with an enlarged staff, with the more specialized courses to be introduced, especially with more advanced courses even to the Ph.D. level.
The Library School Library
CubieWhat I saw as a real change when I reentered the quarters of the school was a library school library at the end of that wing, also taken out of another corner of that enormous room that had the cataloging laboratory. Kathrine [Green Thayer] Dolliver was the library school librarian who preceded Virginia Pratt. And the idea of having a branch library developed, including everything from book arts to librarianship and all that meant, was one in support of this still-to-be-developed-and-enlarged program of the school.
McCreery
Whose idea was the separate reading room that later became the library school library?
Cubie
It wasn't a separate--well, yes it was. There was a little space, but it was really a matter of collecting, enlarging, and most of all bringing together as a branch library those books that had to do with history of the book--with all the bibliographical concerns of librarianship--to bring them together in one collection, having them in a convenient place for our students to use.
For the first time, in this phase of the school compared with the earlier one, it was assumed that there would be much reading, that students would go beyond the more immediate instruction and become acquainted with the resources of the library and how library work was carried on. Reliance on a library was what was assumed, and so it was built up. It was in only a corner of that room because the total space, of course, of the building could never be changed. A little
McCreery
Do you know where the idea came from to have a branch library?
Cubie
I would think that it would be occurring to the people who were looking toward advanced degrees, on the one hand, but also by people like Miss Markley who would assume that her field would be represented very much more in the national literature, used by students much more actively as part of their instruction.
McCreery
Are you aware to what extent there were other specialized branch libraries on the campus at that time?
Cubie
Oh, all along. I would say that after the great Doe library was built, very soon the great buildings that went up in the 1920s would have their own library with their own special fields represented. For instance, when I was an undergraduate, the Life Sciences Building had just been built and so that the life science library was put there. The chemistry department--it wasn't only that there were small informal libraries kept by faculties in their own quarters at that time, but with the University library, with all the many academic specialties created, especially in the sciences, this was particularly necessary. Of course it wasn't so much in the humanities; the main library was the place there, but no, branch libraries were not only well under way but established. I think there were--in most of the years I was in the school--a total number of libraries well over twenty. Over all those decades, from early in the century, the School of Education had its own library, even. But they were all branch libraries, belonging under the total administration of the University library.
McCreery
Well, how was the new library school library received by the faculty?
Cubie
Well, you mean by the faculty over all the university or our faculty? Because of course it wasn't the idea of the library at all; it was the idea of the faculty to ask for it. It was created for the sake of the student body, and after a while when it became well established, people who were interested in book arts or any other part of the book world would go to that branch library as they did later in South Hall when the library had the south end of the ground floor; it naturally grew and developed. But the idea of having one was entirely in support of our changing program of the school and of its growth.
McCreery
Okay. Do you recall your early impressions of Miss Markley?
Well, I had a few thoughts about saying something about her, of course, but also I would just like to say how in reentering the school as now a member of the instruction staff, in the structure of the cataloging courses given, there seemed to be absolute continuity with what I had known before when I was a student. There were lectures followed by lab sessions twice a day, two hours each. But the changes in student body and Miss Markley's teaching style and method were very obvious, too. They were very much felt.
Changes to the Student Body of the School
##
CubieFirst of all, there were changes in the student body, partly because of their own makeup. With all figures removed as to how many students we would take, we took as many as wanted to come. Immediately after the war, demand increased. Returning veterans with the benefit of the G.I. Bill were coming to us. Suddenly there were a large number of men entering the school. And for a while, at least for a year or two after that, perhaps, in the late forties, there were more men than women in the class. That picture changed. The average age of the class rather increased.
Before then, as I said earlier, all the graduates with a handful of exceptions were very young and just out of school, wide open to whatever was going to come along. But with the average age going up, there was more life experience among the students. In quite a few cases, students came from earlier occupations from which they decided to go into something else, so altogether there were more mature expectations of their new profession. While there were, of course, still quite young people who just liked the idea of becoming librarians (Sheila Dowd was a good example--she was in my very first class of 1947-48), there were people like Andrew Horn, a very serious student who had come to us from teaching of history. He hadn't liked it because of large classes--very large classes--being offered "recordings," records or tapes of instructors' recorded lectures, by the instructor, and Andy wasn't getting near the students very often. So that with all the opportunities suddenly presenting themselves in going on with their education, or reeducation in some cases, there was a new student body with a new attitude.
McCreery
Were these changes positive?
Well, yes, they were very positive. There was nothing wrong with the earlier situation, but it was simply a matter of the young graduates--directly out of school going into the next program--were eager, young, and wide open to whatever was offered. There was no critical awareness of what was happening to them because they really didn't know. I was really one of them. [laughs]
Now you had quite a few students who were interested in librarianship but met the new field and the new faculty and the way things were conducted with a great deal more mature expectation of how they might fit in and how it would fit in with what they had been doing before.
Ethelyn Markley's Teaching of Cataloging and Classification
CubieNow to all this Miss Markley brought some really wonderful new things. I don't mean altogether new as compared with the past, but first of all she brought a wealth of experience in the totality of librarianship. She had worked as a public librarian in charge of small libraries as well as working in larger ones, she had worked in academic libraries, she had worked in special libraries. Cataloging had been her major field.
McCreery
Do you know where she came from directly to Berkeley?
Cubie
She came from---I think it was at that point the University of Oklahoma. She had a very amusing little tale of her first connection [laughs], briefly only, as an applicant with our library school. When she was looking for a school to come back to for her master's degree, not many years before, but some years before, she'd applied to Berkeley and Berkeley had not accepted her. And she said, "So they took me in later as a faculty member. There are different ways of being accepted at Berkeley." [laughter]
The other thing she brought and that was in some ways not new but very much expanded over the way it had been the years before, she was a very active participant in the committee work of the American Library Association, that is, specifically of the cataloging section. And as a result of that, she had a very large and cordial relationship to librarians nationwide. This was also particularly true with Library of Congress staff, again in the technical services division. Her commitment to the field of cataloging was absolute, as had been Miss
She much enjoyed the exchanges with students in the laboratory sessions, in which at the beginning she was still very active herself. After I joined her I would do more and more of that for her--that was the reason for my coming--but in the earlier period when everything was still becoming established on the new postwar basis, both of us were very much involved in helping the students in their laboratory work. At the same time, her office was wide open to students coming in to chat. And as a result of all this, she knew the students as individuals, as I don't think anyone ever did in the totality of the student body before or since. And with it she brought a particular discernment in how each student would fit in.
She was extremely popular. She was a most attractive person. She had, you might say, everything that was needed for fulfilling the functions of an excellent instructor. And I think this was partly personal and partly from having a very good background.
Duties of the Reviser
McCreeryYou described the duties of the reviser when you were a student and Miss Bronstein had the job--how did they change by the time you started working there?
Cubie
When Miss Bronstein was there, she would bring in the books selected--no doubt by Miss Sisler herself, though Miss Bronstein, obviously behind the scenes, had assisted her in much of this, but we were never aware of the extent to which they collaborated. Our work was so carefully prepared with each lesson, as I said to you the last time, building little by little--as was always the case, of course, but particularly with Miss Sisler--for that day's laboratory work, that in my year I remember Miss Bronstein as being there but not approached very often by any of us with questions we felt we had to ask. That may have changed over time and perhaps more in the years after I was away, I don't know. But her particular function, as was mine, was to revise all of these masses of laboratory work that came in each day, which in turn
The pattern hadn't changed, but the questions that had to be asked and the puzzling things that arose were very, very much more a problem later. It was partly so because there were no printed codes available that would help students through their own questions. The teachers more and more in the ensuing years had to make up the difference of interpreting what was going on in national cataloging at the Library of Congress and in all of the agencies that produced books and built collections. The personal presence of the teacher or assistant in the laboratory session was very much more required in those years than earlier.
And if you have the time, I could give you just a bit of history to tell you why this was so in the field of cataloging. But before we do, what was I doing when I first joined her? I was revising, as Miss Bronstein had done. Miss Markley would review the work. But one of my earliest assignments was to build--almost to rebuild--the practice collection because of a very curious [sighs] incident in the changeover from one faculty member to another. Miss Sisler, for reasons no one ever really knew, seemed to think that she had the practice collection--the typical books that would illustrate cataloging problems--on loan somehow from the library, and as she retired, she would have to return them to the stacks. And that is what was done.
When Miss Markley came there was really nothing for her, and that was a very difficult situation for her for a while. A year had gone by. She had approached the loan stack people quickly, and with their cooperation some of these things could be reconstituted, but it wasn't entirely along even by the time I came the next year. So one of my first jobs was to build up a new practice collection. [laughs]
There was a wonderful relationship at that time between us and the library. We were on that floor I told you about, on the second floor. Between that wing in which we had our offices and the laboratory space and the classroom, and then the corridor that would go to the loan hall, right in the middle of this wing, behind the depository catalog shelves, was a small door about a yard and a half wide and not very high, to which I was given a key on trust. The loan people just gave me this key and I could walk into the stacks and help myself in the duplicates to whatever I needed, you see, so this was a wonderful source of materials.
And as for the practice collection and our building of it, this over many years became more and more of an ongoing problem because as the student body grew, there were many more sections, and much more laboratory work going on in total over many years. We even at one point bought some books, duplicates of books in some cases, just to make sure that there would be enough to go around. The cataloging laboratory practice collection was one of importance and had to be constantly maintained--like a book collection in a library but for somewhat different reasons. So that was one of my first jobs and a very enjoyable one.
History of Cataloging and Library of Congress System, 1870s to 1940s
CubieI said I would say a little about something historical. And it shouldn't take very long, but it explains something about why teachers had to make themselves so much more available in interpreting how students should proceed in learning the process of cataloging for all kinds of libraries--but of course, always with that emphasis on the research library because that is where most original cataloging processes would be carried on and to which the preparation should lead them.
When we talked some time ago about Mr. Rowell becoming librarian in 1875, that was just one year before the centennial of the United States. The nation celebrated in St. Louis with enormous pride and enthusiasm. It was planned to show just how far the nation had come, and progress in public education was one of the particular sources of pride. Something had to be brought together to demonstrate to the citizens what had happened, and so the U.S. Bureau of Education prepared some exhibits and reports and published them in a large volume called Public Libraries in the United States of America. It was a hefty volume. The Library School Library had it when it had its own collection. It was fabulous to look at. But with it went a second volume, a very slim one, that was called Rules for a Printed Dictionary Catalog by Charles Ammi Cutter. I've mentioned this before.
McCreery
Yes.
Cubie
He was the librarian of the Boston Athenaeum. This set of rules set forth in a comprehensive way what made a good catalog design. It concerned itself with the whole range of construction of a dictionary catalog--how to choose the entry
But to get back to 1876, it was also the year in which the American Library Association was founded. Its concern with cataloging and classification was most prominent at that time. Libraries were growing rapidly, so that the advantage of codifying experience of libraries and providing solutions to common problems was appreciated. The cataloging activity then of many people making separate decisions in an ongoing way that would build into an instrument that was expected to last was taken very seriously. And committees within the American Library Association were established soon to think about these problems.
A third occurrence, not at the time of the centennial, but only about twenty years later, was the move of the Library of Congress staff and collection into its present building. And with that came the need for a new systematic classification, the Library of Congress classification. Its new availability became, of course, the answer to why Mr. Rowell, for example, gave up what he had devised for his own library. And equally important was the beginning of a new dictionary catalog, this one on printed cards. And since it no sooner was started, the library made available from 1901 its printed cards to all the libraries in the country, that was an important date, certainly.
The very next year the Library of Congress began its depository system, really primarily for reasons of its own, but of course there was a great benefit to libraries around the country. It was really a kind of insurance policy against the possibility of destruction, that library having been burned in the first half of the nineteenth century three times.
They placed these printed cards in carefully separated geographic centers throughout the country, but of course the libraries that had these depository catalogs could then use them for all of their own uses and benefits and so in that way the establishment by the Library of Congress of its new procedures was also spreading the benefit of centralized services. These only grew over time, with other new and very
As for size, the Library of Congress in its new building wasn't much over a million volumes, considered huge at that time. Within twenty years or about that, it had gone to fourteen million and continued going strong after that.
Now it was Cutter's rules that were the basis of the standard and structure for the Library of Congress and for other libraries, but the problem of how to carry on responsibility was now divided between the American Library Association committees and the Library of Congress, with its tremendously growing function of looking after their own collection, first of all, but also with the growing responsibility of providing centralized cataloging for other libraries.
Revision--or shall we say simply development of the code was primarily the responsibility of the American Library Association. An expanded code was needed with growing collections, and it was felt that it should be much expanded, and committees went to work on it. It took until 1949 for this work to actually become available to librarians--a code that was now printed and intended to guide the catalogers through the problems they had to solve.
In the history of the school there was a long period in which nothing was there, really, that the students could turn to except what teachers could provide in what they knew about the Library of Congress practice, what original cataloging meant, how the library was going about revising its own practices. The Library of Congress did gradually change its concentration on very close bibliographic description--as had been the custom in all the years I described previously--to what was to be a somewhat more simplified record, though it never became simple--but a reduced attention to bibliographic minutiae. The Library of Congress rules for descriptive cataloging, as they developed in that period of about the next fifty years, was published in that same year as a new code was finally coming out [from the American Library Association] in '49. The problem was it was not a comprehensive code. It was not like Cutter's--one that a student could hold and refer to in the totality of the cataloging function. The Library of Congress' descriptive rules were very complex by now, though
The rules for entry and headings that came from the American Library Association committees were not received with enthusiasm by librarians because they were considered over-complicated. Although they had been asked to be expanded, it was always a difficult thing to do well and therefore they had become too complex and difficult to follow, in fact. And a new code revision committee was set to work immediately in 1949 to do something about what was considered really very unsatisfactory. The result of that did not become available until 1967, with a code this time that did take care and did meet the objections to the 1949 code, and at the same time was based on a plan guided by statements of principles. That was a tremendous improvement over what had happened before.
But that was another twenty years ahead, so that the publication, finally, of the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules--Anglo-American because our library association and the British library association had always collaborated on their common interests--meant that for the first time now when this code became available to students, it was possible for them to refer to something that they could study themselves, that they could follow, that they could look up in their work. Until then it meant that the cataloging staff really had to bridge the difference--from experience, from keeping in touch with what was going on at the Library of Congress and in all the cooperative cataloging endeavors nationwide. So the atmosphere in cataloging instruction, especially in laboratory instruction, changed.
That answers your question in a very long way, really, [laughs] about how it was in these years before the war and on the very much more expanded scale, also, of dealing with a very much larger student body already having rather mature expectations of a new profession.
The School of Librarianship's Student Body, 1940s to 1960s
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CubieThe student body age limit was removed. The number of students accepted just grew and grew. There came a time in the 1960s when as many as 120, 130 new students would be accepted if the qualifications were right. They had to have, first of all, the academic qualifications that made them right for the school, and many of them brought professional experience, occupational
Generally they would start out thinking it might be in their own field. This sometimes happened, and sometimes not. We had, for example, the librarian appointed by the University of San Francisco--the Jesuit school. He would come to the school to find how to build and run his library. There was also a nun from the campus of Notre Dame. What is it now? Down the Peninsula--what is the place?
McCreery
College of Notre Dame?
Cubie
College of Notre Dame, Sister Justine. She was in the same class, as it turned out, with Father Monihan, in that year. People would come from journalism, from business, from the news world--I mentioned that before--and all sorts of things, who for one reason or another were looking for a second career.
Or some time later in life, women would return after raising their families. One of them particularly, many years later, was Theodora Hodges, who was a mother of four children, but that was many years later when we'd already moved to South Hall. As a mother of four children, she thought becoming a school librarian would be just the thing but quickly changed her mind because her own mental tendencies were more toward putting things in order. She liked the cataloging processes and she went quickly in the direction of technical services. She stayed to work for a Ph.D. degree and became associate dean of the school for a while. Of all these people there were not only young adults, but often adults of more mature age.
McCreery
What about the proportion of men students and women--how had that changed?
Cubie
The proportion of men changed abruptly with the return of veterans, but it had already begun to increase somewhat, as I said, in the mid-thirties. In my class of fifty there were ten, but they were still considered a rather special group and therefore of special interest to Mr. Mitchell, as I mentioned before. He interested himself in their progress through the profession later on. John [Mackenzie] Cory was an example of this. He went to the American Library Association as executive
The proportion of men was still small, but it increased rapidly and it remained after that--as a sort of not exactly half and half but very nearly so--as it does now, I would think. I mean, I've not looked at the student body sitting together, but I imagine it remains a good mix of men and women who enter schools.
McCreery
Now in those first few years that you returned to campus in the late forties, were the graduates finding jobs after they finished?
Cubie
They found them and with increasing facility. So many students were admitted precisely because now there was enormous growth in demand. After the war that ended the Depression, and with all sorts of continuing contributions made by government to scholarship, to publication--all the special appropriations by Congress, even the Library Services Act many years later--that kind of thing--produced huge literatures with libraries collecting on a large scale. Everything grew and there were many years in which we couldn't produce enough librarians. That's why we admitted so many.
And in the sixties, particularly, I would say there were quite some years in which librarians would come to visit us to see about interviewing students and hoping to have them join their staff--the exact reverse of those days I described earlier. So that, yes, the employment opportunities remained good--excellent. [laughs]
And that is why so many people with previous experience and at all ages came to the school to prepare themselves to enter such a field. It seemed to have an attraction to people with all kinds of background.
One student, I suddenly remember, was so serious about her volunteering as a librarian--she came to us in the mid- sixties--that she felt that only the best and the most complete preparation would qualify her. She took a degree in our school so that she could be a good volunteer librarian. [laughs] I've never heard of volunteers in any endeavor who would go to that much trouble to prepare themselves. She took the degree. She enjoyed doing it, actually. She was obviously an extraordinary person in several ways, but there was a lot of work and much was demanded always, and she just did it all so that she would be a good, well-prepared volunteer in medical
Deanship of J. Periam Danton
McCreeryVery much so. Well, many of these changes that were coming about naturally after the war coincided with the fact that the library school had this new dean--J. Periam Danton. And you've talked a little bit about the changes. Can you just talk a little bit about your early impressions of him and how his style and philosophies may have differed from those of Mr. Mitchell, to the extent that you know?
Cubie
I think I couldn't pursue this with a great deal of meaning because Mr. Mitchell was away in my year, so how he conducted himself as a hands-on dean, I really don't know. In the same way, I could observe Mr. Danton as a very enterprising, relatively young man full of new plans, new ideas, bringing new blood, bringing ideas from the east with him from his own grounding in librarianship.
University of Chicago's higher degrees were so very much more of interest that he probably spent much of his time and energy earlier on along these two endeavors: changing the degree structure to the professional master's degree from the certificate (and that was, of course, never an easy and quick thing to accomplish because the university takes its time and goes thoroughly about these processes) and establishing the Ph.D. program and all the specialization that came with that.
Recalling Miss Coulter's Death; Stories of Her Childhood
CubieMy own work brought me very much closer, at all times, not only to Miss Markley but of course to the teachers of reference. In the beginning that was still Miss Coulter, herself, who had her own desk in that office we all shared. Upon her retirement we put a desk for Miss Coulter into my office, so that she could continue to come to the school every day. (Office space had increased with our move into the old Bancroft Library quarters on the fourth floor of Doe.)
McCreery
And she did that?
Oh, she did that. Until she died, the way she conducted her life and her interests never changed. She came to The Bancroft Library for a part of each morning and then for the rest of the morning she would come to the library school. She continued some work on her bibliographical interests and California history, and then went to the Women's Faculty Club for lunch, much of the time with Miss Markley and me. So she remained very close, and she remained close until she died at the age of eighty-three, very suddenly.
She was taken out for a drive with her sister by an alumna of the school on a Sunday morning, and within the first hour she decided that she'd rather like to go home, she wasn't feeling well. And she just died at the curb before she reentered her house. It was as sudden as that.
McCreery
What a loss.
Cubie
It was. It was and it was sudden. Her sister--they had never been separated except for such time as one being in library school in the east and the other was in the west. They always shared the same household. They were the two daughters of a mother who was widowed very early, and both became librarians. Miss Mabel Coulter had gone to the [California] State Library school early in the century--actually, not long after Edith graduated from Albany. For many years she was librarian at UC's Lange Library (Education). The sisters built a house together with their mother in the late twenties on Hawthorne Terrace in Berkeley.
I had a dinner guest, I remember--a neighbor from across the street--on that evening. It was a Sunday when Mabel telephoned to say, "My sister has left me." And I offered to come over. She was not far from my house, really, and so I went over for much of that night into the early morning hours. Mabel, unlike her very outgoing communicative sister, was a rather quiet person, but that night she never stopped talking, just reminiscing about life with her sister and so excited and just wanting to talk.
One thing I particularly remember--and again it's about Edith, but it's so revealing of the two personalities. And Mabel knew that, that's why she told me the story.
They were born in Salinas, in a house that was later sold to the city for erecting the public library (not of the present time, but of the preceding public library building of that city).
When they were small girls--I think Mabel said that she was about seven and her sister was five--very young, but I think that was the figure, exactly--her mother asked Mabel as the seven-year-old to go at some distance--Salinas was small then so it wouldn't have been much of a problem to go to a house of someone else in the city--to deliver a message. Mabel was not very happy about having to deliver messages, [laughs] so her little sister said, "Mother, if you let me go along with Mabel, if she takes care of the dogs, I'll do the talking," because all their lives Edith was rather fearful of some of the possible physical threats that the environment might produce. Mabel was a resolute woman who I think managed the household probably rather more than her sister. But it was Edith [laughs] who enjoyed, even from early childhood, the communication part of life. And of course that then was very important to her work later as a reference librarian and as a teacher.
The School of Librarianship Moves to the Former Bancroft Space
CubieSomething I was going to say about the changes in the quarters of the school--if that's all right, next--although we can go back to whatever else you have in mind--
McCreery
That's fine.
Cubie
Because it was within a very few years, in 1950, that the library annex was finished. And with it The Bancroft Library moved into that annex and vacated the fourth floor of the Doe building, which was a very narrow space, roughly like the wing two floors below, taking up approximately the space, or at least much of that space, that we had on the second floor for the library school. When all those moves were taking place, it became necessary to the Doe Library to expand and rearrange its own space on the second floor. The space offered to us was the old Bancroft Library space on the fourth floor. These arrangements were obviously important to the library and therefore there was no question of our remaining on the second floor, but it was not particularly convenient to us. It didn't matter a great deal, because in truth, it doesn't matter as much to an academic department or any kind of department doing its work as it did to the library.
So we moved upstairs with the result that we now had more faculty office space, but there was no space up on the fourth floor for a classroom. And because we needed a larger
But the greatest change was for Miss Markley's and my work, and that was the laboratory space. The old desks had to go. [laughs] We no longer had an enormous room. We were given instead a not-very-large room at the end of our wing on the fourth floor looking to the west. The desks were replaced by typewriter tables. Students still had typewriters because for a long time the work of doing full cataloging records in the complete style that would be exactly like the product of the Library of Congress--that went on all through Miss Markley's years. That later changed, for reasons I'll go into sometime later, when we moved to South Hall and when Miss Markley had retired. Besides typewriters there was a little space on which students would have to work.
It was a rather restricted space for us compared with what we had. There was more office space, but not so much of the classroom and laboratory space. Eventually when South Hall was refurbished and there was the big question of what to do with it and who should use it, there was great rejoicing when the school was finally chosen to occupy South Hall because that was an enormous opportunity for--not so much classroom space, but for students' study and laboratory space for the reference and cataloging courses.
McCreery
Well, once the library school moved to the fourth floor, what other classroom space did the school have other than what you just described for cataloging?
Cubie
Classroom space for lectures or for actual class meetings were in a good-sized room--I think it had once been the room that held the map collection. It was a large room, probably twice the size of the classroom we had had on the second floor for actual class meetings. It was sometime later that centrally assigned lecture rooms would be on campus somewhere--wherever we would have to go, especially as classes got really big--but that was in the future. We still had a student body of a size that you could bring together in the same room from year to year. Now we had a room considerably larger than the original one, but separate from our total space.
McCreery
But all the courses were still held in the Doe library building?
Cubie
In the Doe library building until we removed into South Hall in 1970.
Changes to the Curriculum and Faculty, 1940s to 1950s
McCreeryOkay. Can you comment on any other changes to the total library school curriculum when you arrived as opposed to when you'd been there as a student?
Cubie
Academic librarianship, special librarianship, and all of these fields that the new faculty brought with them, which of course had long been important to librarianship--but now courses were offered that would go entirely in the direction of the specific literature. The courses offered were of a more specialized nature, with a view always toward giving more scope to those students who were planning advanced degrees. That is because Mr. Danton came, he was filled with particular fervor in that direction. When new faculty joined the school, it was always with a view of what they could bring to the Ph.D. program as much as to the first-year program. I think that was an obvious difference.
Also new was the full-time nature of Mr. Joeckel's and later Mr. Wight's appointment. Also the faculty that replaced Miss Coulter after her retirement (and there were several of them)--as the student body grew. In the very first year after her retirement, no one had yet been selected to join the faculty permanently, so there was a temporary replacement for Miss Coulter, Tom Shaw of the reference department of the Library of Congress, who brought with him an enormous experience in that center of librarianship and who also was very happy to continue Miss Coulter's kind of instruction. They became marvelous friends. For Miss Coulter this was particularly good, as it was for all of us. We all enjoyed Tom Shaw in that first year because he very much enjoyed her, she enjoyed him, and it made her retirement, an easing over into a new role, so much more attractive.
The year after that three new teachers were hired: Fred [Fredric John] Mosher, Will Ready, and Reuben Peiss, who would be the person, again, with the specialty courses in mind. He was a person who brought particular scholarly qualifications, but who regrettably was an ill man and didn't live more than about a year--the only death we ever had in the library school, you know, of a quite young man. He was probably in his forties, then.
But the other two, Fred Mosher and Will Ready, were to replace Miss Coulter in her reference courses. You see, there now were two, which indicates something about how large the
Mr. Ready did not stay long in the school because Stanford University offered him a job to head the order department after a couple of years or so. Then Fred Mosher took over the whole, to be joined later by Mr. [Ray E.] Held. At the time this was going on, it was a bit of a worry for the students having two different instructors, because Mr. Mosher was just as systematic and thorough and absolutely committed to making sure that there was nothing about bibliography and reference that the students had not thoroughly mastered before they got finished. [laughs] Mr. Ready was also a reference librarian of much experience, but he was also an author of science fiction. He was a poetically inclined man. He was a man of tremendous wit and humor and we all loved him. And so did the students, but it was very clear soon, and it worried the students, that what they learned about reference books and about American bibliography from Mr. Ready was somewhat limited compared with what Mr. Mosher had to offer, because Ready's experience had been in Ireland, in Canada before he came to us. And he presented what he knew best, and he thought that was just fine. [laughs]
I don't think it ever occurred to him at any time that in some ways he was shortchanging our students a bit. It was completely unintended, but I remember the fact that there was quite a divergence between the two presentations, and that was worrying to the students. They compared what was happening in one kind of assignment--especially in the laboratories as they developed--with another and found they were not entirely happy about it.
It was also that kind of experience with the students' attitudes that later had something to do with the faculty as a whole readily accepting the idea of my--after quite some years of having absorbed every nuance of Miss Markley's courses and assisting in them, it was agreed that perhaps the best way to provide for larger classes core instruction would be just my taking on half of hers instead of going outside and having again that divergence of teaching styles which is not comfortable in a small student body where the same kind of content and the same results are expected, without the problem of having quite different teachers who will naturally present somewhat different emphases, even if their background is very similar, as it wasn't in the case of the reference courses.
I don't think that was on anyone's mind consciously, but I think it certainly had an influence on my doing what we'll talk
My first classification in the university was one of librarian. You know, my administrative staff appointment was that. And it was only along about 1960 when we made the changeover to my joining the faculty.
McCreery
Okay, well, that's actually a good stopping place for today, and we'll talk more about your different levels of employment over time. That's a good subject to bring up again. Thank you.
Further Recollections of Edith Coulter and Her Stories
We said that we would start today talking a little bit about this color photograph that you've just handed me, taken--on the back it says 1963--a photo you took yourself of Edith Coulter and her sister.
Cubie
Of Edith Coulter and her sister, Mabel.
McCreery
What can you tell me about this?
Cubie
It was in front of their house. We obviously must have been going by. They were near neighbors living on Hawthorne Terrace while I was on LeRoy Avenue, and it was one of the days we were probably going to have a meal together somewhere, so I took the opportunity of taking a little photo of them on a sunny morning, looking the way they always did when they left the house, especially Edith. A lady of her time and station would never leave the house without a hat and gloves. And fortunately the sun shines on their faces enough that the features are rather, you know--being a small color photo, they're quite recognizable, aren't they?
McCreery
Yes, it's rather clear. Well, thank you for offering to donate this photo to the collection.
Cubie
You're quite welcome. And the thing last time we were rather alluding to were the stories that her students and so many other people who had a chance to listen to Edith enjoyed. So many of her stories were stories of small incidents, really, but what made them such a joy was the way she was relishing the
One of the stories--and there are two--is there time for two?
McCreery
Yes.
Cubie
One of the stories--it's the smaller one--[laughs] is the one that brings out the way she dressed--hat and gloves. She had some reason for visiting the University of Illinois and one morning took the streetcar out to Urbana. And that apparently was a long streetcar ride of maybe the better part of an hour--an interurban sort of thing as I understand it. As she entered the streetcar, she found herself the only other passenger with a large number of young men--a band of quite of few instruments--also on their way to the campus. And in all the time she sat there, they smiled at her, gave her a place to sit, and they practiced away at whatever they were going to do later that day.
And at that point Edith [in the story] would do the characteristic things: she would make a small gesture and you would get the idea about what the trombone was doing and what other instruments might be doing.
When they got to the campus, a large number of students came rushing out to meet the streetcar, so obviously the band was expected--she had no idea what for--but the doors opened and the students very politely held back to let the lady descend. So the lady did. She said, "I descended and the students looked at me in great expectation, so I bowed to the left and I bowed to the right, and just walked away."
The band began playing and also leaving the streetcar. And she has no idea what happened after that, but she saw a copy of the student newspaper the next day, which said there had been a visit by Mrs. Calvin Coolidge the day before. [laughter]
And you see, when Miss Coulter told this tale, and all of us knowing her well, one could sort of see how her particular kind of dignity and her particular attire would make the students wonder, "Who is this lady?" You know, the only other visitor besides the band behind her.
The other story has been known as the Washington's birthday story. Edith found herself on Washington's birthday in Washington--probably on her first visit there--with a cousin from New York, a woman cousin. The two of them were going to spend a few days in Washington. And of course, that's a popular date to go and see Mount Vernon. And it was also the obvious thing, she said, then, to take a boat out.
They went rushing onto the pier and were just a little late and noticed the boat was just about ready to leave. And there was no time to get a ticket, so they rushed on and sat down and hoped that they could do something with the purser about their ticket. But very soon it was clear that there was no purser, but there were many ladies. This seemed rather strange, too, that there were only women on the boat that day, but a lady came to them and said, "Good morning. Are you daughters?"
And Edith said, [in a hushed voice] "Well, I thought that was pretty obvious, and I said, 'Yes.'"
You see, this is her kind of story.
"I said yes."
Well, and the lady said, "Welcome. Have you brought your lunch?"
"No," said Edith, "We haven't. We've got here in rather a hurry and we haven't."
And she said, "Well, it's all right, there are plenty of sandwiches, so don't worry about it. I'd just like you to know that when we get off the boat and we climb the hill before we go to the house, we'll stop at the grave for a little ceremony and then we'll proceed on to lunch."
The lady went away and Edith said to whatever the name of her cousin was, "You know where we are? I don't think this is the place where we ought to be, but what can we do? We're here now." [laughs] So they said nothing, they just continued on up. When they got off, and trudged up the hill and made their--have you been?
McCreery
No, I haven't.
Cubie
Mount Vernon. It's a wonderful place on the Potomac. You get off a wonderful, wide, flourishing river.
There is the hill upon which--it's not a very high hill--with a mansion on the top and halfway up are the graves. So everyone stopped, and the same lady in charge brought out a large wreath that was going to be placed on the grave. And she said, "I think it would be fitting if the daughter who has come the farthest way would lay the wreath on the grave." And at that point her cousin gave a little push and said, "That's you, Edith." And she said, "Yes, of course that's perfectly true, but oh, dear."
She was handed the wreath, she took it and stood in front of the grave to do the right thing, but then she said, "Oh, I suddenly realized that Washington had never said a lie!" And she said, "I felt a tug somehow from the ground up and the whole thing just fell out of my hand." She said, "I don't know whether people noticed that this was rather unusual, but my cousin and I made ourselves as small as we could after that and used the next opportunity to get down after we had seen what we came to see--to get down to take the next public boat back to Washington."
Now that is so typical, you see, of how she would build up her little incident and the center of it. And always there was the enjoyment of thinking back on it. And it is a story I remember hearing once or twice at the appropriate time. And when she would see us on Washington's birthday, she would say, "Remember my Washington's birthday story." [laughter]
Edith Coulter and the University's Classification of Librarian Jobs
CubieWell, that's probably enough about the stories of Edith Coulter. Another aspect of her personality, of course, was her way with students and her classroom presentation, which was always carried on with style and humor. And people loved her for it.
But in her years, first on the library staff and later on the faculty of the university, there was one activity that has always interested me because it would not have been expected from her particular personality. Edith was a woman born in the last century, with very conservative ideas about dignity in life, in society. And she would have been very unsympathetic, and was in the later years, with any indication of unrest on campus. But she, on the other hand, was at one time active in something that might have led, had it gone very much farther,
I think probably it is still true, isn't it, that there is a classification of the library staff that is considered--probably along with many others now--but at that time they were probably the only group that began to single itself out as a professional group between the academic employees and what was then known as the administrative employees, involving everybody else. Their reason for wanting to be considered a professional group with certain privileges was that in many other universities librarians had faculty status, so that meant that vacation periods were longer, and there were these kinds of privileges. The UC librarians were hoping for the same kind of treatment and proposed another kind of classification.
It didn't get very far very quickly because we were very far out here, and it took a while before California wished to catch up, especially with the things that were perhaps rather inconvenient and somewhat expensive. So there was not much support for this move, but Edith--she didn't exactly lead it but was certainly the one who, when it came to making the representation that might make a real difference, led it.
She went to visit Mr. [Monroe E.] Deutsch--Provost Deutsch--to make her representation. And knowing him as a man who was very sensitive to the possibility or the suggestion of discrimination--you know, the people in those days didn't give these problems the kind of careful thought they have for a long time now. But she knew him to be that kind of man, and so she approached him just on the point that she knew would make the difference, or could make the difference. She said, "You know, Mr. Deutsch, I've listened to the university's reasons for not making changes for us, but we are all quite convinced that there should be--and so I can only conclude that the university is not interested in advancing the interests of women."
Edith, by this time, was of course well aware of the history of the Women's Faculty Club, of university women not having been welcome to the men in their club, thus putting them to the expense of building their own. And with all that background and with few women still at that time in academic classifications, her statement, "I just don't think that you want to give it to us because most of the library staff are women," provoked the reply, "Oh, no, Miss Coulter! No, no, we were far from that thought. Please do not feel that way," and
McCreery
Really!
Cubie
She made a difference. She made a difference by appealing to Mr. Deutsch's sense of fairness. And of course this was at a time when--let's see, who was university president at that time? Sproul came in '30. Well, it could have been possibly just before that. I mean, I have a feeling this may have all happened in the late twenties, but I'm just not sure about the date. The important thing--and I'm telling it exactly as she told it--I mean, she remembered this to have been an important moment. The whole idea about classifications of all the staff of the university, of course, came along after the war. It was set up very formally in a personnel department. These things were smaller and on a much more informal basis before.
McCreery
Do you have any knowledge of how the rest of the library school faculty viewed her action of going to the provost?
Cubie
This may well have been at the time when the library school, as such, had very little to do with it. I mean, it was not the library school; she may still--no, of course by that time she was in the school. The school started quite a few years before, so she must have been on the faculty at the time this was happening. But she was supporting and in some ways we know leading the library staff in this.
McCreery
Okay.
The Coulter Lectureship
CubieThen the other thing I wanted to mention again are the Coulter lectures. I said the last time--and I think I may have said it on tape and I want to be quite correct about this--when I said that she had endowed the lectureship, this is perfectly true so far as money support was concerned. And that is very essential, but it wasn't, of course, her idea. She didn't come out to honor herself by saying, "I want..." You know, I'm not saying that. I want to make sure this is clear.
It was the library school alumni association who wanted to honor the first three faculty that had built the school, and it was still very close to the time of this retirement when awards were established in the form of a scholarship in the name of
McCreery
Yes, lectureship versus scholarship and so on.
Cubie
That's right. Miss Coulter was very, very interested and she loved the idea of it. She said, "You know, I would like to..." And as that was being shaped, she then--endowed is not the word, but I think she certainly made a financial contribution to get it on its feet that was probably rather important to the association.
What I have here then, are these two--we talked about them a moment ago--the little keepsake booklets of the first two Coulter lectures. The subject matter was understood to--as Edith saw it and as it was intended in the beginning--represent Miss Coulter's interests: bibliography and California history, western history. That was pretty well the subject matter of the first lectures. The first one was on, "The Universality of California History," by Rodman Paul, an author whose book was being worked on in the University Press. He was asked by August Frugé, who was chairman then of the committee to select the first speaker. And he very happily accepted that assignment.
The first Coulter lecture was delivered in Pasadena. I think it was at the Huntington Hotel. I remember it very well. It was a very beautiful situation. October 24, 1952. It began, "It's a pleasure to be here," and so forth, but then he says, "It is thus a pleasure to be able to express appreciation for many kindnesses I have received from the profession which you represent. It is especially gratifying that the particular occasion is a meeting in honor of Miss Coulter. I will confess that I have never before met Miss Coulter." (She was there, of course, on that day.) "And yet, I have known her well for years. I started making her acquaintance sixteen years ago, when my first assignment as a graduate student was to familiarize myself with her book Historical Bibliographies. Subsequently I began to see her writings in the field of California history, especially those that she has done in recent years for the Book Club of California. But most important of all, I have met her through her former students. One of these former students remarked: 'Any super superlatives you care to use about Miss Coulter will be understatements.'"
And he said then at the end of the quotation, "Wherever I have gone amongst California libraries, I have found myself
The second lecture was given in Stockton on November 13, 1953, at the Stockton Hotel. Do you know Stockton? It's a rather old deserted building now, but it was the great hotel of the City of Stockton where the California Library Association had its annual meeting that year. And this time the speaker was Savoie Lottinville, the director of the University of Oklahoma Press. He talked about "Western Man and His Tradition." So the first two lectures were as envisaged by everybody at that time and certainly by Miss Coulter.
It was interesting over the many years--since we just had the forty-seventh, wasn't it, a little while ago--how sometimes the themes were far away from the kinds of things that Miss Coulter would have found both familiar and desirable. But it's hard to say how she would have approved or disapproved; I think it might have been--her personality had facets that were not entirely all along in the same direction. I think probably she would have loved some of the themes and perhaps rather wondered why some of the others were chosen. [laughter]
McCreery
Do you know how the speakers were chosen after those first two years?
Cubie
No, I don't know how the association chose them, as I became less active in the alumni association, as such. Certainly, the one consistent thing was that it was always given at the annual meeting of the California Library Association, so there would be a big audience and it was worth making it an annual lecture. As the years went by the officers of the association would appoint someone who would pretty well be guided by his own lights about who would be a good speaker that year on a subject often of more current interest.
In Miss Coulter's days and in those early years when she had first retired, there was very much more agreement about what librarians stood for, how they did their work, what they saw to be their obligations toward the institutions for which they worked, and toward society in general. The more common acceptance allowed a certain expectation that one doesn't necessarily have any more. These are the things, then, that I did want to say about Miss Coulter. And the books are here to
McCreery
Well, thank you very much. I have not seen these, so this is a real treat. I'll make sure that they're deposited there in some fashion.
The Mitchell Scholarship and the Sisler Book Prize
McCreeryYou mentioned that the different programs inaugurated to honor Miss Coulter, Miss Sisler, and Mr. Mitchell were all different and all suited to the people.
Cubie
Yes.
McCreery
Do you have any particular things to add about the Sisler prize or the Mitchell scholarship?
Cubie
No, except that they would be duly awarded every year. The alumni association has always taken its work seriously about selecting a student in the class for the scholarship. And that was never difficult because, the people who came--and undoubtedly to this day, who come to the school, [laughs] including the present school--are very talented, intelligent, and enterprising people.
How they would now award the Sisler book prize, particularly, would become a little bit less obvious because the courses given that encouraged students in studying along those lines have all gone by the wayside. So I don't know how that would be handled presently, but until not long ago, the money that came in for membership and the listing of the various scholarships--I mean, to honor particular retired members, alumni would continually replenish these funds. The awards never ceased to be given, so far as I know, except that I'm rather wondering now what they would do with the Sisler prize.
The scholarship for Mr. Mitchell would be easy enough still to award. And certainly the lectures are being given. I thought that this year's theme--what was this year's: "In Defense of Idleness"--of course I wasn't there to hear it, but I just noticed in the alumni bulletin that that was going to be the speech of this year. It sounds in some ways rather closer to some of the original intention.
Yes, yes. Now, my research tells me that in 1951 the library school inaugurated the Joeckel internships in public libraries. That's a bit of a different kind of thing, but do you have much knowledge of that program?
Cubie
I don't really because I wasn't in touch with the criteria of the award and to whom they were awarded.
Sydney Mitchell's Presence After Retirement
McCreeryOkay. You also indicated that you became friends with Sydney Mitchell after you joined the library school and after he retired.
Cubie
Well, yes, before the year when I was actually in the school, I mostly remember the time I had my interview with him of whether I might someday go to the library school. He gave me quite a bit of time, when I was still an undergraduate. Then I remember the next interview of being accepted into the school. During my actual year, he was away--probably in England doing something about his irises--[laughs] whatever he was doing with iris--he actually created new iris strains. He was very serious about his botanical work, and I think two or three times he was away for as much as a year. My year was one of them.
But after that, when my husband had been working for the Press, not very long after that--well, three years after that--I went to work for the school. I think my association was, again, entirely an informal one, a social one. Mr. Mitchell continued to be very interested, as I think I said once before, in the careers of the graduates, especially young men. Since men were at that time still only just beginning to come back in fair numbers, [coughing] he watched the development of their careers afterwards. And those whom he could actually see and be with became friends, so that visiting him at his house and his visiting with us was a kind of association we had after that.
##
Cubie
Your question was whether Mr. Mitchell then was in touch the way Miss Coulter kept in touch. The significant difference was that when Mr. Mitchell and Miss Sisler retired, one never saw them in the school. They did not visit. They had separated themselves entirely from the school.
Miss Coulter, on the other hand, had an office desk with us and for all the rest of her life she spent part of the day in her own office and kept very much in touch.
We were talking some time ago about the deans and their different personalities and their different eras. Mr. Mitchell's was one of total responsibility for the school in an administrative way. He was the first director. That was his title. In all the years he was dean he made the selection of the next year's class--and with his secretary, an administrative assistant, no doubt--but he was solely responsible, and it was not in the same sense a shared activity as it did become later.
I remember his total approval of the next faculty appointments. He spoke to the California Library Association of the new-faculty-to-be and the new dean who was coming. Oh, I remember he was quite dramatic about it. He said, "We have a dean!" [laughter] And, "After some search! As you know, Miss Sisler and I stayed longer than we might have if it hadn't been for the wartime in which we were asked to stay longer."
Further Recollections of the Deanship of J. Periam Danton
CubieImmediately after the war the search had begun for a new dean and Mr. Mitchell made some remarks about what that meant and what they were looking for. This was at a large gathering of California librarians, and he said, "But I'm not going to tell you who it is." [laughter] Because it was perhaps within a couple of weeks before the university had to make its announcement. So Mr. Danton came with quite a flourish, in the announcement and in the expectation. So that at the next California Library Association meeting, when the new dean and faculty members attended for the first time, they were rather featured and met everybody and everybody met them.
McCreery
Was the Berkeley faculty prominent in the California Library Association?
Cubie
You mean as officers?
McCreery
Yes, and involved and active.
Cubie
Well, they were very involved and active, as you can see, for instance, in these rather auxiliary functions that you might describe. You just handed me some of the old records of
McCreery
Okay.
Cubie
There was a feeling of obligation toward the profession and of being entirely open to requests and guidance and all of this--there was a lot of give and take.
With Mr. Danton and LeRoy Merritt, who came soon after him as associate dean--you see, there was now an expansion of that role--both of them having been graduates of the University of Chicago, having done their doctoral work there, there was a whole new trend toward expanding the programs toward academic and research librarianship. That was certainly altogether the interest of Mr. Danton. He knew and everyone knew and all the faculty knew that that was a significant part and perhaps the most demanding part so far as instruction was concerned. But there was also a very important segment of the profession, the larger one in total numbers, and that was public and county librarians. The school had always been very careful about having public and county librarians to have their say and to provide instructors as needed, as I think I've told you before.
The obligation to public libraries continued in Mr. Danton's era and so then, to serve them, Mr. Joeckel came as full-time member of the faculty right away. He spoke for and made close connections between the school and public libraries. He did a lot in advising and doing whatever a university school could do for that field in librarianship. And that was continued when Mr. Joeckel had to retire because of ill health after a few years. Mr. Edward Wight developed strong and cordial relationships between the school and public libraries and public librarians. He was very active in his relations with the state library, and it was especially through the state library that all these kinds of advisory services were carried out. Yes, I think it was very close and very active in all directions.
This has always been, and it was until--well, in recent years there have been many, many changes. Attitudes change quite obviously for many reasons, but there was a long time in which the school was very proud--its alumni association reflects that--of making sure that all phases of California librarianship were given their due from the school.
The California Library Association
McCreeryYes. Did you attend the annual CLA meetings in the fifties?
Cubie
Yes.
McCreery
What did you think of them?
Cubie
As is customary at very large association meetings, there would be speeches and many meetings of special groups to discuss common concerns. But most remembered would be meetings in little groups among friends and former associates and the opportunities for just being with other librarians--librarians they already knew or meeting new ones, like that important year when the new faculty was on parade. Again, I have no idea how such meetings are conducted now. Probably not very differently. [laughter]
Experiences as the Reviser
McCreeryWell, let's return for a moment to your own experiences in the early years after you joined the faculty. You did a good job last time of describing your duties as the reviser or the lab assistant for the cataloging courses. I wonder, do you recall your salary when you were hired in that job?
Cubie
That is interesting, I can't think for the life of me what I was paid. Reviser was the term given to the actual performance as Miss Markley's assistant and that had had that title all along--well before my time--and it continued to be the technical title. But in the university classification I was in--at that time what would have been my category? What are they called now? Assistant librarians? Not library assistants because library assistants tended to describe the clerical functions, didn't it? And assistant librarians would have been--but you see, that didn't have much meaning later on when that was entirely a matter of library administration.
Oh, I know, these earlier titles of assistant librarian that were still in use in the days when I was in school, for example--I think that after the war when the personnel department was created, they had librarians I, II, III, and IV, that kind of classification. And I have a feeling that I--without being certain now; I've forgotten this--I probably had a sort of II category there. I was in one of the
The change in my classification was when I became a lecturer in the department. There was simply a meeting by the faculty who said, yes, this was a good idea; that I should be the one who would divide with Miss Markley these large classes, and we would work along parallel lines, as we did forever after. Then I left that classification entirely; I was no longer classified librarian. I was now a member of the faculty, and that meant that the salary was then very similar to the salary I was paid before, and you know, with the various increases that came along at various times. At one time, many years later, Mr. [Patrick G.] Wilson--when I was finally on my own after Miss Markley retired--wrote to the chancellor about my position and said, "You know, I think this woman is rather underclassified in our own academic schedule, because she has been here all these years and has taken on more and more duties, and I think this should be reviewed." And I remember there being a considerable review of my salary, et cetera, et cetera--but that was many years later.
At one time, I had been classified as a librarian, as though I were working for the UC library staff. This came to an end when I was on an academic schedule and paid, no doubt, from a different budget. It meant that I was no longer a part of this great group that Miss Coulter had helped create many years ago. [laughter]
McCreery
Okay. Was your employment considered full time starting in 1947?
Cubie
Yes. Full time. The reviser's position, as I think I made clear in many allusions to these earlier years, was an exacting and demanding kind of performance to make sure that students emerged out of the cataloging courses as well prepared to do a very respectable job as catalogers, if that is what they were going to be, or if not, to fully understand what the catalogs were for and how they were to be used. It meant that the teacher of cataloging, who would give the lectures, would really on the whole have little time for supervising laboratory.
In the beginning that was true. Ethelyn Markley did this for a while, along with me, until gradually there were other demands. It meant that the description "reviser" was a very good one, because there was much revision going on of the carefully devised student work. It would be handled pretty well the way it would be in a library. The work was about to
Campus Atmosphere After World War II
McCreeryYes, okay. You did a good job last time of talking about the changes in the library school's student body after the war when you began teaching, or revising, there. I'm wondering, though, about the larger atmosphere on campus. And I'm thinking now of the postwar years and the fifties--we'll talk about the sixties later--but mainly in what changes or differences you might have noticed since you'd been there as a student.
Cubie
When I came back to the school in the forties--of course this is when one would most notice differences, having been away roughly ten years, first professionally in another town, and then later on, before I actually came back into the profession--what struck me in the beginning, and this would be in the late forties, was, well, you might say the greater maturity of the student body.
A lot of people were now entering the university who were veterans or civilians who had been involved in the war effort or who were now ready to go on with the more normal life. Higher education was something that had to be picked up again and began quite naturally to be reshaped somewhat by the fact that the student body was not almost entirely very young--that is, unlike the undergraduate body of very young people all of about the same age group. That made a lot of difference, I think, and it also made the difference that led on to much greater desire by students to express themselves, and to express themselves in different ways when the sixties came along, where the administration in some ways--in many ways--was lagging behind what was actually happening in the student body. And about that we can talk whenever you think it is the right time.
The continuity about my work in the school with Miss Markley--we had come to a point some time ago where I had said we had gone about our teaching in a certain way and then came a
McCreery
I do, indeed.
Cubie
But when we do that is up to you. The other thing is bringing it up through the sixties and into the seventies and going later on into what that meant in going into South Hall. The important thing about those periods--both of them--the sixties and the seventies--that this is the period in which the student lives were so very much affected by the political events. And you asked me some time ago perhaps to say something about the school's part in this. And when we had best bring that up, though, whether we should go through that first, perhaps, as a sort of general remark on that period--what do you think?
Library of Congress Internship Program
McCreeryLet's hold off just a short time. There was one other thing we talked about before we started taping. You had talked at length last time about the Library of Congress system and we had a brief mention of their internship program and I wondered if you had any remarks about that.
Cubie
Yes. The internship program was one carried on through the great period of growth of collections. The Higher Education Act of 1965--an act of Congress--made money available in aid of research and higher education, which resulted in rapid growth of libraries and the need for librarians. It was a wonderful period for teaching. I loved it in all the periods when I was there because until I retired in 1975, there was only beginning to be then an indication that things were going to change again. But there was a long period of about twenty years--roughly between the end of the war and through the fifties, sixties, and into the early seventies, but certainly through the sixties--when the demand was great. As a result, the Library of Congress had the same need for developing its staff, developing for growth, and they looked for staff for all their departments to the library schools.
Miss Markley, particularly, because of all her committee work and her close association with many of the people at the Library of Congress, was particularly close to some of the people there, but I don't think that had in itself any influence in the program as such, because it was across the board.
The idea was of interns who would come to the Library of Congress staff for one year, with assignments in the major departments for something like a couple of months at a time. They would learn what went on in all of them with the hope of grooming new staff for the Library of Congress, but at all times with the understanding that there was no expectation of their having to stay. And most of them--I would say nearly all of the people who came from our school, and there were quite a few--did not stay immediately. A few of them, on the other hand, went back later on to join the staff, especially in the technical services division when the computer age really made itself felt. The Library of Congress was developing its own projects in that direction, and some of our people went to work there.
In that period we were very happy to send at least one or two--one year, four--of perhaps a dozen interns altogether--I don't know the exact number, but it was always a fairly small number--to the Library of Congress. So it was for the benefit of the library, but it was also the understanding that it was for the profession. They were so generous about the idea that you didn't have to stay with them. You didn't even have to give them a minimum time, as is so often the case, because if they didn't keep you, then you would be making a difference somewhere else.
McCreery
Was it prestigious to be chosen for that?
Cubie
It was. Yes, it was. The Library of Congress is our national library with all of the ramifications that that implies. It is an important institution.
Recollections of State Librarians
McCreeryOkay, well, thank you. We talked a little bit in previous sessions about an earlier state librarian, Mabel Gillis. When she retired in the early fifties, she was replaced by Carma Zimmerman and I just was realizing I wanted to ask you if you knew her very well at any time.
Not well. I met her, you know. I knew who she was, but the staff of the state library and relations between the school and them were so very much more compartmentalized now in the school. It was Mr. Wight's particular responsibility to make all these connections between the school and public librarians of California. Other people--you know, specialization became a little more obvious when there were more of us, rather than back in the time of three or four [laughs] faculty members who had to do everything and knew everyone. The state library staff worked closely with Mr. Wight on public library concerns, but for the rest of the school, Mrs. Zimmerman was a person whom one knew but didn't have a lot of close association.
McCreery
Okay. Well, thank you though for that comment.
School of Librarianship's Three-Year Summer Program
McCreeryI also learned that the library school in 1953 tried offering a three-year summer program. Do you recall that? Or did you participate or teach in that?
Cubie
No. And I don't think any of us did. I mean, not in my courses with Miss Markley. We did not. And in fact I'd forgotten this, but I think this was probably at a time when there was a question of do we need another library school--what are we going to do about giving service elsewhere. The school was ready to do all it could to make this possible, but I think it was probably a sort of interim situation, just as it had been earlier on before the library school was established at UC, when there had been the summer schools and the state library had given some courses. It was at a time when there was still a question about establishing a school at UCLA.
McCreery
Yes, it sounds as if it was something of an experiment.
Cubie
That's right.
McCreery
Perhaps, as you say, to fill the needs of the moment and that sort of thing.
Cubie
That's right.
McCreery
Okay. I also saw a bit of a reference to the California Library Association adult education committee and some indication that you served on that committee around the mid-fifties. Do you recall anything about the work of that group?
[pause] You would think if you had worked on a committee, it would just come flooding back.
McCreery
[laughter] Well, I'm sort of springing it on you.
Cubie
This is very interesting. The chances are, I was active on it, but I cannot now really have an awfully good recollection of what I did. I really don't.
McCreery
Well, that's okay.
Cubie
It doesn't really come back to me.
McCreery
Do you recall though, did you do very much committee work for CLA?
Cubie
No, I don't think--I would say I did not do the really major jobs of the committees--the chairmanships and the ones where the real work was. I don't think I did more than the helping along lines where help was needed. I was much more on the periphery with all of them at all times. I found myself, for instance, in one or two things as I was going through old materials--and I don't have very much of it here at all--that I had done something to assist with manuscripts. The trouble is I don't remember. It goes so far back that if I was serving, it was never in a capacity to make much difference for policy in any of the ongoing work that would be worth relating now.
Relations Between School of Librarianship and Main Library
McCreeryOkay, that's fair enough. I wonder if--well, we need to change the tape in a moment. I wonder if, in the fifties, there was any difference that you noticed in the relationship between the library school and the library staff. I mean, you described the move to the fourth floor of the Doe building--
Cubie
No--again, once in a while--and it wasn't so much really in the fifties; that happened later on--there would be someone on the library staff who would be asked to join the faculty, or once or twice it went in reverse, in the history of the school. And there would always be a very significant personal reason or something that would happen that would bring this about.
##
To describe the relations between the school and the library, individual librarians and individual members of the school were very well aware, of course, of the work they were all doing because they were often friends. Quite a few of our graduates were on the library staff, and others who came from a distance would after a while become well acquainted with a faculty that after all, in those days, was never really very large. There was a community of interest without there being really very much give and take in their actual duties.
McCreery
Okay.
Cubie
There was a library and there was a school. And the school had taken on the obligation of the education of new librarians to fill the needs of the field--and that was the whole field. Members of the library staff occasionally would be giving a particular course, or members even from some other part of the university might be asked to give a particular course or seminar--that kind of thing, but nothing beyond that--no close cooperation. There was no reason for it, really. They had different functions.
Views of Professor Danton as Dean
McCreeryOkay. Do you know how Mr. Danton as dean was viewed by the library staff?
Cubie
Mr. Danton I think was viewed over the many years in which he was dean with in some ways rather mixed reactions. There was a feeling among librarians in California that his great interest of developing advanced programs was so very much absorbed in the academic and research library field, and that it was most particularly concentrating on enhancing the degree structures of the library school. Until then, of course, as you know, certificates seemed to be perfectly acceptable and everyone was comfortable with them in the State of California. But now there was a very big push on Mr. Danton's part and the people who most represented his view that we should become very much more like the schools farther east. And that meant that he went to work very earnestly on changing the completion at the end of the first year and the second year into new degrees--the professional master's degree replaced a certificate--and developing of the doctoral degree. And he put much of his energy into that.
I think that created among California librarians a feeling that he was personally less interested in all the rest of the work everybody else was doing. I think there was a feeling that way. Well, in the library staff, itself--[sighs] how must I express this now? Changes in individual relationships between some people in the library staff and Mr. Danton made, for a while, for some really rather unhappy relationships between the two. Once those periods were behind us I think it settled down again to more cordial relations.
But let me put it another way. At all times, individual personalities make all the difference in how people are taking to each other. Mr. Donald Coney, as it turns out, was also the new university librarian, just about the same time that the library school faculties were changing, and although the school and the library had a close relationship and an appreciation of each other's work, instead of becoming closer then, they drifted apart just a little bit more. And I think it had a lot to do with the perception on the part of the library and California librarians, generally, that Mr. Danton had a view of the library school and what it should promote that was not generally shared. And it took quite some time for them to come back together in these years during his deanship.
Another thing that happened during those years was that the university, itself, in the years Mr. Danton was dean, was reviewing the administration of professional schools. The assumption was questioned that a director of a professional school would just remain in that job until he retired. It was certainly true for Mr. Mitchell and no one ever questioned it since he was also the founder, but it did begin to be questioned in the fifties. A big review was made and as a result it was decided that there should be a term of so many years and then a new director had to be found and the other person would just revert to his other duties as faculty member. And so this happened under Mr. Danton's administration, that a new dean had to be found. And it was Mr. [Raynard Coe] Swank, then, who was asked to come over from Stanford.
But to get back to your question of how the profession viewed Mr. Danton--and I think this is a fair thing to say--I think that there was not the unanimity of acceptance and appreciation of what he was doing and of what he had to offer that there had been earlier with the school as it had been before.
I think something else also entered into that. Our own students were--you asked about the change in student body. There was certainly a change in student body after the war.
McCreery
What did you think about that?
Cubie
There were perhaps rather more with Mr. Danton, because there was a feeling that he did not understand the problems of the student as well as he should. The students often felt that he put some difficulties in their way, so there was a mixed [laughs] reaction to him as a teacher. But, at the same time, no one ever questioned that in these courses he taught, the material he presented was well worth having and that as a teacher he was thorough and greatly cared about his subject. It was only that the whole profession in this state took more time to warm up to the new dean than one might have expected in the beginning.
McCreery
What about the library school faculty views of him?
Cubie
There was a very unfortunate problem presenting itself very, very early on. It was a very small faculty and among the few people who were in the administration of the UC Library, there were close friends--as I've said, as some of the people like Mr. Coney and the library school faculty even coming at the same time--but unfortunately there was within two years a very sudden divorce and remarriage involving people who had been very close friends. And that fact--Mr. Danton marrying the former wife of the assistant university librarian--no one among the staff on either side were well prepared for this, and so there was a lot of hurt feelings. And I think this made some difference to have something unhappy like this, unfortunately, during this time in those early years. But that did not last indefinitely and did not make any difference even some years later, once all these problems had been resolved. But at the
When I said it didn't last, that's perfectly true. With personnel changes and new faculty in the school it was put aside over time, and after that, the faculty and the library had very cordial relations and certainly did see things the same way, so far as the field as a whole was concerned. And we did have some exchange of people coming to join the faculty or vice versa. There were some problems in the beginning that came about--many of them--just for quite personal reasons.
McCreery
Was Mr. Danton much of a presence in the larger campus administration?
Cubie
No, I don't think so.
McCreery
I'm thinking now of advocating for the school or taking issues of the school--
Cubie
Oh, yes. I think when I say I don't think so, I think the contrary is true. Within the limits of his very primary interest to advance and reshape the degree structure for our students and develop the curriculum accordingly--and that, in fairness, was meant to be something of benefit to the profession generally--he worked very hard at this. He was a very hardworking dean at those particular things that he felt were most important to the school to develop at the time he came. They were new, they were different from what had gone before, and he gave it his all.
It was also true that I think that since people had to be recruited to represent other parts of librarianship, it would be under Mr. Danton's deanship that Mr. Joeckel came to the school. Mr. Joeckel had probably already been asked by the previous administration, but upon his sudden retirement, it was Mr. Danton who knew Mr. Wight well and invited him to come. His leadership was very effective along those lines in which he worked--particularly, his own field of academic and research librarianship. And I would think he felt, and it was certainly true, that having helped in the appointment of and finding the new staff members from farther east, as they all came to us from there--quite a few of them he had already known--that that was his contribution. And I think also because the school got bigger, the faculty got bigger, the student body got very much larger, it was quite fair for him to say, you know, "I'm going to put greater emphasis along these lines."
The changes there were in the leadership of the school were partly campuswide but partly because of just the fact of particular people being in a particular place at their particular time and their relationships. And once there was anything that got entirely away from professional relationships--into friendships and broken friendships--that was something of a worry to the school for a while.
Mr. [Barr] Tompkins, who was for a couple of years on the faculty, resigned to go over to The Bancroft Library. And again, I think this had some connection with the difficult personal relationship between the two administrations at that time and its effect on others.
Husband's Career at UC Press
McCreeryThis reminds me to ask you--although it's on a different kind of subject--I'm not sure of your personal status when you went back and became a full-time staff member at Berkeley. I gather you and Mr. Frugé were divorced at some point?
Cubie
No. No, no, that was many years later.
McCreery
Oh, I'm sorry.
Cubie
No, I mean, how would you know? No, we were divorced in 1959. You see, that was many years later. In those years, August Frugé was first the assistant manager for the Press for the first few years when Mr. Farquhar was still living. Then there were some years in which he was acting manager, as it was still called then, while the university went through long difficult periods of deciding about the structures--whether the press should be run primarily with the leadership of the academic senate and all of the publishing end of it, that is, whether the intellectual part of publishing--the contribution of manuscripts and so forth--of the press should be directed by someone on that side, or whether, in fact, the university printers should have the primary role in this. They were considered very good printers, and they made quite a fine contribution to university publishing in the printing department very early on. So there were some years in which the university couldn't resolve the problem about whom to appoint.
And the solution eventually was one of separation of the two functions, printing becoming responsible to the business
But while all of this search was going on about how to do this--not looking necessarily for new individuals for a long time, but rather what should be the composition of the university press--during all of this time August Frugé was the acting manager. And when it was finally resolved that the university press as a publishing organization would be separate, then he became the director. He was given the new title director. But this whole process took many years--much throughout the fifties [laughs] there was this difficulty about what to do about the university press. It was a rather hard time for him, actually, because all the time he was carrying on, you know, the work of the press. Opinions varied about what is the center and the most important thing about a university press. Certainly, printers would--those of them who were putting out all these well-designed works, and university press books were very handsome, always, from the very beginning. Sam Farquhar, was the founder and, as with all beginnings--it's rather similar to the library school--the small size was one that made it possible to enter into all phases of this thoroughly. Then, after a while, the difficulties began to arise in branching out and sharing with other people, and conflict arose from conflicting ideas.
McCreery
I take it Mr. Frugé was happy with his decision to leave librarianship and go into publishing?
Cubie
He was happy with the press. He always was.
He was very happy to have been a librarian. He took librarianship with a great deal of interest, and he liked what he was doing, especially when he had the opportunity as a young assistant in the order department at UC. He enjoyed that all, especially because Mr. [Frank M.] Bumstead, the head of the department, was on medical leave for a very long time and that meant that all the other people in the department did rather more and took on more responsibility for the whole. It was in his time when this was possible and he rather liked that, but when he went to the state library, he took that examination and appointment to a very much smaller situation--of one head of the department, one professional assistant, and some clerical help. The essential new thing was the buying and the selection of the books--making that collection grow.
So all the facets of his work were always personally very interesting to him, but all the time he had observed the
Mr. Farquhar died very suddenly when they were both on a trip of some sort in the east. It was very sad because it meant that Mr. Farquhar died while they were both there. But the press grew--August Frugé found a tremendous opportunity for helping it grow in new directions. He found it very fulfilling the whole way through.
Students' Involvement in Their Own Education, 1950s
McCreeryOkay, thank you. You mentioned a few minutes ago that the students in the library school in the fifties were beginning to question the instruction a little bit more. And you gave the example of perhaps challenging the testing methods. Maybe challenging is too strong a word, but rather than just taking everything given to them, they took a more active role in their own education?
Cubie
I think the more active role that they actually took in a real sense when they were proposing to enter it more--and to some extent they did. That came more in the sixties and even more in the seventies. No, in the sixties, really, with the whole idea that students developed that they could best judge for themselves what was valuable in content and method. It began actually with some absurd assumptions--of the whole idea about, you know, "If it's not relevant to me..." That word,
But that of course was an aberration that came out of tremendous stresses and troubles of that period. Before then, because they were older, especially in the library school, more and more we had people who were young adults and adults sometimes of some maturity, who had worked in other professions even, who had worked at a whole lot of things. When they came to us they weren't so much objecting ever really to the content of courses.
Certainly it was not true in anything we taught where--in fact, we didn't, on the whole, have much of a problem (that is, Miss Markley and I did not) because there is something about the total, to some extent technical content of cataloging that makes people not argue very long about whether it should or shouldn't be taught. I mean, there were--and I will say something about that later--some ways in which students did make contributions to making things more helpful here. You know, not formally, but one took advantage of their reactions to examinations and laboratory assignments.
But it wasn't true throughout the school. It would be true, perhaps in particular courses where students would say, "Well, I don't know--what meaning does this have to me and what I've perceived of the profession?" Perhaps some of them who already knew the profession felt--yes, there was more of an overall readiness to criticize. Therefore, this would occur, but it would occur periodically, in particular situations with particular instructors, for a while, whatever it would be; but it wasn't an all-pervasive problem, at all. I mean, the school did not experience this in a large way.
McCreery
Okay.
Cubie
Not in the fifties.
McCreery
Okay, what form did this take, though, in the cataloging courses?
Cubie
Very little.
McCreery
Very little, okay.
Cubie
In the cataloging courses, as I've just said, while people who had a natural bent in the direction of liking organizing things--they would find it anything from fascinating down to a real burden: "Here I come. I'm a lover of books, I love
Others would thrive on it. They would find it very stimulating. An example later on was Teddie [Theodora] Hodges, who keeps coming up in this at various times. Teddie was coming into the school to become a school librarian. She always was a woman of a lot of giving of herself and wanting to make a contribution to whatever she was--as a mother, as a member of the community--and so she wanted to prepare herself for something real, outside, in addition to her four children. But when she hadn't been with us very long, it was cataloging that appealed to her.
The Loyalty Oath Controversy, Late 1940s to Early 1950s
We talked quite a lot last time about various events of the 1950s when you were on the library school faculty, and I wanted to ask you this morning to give a brief summary of your thoughts and experiences about the loyalty oath controversy of the early fifties.
Cubie
This is [laughs] almost a repetition of something you and I just talked about a moment ago of the impression one had in hearing the conversations and the meetings that took place once in a while, by people particularly interested in this problem. I remember especially one time--I didn't say this a moment ago, but it comes back to me--that in 1950, the California Library Association met in Sacramento. A committee of faculty came to talk to librarians about this whole problem and called attention to the fact that some faculty, both north and south, had made this a matter of conscience and resistance and were very quickly dismissed from their jobs, and there was much hardship in this. So this was discussed--also ways and means of helping, in a financial way, some of these people.
They were either friends or acquainted with some of the particular faculty who were dismissed. One of the people, particularly--and I think he was actually there, but I can't now remember whether he was himself talking about the constitutional problem or whether it was said about him. Sorry, my memory is just not clear on this, but I know it represented John Caughey's thoughts--a professor of history at UCLA, who was in fact one of the people who had been relieved of his duties.
So that the whole constitutional problem and the injustices were sort of laid out for librarians whose job it was, quite rightly, to be giving some thought to these things. And so there was a very serious meeting discussing all this with a very large number of librarians.
On campus, I had the impression that the large majority were not as troubled by this problem, because it was a very new one. Constitutional requirements and how the Constitution touches on one's life every day, as it is often considered nowadays, had up to that time not been discussed very much. So it hit people all at once as something new. And therefore it took longer for some people to realize what this really did mean than others.
I would say that the vast majority of faculty and staff were ready to sign this because they were not deeply troubled by it, though they were certainly troubled by the fact that there was uneasiness and controversy on campus. But then there would be some faculty members, who, when there was discussion in meetings and other reasons for being together--I remember Professor [Herbert M.] Evans in zoology, or biology, I think it was, saying that he couldn't see what all the fuss was about, because he would gladly go on his knees every day and take a loyalty oath, so what was wrong with saying you were loyal? [laughs]
And that in a way was the problem. To generalize a statement: "Are you loyal to the Constitution and have you ever done anything to destroy it?"--of course people hadn't, and so there was kind of a feeling that there was a lot of fuss there. It took a while to realize how destructive that was. And those faculty members who did take a stand certainly prevailed over time.
McCreery
Were you personally acquainted with any who were dismissed?
Cubie
Yes, the only one that I personally knew was John Caughey, a professor of history at UCLA. He was someone we knew well. He
McCreery
How did it actually occur that you and your colleagues in the library school were asked to sign the oath and carried that out?
Cubie
To me, it was--let's see, when did this happen? [June 1949] Actually it couldn't have happened at the time when I was first working for Miss Markley as a reviser. You know, I think it was considered such a simple matter that just indicated that there was nothing very ceremonious about signing anything. [laughs] There were certain papers that came along with--it would be almost in the paperwork part of it. It would have been like renewing your instructions about insurance and whatever else you had. It was just part of the routine of each year's financial--or it came perhaps with the check that was deposited somewhere, and on it there was a line in which you said you had your check and you also had never been interested in overthrowing the United States government. It was something like that.
McCreery
Okay. Were your own views of the issue particularly strong?
Cubie
I don't think my views were very strong. I think from all you've heard about me by now, I was not a person deeply committed to political action at any time. I observed it always. I was aware. I would sort out my ideas about it, but always did this rather privately. I don't think I was ever someone who would have been interested in all the many concerns of politics. I'm interested, but not in wanting to be part of movements. As a matter of fact, I was asked a question I think would illustrate this, when I was much younger and before any of these things happened.
When I took my citizenship examination I had just had my course in American Institutions. I don't know whether that's required nowadays. Is it? Do you have to take it as part of graduation at the university?
McCreery
I think so.
Cubie
But not necessarily at all universities.
McCreery
That I don't know.
Did you at any time before you graduated? We did, at Berkeley, have to take a course called American Institutions--very well taught. It certainly laid it out very well, just how our government worked. And I had finished that course, well, just days before I took my citizenship examination, because I had just turned--what was my age--I had turned twenty-one.
McCreery
Eighteen?
Cubie
No, you see, at eighteen I could apply on my own. At twenty-one I had had my residence of five years. And it just coincided in date.
The examiner, then, in hearing that I was a student or had been a student--I was now a graduate student, actually, having started library school--I think that's when it happened--so when he then brought up the examination questions they're supposed to ask and knew that I was a student at UC--and he was aware that there were these courses--he said, "Well, I don't really have to ask you about the Constitution because I know you know. I only have to ask you about, are there any political views that might be destructive to the interests of this country?" And whatever answer I gave I don't remember, but I remember his saying, "Well," he said, "I just had the impression that you're not terribly interested in -isms."
McCreery
Thank you for telling a little bit about that time, though, because the loyalty oath controversy is very much of interest now, as you know, looking back.
Cubie
Yes, it is. And there are so many parallels and so many absolutely contrary views on things at the same time [laughs] that it is fascinating, isn't it, how that goes on.
Further Recollections of Cataloging Instruction
McCreeryWell, we wanted to talk next a little bit--going on--about the cataloging instruction once again. We wanted to return to the time when the new code was developed and available to students and just bring up to date our earlier discussions of your actual teaching activity.
Cubie
We had some time ago left off with discussing some of the difficulties in instruction when introducing the cataloging subject matter to students and working with them in their laboratory exercises to learn how to become competent in this
There was, of course, very much serious work going on by the ALA committees, but it took several decades before a comprehensive cataloging code emerged from the work of the committees and in cooperation with similar committees of the library association in Britain. And what was to be new about the code, and what finally was worked out, was that there was a clear statement on guiding principles that was much elaborated, quite necessarily after decades of use, beyond the ones that Mr. Cutter had indicated, but just briefly hinted at.
So with the publication in 1967 of the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, instruction was now on a much firmer basis. It was simply greatly aided by the fact that students had their own copies. They now had them and the syllabi to refer to in laboratory work, and it remained for instructors to guide them through the use and understanding of them, because they were necessarily complex.
There was never any doubt that whatever code came out--and the codes could only grow over years, with the growth of collections to millions and millions of volumes and the enormous variety of intellectual products in the world created and ever-growing--there was an understanding of all the peculiarities that had to be considered in doing the thing that was so desired, and that was to bring together, in catalogs, representations of an intellectual product of whatever kind and not to let it be scattered by the accident of titles, not to let it go--with translations and all that, you can imagine how scattered that would be. As a matter of fact, it quite generally is scattered in the new technological approaches to this, or very easily so. And the problems presented by names, and names of organizations, particularly, as well as personal names--all of this became a matter of code.
And it was all well met. And, as I say, the code succeeded in adhering to principles, but interpretation and guiding the students to a proper selection from the various bibliographic elements of a particular work was left to instructors to do. But having the code made a lot of difference. I still remember when the student bookstore finally had them. [laughs] We had been asking them to let us know, so one day there was a telephone call saying, "The Anglo-Saxon [sic] rules have
The other thing I wanted to say was that as our practice collection grew with the size of classes, not much more was needed in the collections given to the students to work with in their laboratory sessions. The collection grew in size and quality, the student body grew, and more laboratory sections were needed. It was no longer a matter of two a day. We had a considerable number for a while. The student body enlarged ever more through the fifties, of course, but even more in the sixties and early seventies.
At that time, or along about mid-sixties, I would think--I can't remember the exact date, but it was somewhere toward the mid-sixties--we moved from the small room that had been given to us for laboratory sessions, when we moved up into the former Bancroft space, into the T buildings across the street. For anyone who hasn't seen them, they would have to be described as sort of wooden barracks--named T, of course, because they were meant to be temporary and were barracks from the Second World War. The location was exactly where that new reflection pool is now with that wonderful landscape design that has been created across from the main portal of the Doe Library.
During these years we had more sections, we had more people helping with the laboratory instruction, and we were very lucky in cataloging courses to have the services of laboratory assistants--"revisers" was always that elegant name given to that function from the beginning. And we had the chance of recruiting from our own graduates, so we got people really interested in cataloging, liking it. We had some excellent people, and it's wonderful now to go back through the decades and see what happened to some of them who gave outstanding service to the school afterwards.
Charlotte Nolan was one of these who joined us, and I can still see her working with us during that time in the T buildings. Later, it was Judy [Julia J.] Cooke, and you know what their faculty appointments were later. Judy Cooke joined us when we were in South Hall in the seventies.
Recruitment was easy then. One simply asked a likely person whether he or she would be interested. There were men, but very few--more women--[laughs] who were interested in this
And I remember calling Judy Cooke at her job at San Francisco State--it was first College, later, University, I think--and I see myself at my desk in South Hall picking up the telephone and asking her. And she said, "That sounds very interesting. I'd like to talk it over with my husband." She called back the next day and we had Judy Cooke.
And still another I want to mention, and in many ways a very specially delightful relationship, was Teddie Hodges, who as of course you know became acting dean not very long after I retired. When Mr. [Michael K.] Buckland was expected to come from England there was a delay, and she became acting dean. By that time she had done a great deal for us in cataloging instruction. She was very interested in it. And of course there were others, but this is just an indication of how lucky we were in getting staff to carry on the work at the level we were doing it with an ever-increasing student body. It was a very busy time.
McCreery
Now, in 1963 you had co-authored with Miss Markley the Introduction to Classification and Cataloging syllabus, I guess you would call it, which was available for students to purchase. How did the new Anglo-American code affect that?
Cubie
Only in a revision--a very simple revision--of making sure that proper references were included. We did not change anything because, you see, what we were giving the students to work with was all distilled from all the practice that was carried on at the sources, particularly at the Library of Congress, and this did not have to be changed. The syllabus outline of the subject matter was brought up to date to include the code, but there was no reason for making a change. And as long as instruction was given the way I have described it--very fulsomely, I'm sure, over the time we've been talking about it--in all that time, the use of the syllabus was twofold. Just as Miss Sisler at one time had made us make a model catalog, in a similar way, now, we gave them some examples that introduced the particular problems and illustrated them.
I thought that another thing--did that satisfy you?
McCreery
Yes.
IV Later Career at the School, 1960s to 1970s
The Free Speech Movement, 1964
CubieThe other thing we were also going to discuss a little bit, and this is aside from instruction but it comes up chronologically at this time, is the years of turmoil on campus because of the Free Speech Movement.
The history of that doesn't have to be discussed by us, because we know all the movers of this and the reasons why it began, but what were our students' reactions? In the first wave of this in the mid-sixties--was it '64 when Mario Savio began leading it?--and it went on from there.
There was much of an atmosphere of conflict and uncertainty. Our students, who were in a serious professional program, knowing that if they were in any way removed from the [laughs] daily effort of building on what they had been doing before, there were going to be some real holes in their preparation. So this was something that had to be discussed with the faculty, to see what the attitude was.
And so the dean called a meeting. By this time it was Mr. Swank. You know the change--you have that in other connections--to a new dean. And we met with all the students and told them that we saw it to be our duty to appear at classes; there wasn't a faculty member who refused to hold classes. And for the students it would be a matter of their decision: that we would not punish them in any way for absenting themselves if they felt they needed to do this. And so there was no coercion and there was no suggestion by the library school faculty that students do anything in particular. We left it to them.
So a relatively small number of people did in fact stay away--they felt in support of this movement--but not very long.
Other Student Movements; Effects on Classes
CubieLater on in the seventies, when it revived in an even more serious way, when there had been the problem in Cambodia and the tragedy at Kent State, when things got really rather more ugly than they did in the sixties, once again, the few students who felt that the only way they could express their solidarity was to stay away from classes. But [laughs] they would always carefully--before they stayed away--come and apologize and say, "You know, I hope you don't mind." So finally--I remember well--there were probably half a dozen students out of a very large class who literally were away for some little time. So I managed to have them, when it was all over, [laughs] come to my house for some catch-up sessions. In a rather reduced way we re-covered the things that mattered the most so that they were not just completely left in the dark. You know, of course, from so much that I have already said about cataloging instruction, not only do the instruments used in bibliographic control have to be built--constructed--in a planned and consistent manner, but also instruction in how to do this has to be presented in the same way. If there are omissions it begins to make no sense at all. So that was taken care of with not too much trouble.
McCreery
I'm interested in your comment that you did some make-up sessions at your home. That was a nice way to accommodate those few students, it seems to me. Now how did other faculty handle that? You said the library school faculty went on teaching?
Cubie
Other faculty did not have to handle it. You see, I think [laughs] one of the things about cataloging instruction, as I've just said, is that it presents a problem of construction. It doesn't hold together without continuity. It would be true for reference instruction, also, but a little bit more easily caught up because a student could be sent--as I remember, as a student, being sent by Miss Coulter to familiarize ourselves with certain works that she had described. But it was up to us
So the cataloging courses were peculiar in that way. Miss Markley once had an interesting comparison--and it was not to be in any way dismissing all the other courses taught in the school; obviously they all had their very own value--she called them the "opinion courses." You see, [laughter] a person could go up and talk from his experience and give his ideas about what was the most important. The voice of experience, of course, was behind any kind of teaching, but omissions and classes missed did not matter in quite the same way.
McCreery
I see. That makes sense. So just let me confirm, then, the other library school faculty kept teaching during the Free Speech Movement?
Cubie
That's right. That's right. It was up to students to catch up. Again, much of what they did would rely on reading. And there were ways of finding out what they had missed that was perhaps a little more easily arrived at.
McCreery
What did you think of that whole thing?
Cubie
What did I think about it? Well, I saw it, of course, as many young people doing some educational harm to themselves in an effort to do something very constructive, very noble for their country. One had the greatest sympathy for their attitudes. Also, they were enormously troubled by the events, the larger events in the military, on campus life, and in other places.
So even though there was a great difference in age and experience and place in university life--mine at that time and theirs was obviously not the same. We were all--there was no one in the library school that I remember ever feeling, "Why are they so bothered?" Everyone understood perfectly. And should. I think librarians have never found it very hard to understand what concerns people, but still, our own obligation was very clear. There was absolutely no reason for encouraging students in shutting everything down and then some months later finding that they wouldn't be hired in their future employment. So it was getting these two requirements together that was something to work out.
The School of Librarianship Moves Into South Hall, 1970
CubieBut you know, there was a very good thing that happened to us during this time. And I think this gets us now to the seventies, especially when things did flare up again, as it turns out, in 1970. This whole troubled period coincided with a very positive development for the school, and that was moving into South Hall.
This gave us some great opportunities for developing further. It certainly gave Mr. Mosher and his colleagues--because there were by now more than one instructor in the subjects he taught--a chance to build up all the supporting material: a good collection, a good reference collection with the support, again, of the library. Virginia Pratt had not put it together entirely, because she was one of several successive library school librarians, but she was now in the position, having a whole basement of space in South Hall, to build up an even better collection and make it much more useful to the students, the school, librarians, and people in the university altogether.
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McCreery
We were just talking about 1970 when the school moved to South Hall. And I take it South Hall was a desirable location. How did the school manage to get it?
Cubie
How did they use it? How did they manage to get it. That was interesting. We were one of certainly several applicants. The original idea had not been a single one, either, as these things never are. There were people for just simply removing South Hall as an old building, but fortunately there was a much larger movement in keeping one historically interesting building and renovating it in the important ways, but keeping it exactly at it had always been, exactly the same to the eye. And that was very successful. We applied and two or three other departments applied.
McCreery
Do you remember which ones?
Cubie
No, I don't. I don't know who the others would have been. It had of course been in the past used, oh, in so many different ways. Political science had it for a while. My good friend Eleanor Van Horn was their administrative assistant, and she gave me much material of the earlier years when they had been in South Hall. But the new South Hall now became ours partly because we had such a variety of uses. We needed small rooms
And it may be true now--it's true I haven't been in there reading, recently, and when I was there last, I saw that all the computers and all the things that now fill the school--the material is different; the books have disappeared [laughs] and the machines are there. Apparently the people in charge of first assigning South Hall to the school--that would have been in the administration, wouldn't it? It wouldn't have been a part of the faculty senate's problem to decide. But they were convinced that the library school's particular kind of use of South Hall was perhaps the most practical, and so the library school was getting it.
So the building provided excellent space now for study halls and laboratory in particular. The cataloging laboratory was one flight up from the ground floor. That whole south wing from front to back was the laboratory space, moving over at that time from the T buildings that had been our other larger space. And that meant that right next to it we had a smaller room where the practice collection was kept, where the revisers had a little office space. It was ideal. Next to that was my office, right at the beginning as you came into the front hall. But that I gave up very soon because [Dean] Patrick Wilson, who had generously let me have that space, really needed it for the library school office. When people entered the building, they would have immediate access to the office and not have to climb to the third floor. So we exchanged space. I moved my office upstairs, but the cataloging laboratory remained below.
Above us was the reference laboratory in a similar space with a lot of room for reading and consulting of all the great collection that Mr. Mosher and Mr. Held created for their students. Below that, on the ground floor, was Virginia Pratt's library, so we really had a most wonderful situation for instruction. The students were in one place, where they could come to these things without wasting an awful lot of time hunting up things in the main library--except of course for those students who were at one time or another studying something that involved other subjects; then they would have to use the rest of the library. They used the library, too, but we had the things they used all the time, so there was enormous reduction in wasted time on the part of our students.
They were really very well served in a space large enough to take care of the whole student body. For small classes there were, of course, smaller rooms.
The only great change it brought to us for the largest classes was that we were assigned space wherever the committee on space assigned us. Lecture rooms of any size--for example in the course, "Introduction to cataloging and classification," in those years I averaged, oh, I don't know, 115 students. You know, they were really quite large, and since almost all our students took these courses--after a while there was no absolute requirement to take any particular course, though it was quite clear to most people very soon that they did themselves a service in not losing the opportunity of learning something about the things common to all libraries and so most of them actually took the courses.
The Abandonment of a Fixed Curriculum
McCreeryWhat did you think of that lapse in requirements?
Cubie
The lapse in requirement of courses as fundamental as reference and cataloging on the whole seemed a bad idea because the assumption had always been, and I'm sure is now with whatever is needed for preparing people for information--well, let's see, how do they define it now?--access to information in all the different modes by which it is now carried out. To say that any part of this can just be an elective and people can take it or leave it means, as it has always meant, that it rather gets in the way of the whole definition of a professional course. If there is nothing to learn that the profession does collectively, then there is no reason for having a school.
McCreery
There's no profession.
Cubie
There's no profession, and so it has to be a whole. But you know, the whole idea about making these changes came in a period with the Free Speech Movement and the seventies--the questioning of everything. Students were not receptive to the idea of dutifully following what was expected and assuming that because teachers knew and they didn't, it was simply a matter of following through.
You know, this was period of curriculum changes as well, at least certain experimentation with courses. Some flourished, others did not. We introduced courses for a while that did not go over very well in the long run, and others did. But on the whole, the students' attitudes and expectations changed in these years of disturbances very much. And to some extent,
McCreery
Do you feel it was more student attitude changes or changes on the part of the faculty?
Cubie
I think that student attitude changes led to changes in the faculty attitudes, as well.
McCreery
Okay, just wanted to clarify.
Cubie
But the result of not requiring courses on the other hand--again, it seems to be, quite naturally, turned out not to be a great deal. You know the way one speaks about children being left alone to eat; to help themselves to food that's really good for them, if you just leave them alone--in a way, it applied there with very few exceptions. They sort of gravitated toward taking a well-rounded curriculum.
But there were in those years, at the undergraduate level, particularly--and this carried over and of course there was still with some of the students who had graduated very recently--the notion of relevance. It was much discussed. Although our students didn't spend much time talking about it, there were basic assumptions that they should be offered what interested them. And some of them, a few, insisted that they should be part of the curriculum development. They should come to faculty meetings and hear what was being planned for them and offer their agreement. So we invited them to come, and as a matter of fact, representatives were sent, I think, to two faculty meetings. And they seemed to get bored with what went on there and it just didn't continue. But you know, it was interesting that just by being made welcome, they got the idea of what happened and then stopped coming.
The Advent of Student Evaluations of Teaching
CubieBut one thing did develop during that time that I think was rather sound, and it was lasting--I think it's still going on, at least I hope so. And that was some device for students to express themselves on courses and how they were conducted--the content or anything else that occurred to them, but also, very largely, giving their opinions on instructors and how the instruction came across to them. That, I think, was handled very well. We gave them at the end of each course a chance to write any statement they wanted to make. And this would be
McCreery
And there had been no student evaluation until that time?
Cubie
None whatever. So I think that the whole idea that students had an opinion that mattered--oh, not as individuals, I mean, you know, they were all adults. There was never--even in my day of being a student, there was a certain courtesy in relationships between faculty and students and this was absolutely a right one. It was only that in all those years students did not think they had anything to offer for evaluating teaching or the curriculum, until they themselves had profited from what was going on in their time in the school and what happened afterwards. It was at that time that they would join the alumni and make their own contribution.
It's that notion that changed, and I think it came entirely out of the Free Speech Movement. Students already knew. And some of it, of course, was quite absurd. The relevance idea particularly was absurd, because the notion there was: "If it doesn't suit me, it can't be very good." [laughter] And so that was one of the aberrations, but by and large the school came through these disturbed periods pretty well intact, because most students understood that to be acceptable to employers meant that real preparation for the services that libraries give was expected. And that is why they came.
And the students were, as I'm sure they are now, very bright and very able people. One other thing about our student body in those later years--the years after the war--there were a fair number of students not just graduated, but people who had worked in just any number of occupations: journalism, business, the military. We had several retired officers who had to leave the military in their fifties and were preparing themselves for something afterwards. So that there was a total student body with the ability to judge and give mature comments and suggestions on everything that went on.
Now, a little more about the seventies in instruction, or is there time for a little more?
McCreery
Yes, there's certainly time for a little more, and then I will want to go back and talk about some of the other deans of the school and so on, so we'll back up whenever you're finished.
Well interestingly, the very next statement I was going to make is about a dean, and that is the deanship of Patrick Wilson. That began just shortly before we went into South Hall.
The Acting Deanship of LeRoy Merritt, 1961-1963
McCreeryMaybe I'll ask you--at the risk of you losing your train of thought--before we do that, since we really haven't talked about any of the deans since Danton, maybe I'll ask you just to give me a few thoughts on the others that came between. We know that Professor Danton retired as dean in 1961, and at that time his second in command, LeRoy Merritt, took over as acting dean just for a couple of years' time. Was there anything significant you'd like to comment on about Dean Merritt?
Cubie
He left us, when he left the school, to become dean in Oregon, wasn't it? He was a scholarly man, a very quiet man, who was thoroughly satisfied and convinced that to be a good associate to Mr. Danton was his very best contribution. They agreed on the values and on the new programs they were trying to develop, and they came to Berkeley at the same time. When Mr. Danton was asked to come to the school, he asked Mr. Merritt if he was interested in coming along as associate dean, and that is what happened. And so that when Mr. Merritt became dean, when the change came about in the whole structure of directorships of various professional schools, Mr. Merritt carried on in pretty well the same way. He was a quiet, serious, kind person, of dedication--in the quietest way possible--to his job. Nothing would stand out that was different from what was done before. He carried on the agreed-upon programs for that time.
McCreery
And of course as acting dean, perhaps that's an appropriate approach to take.
Cubie
That's right.
McCreery
Did you feel you knew him very well?
Cubie
Yes, I think I knew him well. I thought I knew all of them well because it was such a small school. I think we all knew each other well, because even when after the war the faculty and the school grew, the faculty became--it seemed to us--very much larger. Still it was a small community, not only at faculty meetings, but with offices close together, you know. People met socially, too. We were a friendly sort of total
McCreery
We mentioned off tape that Clark Kerr was president of the university by that time and that he was decentralizing the administration somewhat and so on. Do you know if Mr. Merritt had any particular challenges with the larger administration during his short tenure as dean?
Cubie
None that I could now remember or be particularly aware of. If there had been anything of much significance, I think I would remember. But I don't think there was.
My own relationship to the total faculty was a smaller one because it was before the time when I began to take on the responsibility of co-teaching with Miss Markley. It was only in the years from about '60, about that time, when my own status in the school changed that the problems that had to be met and the thoughts that would be behind any action became more known to me. Up to that time I was closer to the profession as a whole as an alumna myself, and having been rather involved in the activities to some extent as we remembered the other day when I was rereading the Calibrarian. I was entirely involved in cataloging instruction and with Miss Markley's leadership in all this. All the total concerns of the school were slightly--not removed, but not very much part of my daily work in the same way.
Serving as Associate Editor of Calibrarian Alumni Newsletter, From 1950
McCreeryI understand. Would you like to talk a little bit about rereading those old issues of the Calibrarian and what that was like for you?
Cubie
Yes. This is perhaps also a good time to do that because I, first of all, wanted to thank you for bringing them at all, because I was delighted and enjoyed immensely reading the volumes of a ten-year period beginning with the first issue of the newsletter (which in the very next issue had found its name as Calibrarian). The period was of 1950 to 1959. Certainly I immensely enjoyed rereading it, as one who was there, so to speak.
And I was struck--and I remembered and thought about it as a decade--as a very vivid record of the very close association
I think that you must have been struck by the fact that so much is included in these letters: what alumni are doing individually; the roster of the classes; excerpts from some of their writings; the lists of what they've been up to there; the full text, for example, of the statements students made in the prizes they won for their personal book collections--they would be printed in these issues. One of them, as a matter of fact, printed not only the winners, but one person who didn't win but whose collection was so good. This complete entering into each other's interests and enterprises was a very good thing of that time, so I was very happy to be reminded of it.
Also, in that first volume--and that must be of interest to you because I know you have been looking at it and informing yourself on some things you thought you should--there are statements by some of the early leaders in the school, as well as in the university library. There are statements from Mr. Mitchell, and more than once a bit of reminiscing about what led up to alumni associations and that sort of thing. There was one by May Dornin, the archivist, and one by Miss [Mabel] Gillis. You asked about Miss Gillis some time ago. The spirit of fellowship and service, I think, comes through in this thing very, very strongly.
And regretfully, when I then picked up the South Hall News copy from the last time, I felt that it had become rather reduced to a very sparse kind of presentation, interestingly of all the same material--that is: alumni news, social events, dean's news column, the lectures and awards and scholarship
But I think this does represent a difference of a conviction at the time after the war, in the forties, fifties, sixties, that this profession was convinced of its own worth and felt that its duty was to, you know, help people keep it strong in what the school had to offer and with the help of the alumni, the interest that alumni in fact had, as employing librarians. There was every bit of expression of that in those early Calibrarian volumes. I found that most interesting.
And since we are on tape, we said a little while ago, I might just read from Calibrarian an excerpt from a letter Mr. Dewey, Melvil Dewey, wrote to Benjamin Ide Wheeler.
3. The letter, written in 1901, is in The Bancroft Library.
"I am personally more interested in the development of library interests and of a strong library school at Berkeley than at any other point in the world I think [laughs], because there is a pressing need for it in that great section, which has always had a peculiar charm for me. The demand will grow. My finger is on this library pulse all the while and I am sure the next [laughs] twenty-five years are going to show even greater progress than the remarkable quarter century just ended, which has been distinctly the library age of the world... Please put the idea in your mental pigeonhole. I believe you will come to believe it a matter of large importance for that part of the world."
So you see I said, I think when we were beginning these discussions or these notes and reminiscences, that much of that time could be described as the librarians' age of confidence, beginning in the late nineteenth century and with interruptions--very long interruptions--in which the periods were troubled. There was war, there was the Depression, but there was a great reaffirmation and an assumption that it could only get better and better and better if people were putting their full effort into it.
Well, thank you for sharing that excerpt. It's nice to get a little of the early history worked in. Now, you were serving as associate editor of the Calibrarian.
Cubie
Yes, with David Heron. David was of the class of 1948, the very first class in which I was reviser for Ethelyn Markley and so that the year now was 1950 when he became editor. And Miss [Margaret V.] Girdner, the president of the alumni association at that time, a wonderfully warm and active and generous woman, was behind this creation of--with the rest of the committee, of course, with the board--the newsletter. She appointed Heron, and Heron in turn asked me to act as associate editor.
And I think the reason I was asked to be associate editor and a couple of years later to become secretary of the alumni association was really quite simple: I was in the school, I was in a place to get all the news that emanated from the school, and keep things together, take care of planning social events for the students, keep the records of the association.
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McCreery
We were just talking about your associate editorship of the Calibrarian newsletter. Were you happy to accept that job?
Cubie
When we last met, I'd almost forgotten I'd ever done that, but when I reread in one piece all the activities of that ten-year period, you see, I learned something about the effect of all these meetings and newsletters. And I was pleased with it, as you can see. Yes, I was glad to do this because the thing I've just been talking about was so very strong. The librarians who were the officers of the association, and all the shared activities between the school and the association, these were all carried on by people with whom I was working all the time, or people with whom I had either worked in the past or knew and met at California Library Association meetings, or in some of the smaller special committees. It was really just one large family, and I was glad to do my little part in carrying on the work of that large group. Because I felt I belonged to it in several ways. I think that would have been the reason.
Serving as Secretary of the Alumni Association
McCreeryOkay. For part of that same time in the early fifties, you were serving as secretary of the alumni association. Do you have any particular comments on those duties?
I think that the comments I just made in a way cover that. I mean, it was true about the editorship and helping Dave Heron to get the material together from the school's point of view, representing the students in the school, and planning for the students to come, but I think the same thing was true about being secretary. A place to keep the records, to see to the welcoming the new students, planning for them, making sure that meetings were possible on several levels in the course of the year that would bring the students and the alumni together, all the things, really, that a secretary does. I think that one job, in a way, led to the other one. It was just a natural expression of all that.
Something occurs to me at this moment and that is how the relationship of the alumni association with the students didn't ever change. The interest was strong on the part of alumni to make sure to give every bit of help to the incoming new group. And so that was a common purpose.
But the way it was carried out changed in very interesting ways. When the alumni association was first formed in the mid-twenties and the school became a graduate school--from about that time on, an association was formed very soon. The annual meetings--there would be a banquet to which the alumni association would invite all the students. And the students were truly the guests. I mean, they were really invited to this event, and it would be at some place like the Berkeley Women's City Club, one large enough to accommodate a well-attended dinner party.
But the relationship of seniors to juniors was a clearly defined one, of the old kind. And it expressed itself in the--I would say the invitation, and firm expectation, yearly, that the classes would entertain the alumni with a bit of a theatrical skit. And it was wonderful. The students did it beautifully. The annual skit had been done for years before. It was done for some years after the war, but not very long, (and I'll tell you why in a moment). But it was always done with great panache. I mean, I always felt it was amazing how cleverly it was carried out. It would be some little skit and of course, you know, a [laughs] humorous dressing down of the faculty and all the things that were meant to be said after they'd graduated that had been either amusing or annoying to them, but it was always very funny.
But what I want to say about the skits is that this practice, this tradition, remained only a very few years after the war. Then it occurred to us--I think it was some of us in the school, with some hints from graduating students--to
So it changed. The alumni association began being, not hosts for a dinner at which the invited company had to sing for its supper, but rather entertaining at a welcome party for the new alumni. And that is what happened after that, so that over the years there were teas, either on campus or sometimes at faculty houses.
We noticed in reading Calibrarian the last time, that we had one of the alumni receptions at my house. And the dean had one at his house one time, or they would be at the Women's Faculty Club or some other hospitality center on campus. There is a long tradition, the year-end spring luncheon--that is still being held now, isn't it, by the alumni association?
McCreery
Yes.
Cubie
And all these other functions would make the students aware that there was a large number of people interested in them, who hoped that they would join them at some time.
McCreery
Do you remember any of the skits?
Cubie
I only remember little parts of--I remember the last one as being one that was particularly hard on Mr. Danton. He had an acronym that represented the elements of good administration--you'd have to ask Jim Kantor what the words were, because I never took Mr. Danton's course in administration, but it was something like "Podscorb." And I don't know what the individual words are, but I think the acronym was the title of the play. They would not only, of course, represent the dean in this little skit, but all the rest of the library school faculty. And whatever their idiosyncracies or foibles were would all be reviewed, but always in a way that was funny enough that everyone laughed. They were good, but they were too much trouble, really.
But all this then came to an end when students' attitudes had changed. People had other things on their minds, or something more on their minds, or brought to their work and to their expectations something that perhaps in the long run would
McCreery
But I'm glad you mentioned the close ties between the alumni and the students because I have noticed, not only in the historical research but even today, that the alumni association seems to be a very strong force in things, very active and interested. And so it's good to hear some of the early manifestations of that.
Cubie
Yes, I've probably given a great deal more attention to this just because I am one that goes so far back, you know, when these relationships developed and became rather stronger.
I have no doubt that the alumni association and the library profession is still more than interested in the evolution of the present school and its curriculum, and I'm sure to some extent troubled by news that comes in of how much they in fact have been left out of the present thinking. But that's another story and one that, of course, to me is only known from what I read--when I get a newsletter or what some of my colleagues tell me--because I have been removed from it for such a long time. But this, again, is a matter of evolution that no doubt isn't going to be any more settled now, in the new thinking, than it was settled a long time ago when we all thought that it was just a matter of continuing a perfecting process, rather than creating something revolutionary and casting aside practices that everyone assumed were the firm basis of bibliographical endeavor. And it turned out to be not only questioned, but interestingly somewhat disconnected.
McCreery
Well, that can bring us back to our discussion of the various deans that served in the school. We talked a little while ago about LeRoy Merritt who, as we said, was acting dean only from 1961 to '63. Just as an aside, do you have any recollections or comments on his own teaching of courses before we leave the subject of Professor Merritt?
Cubie
Not to add a great deal that would be very revealing. Later on, in the last years when Miss Markley retired and now I was responsible for a period of five or six years for all of the cataloging instruction--from that time on, you see, I would feel closer to what everyone was doing because I was involved in the decisions made about courses offered and so forth. And I think in the earlier years this was not the case. I knew the deans as the people representing the school. I knew them well as people. I knew them less well in any substantive way. I also knew about students' involvement with other courses, but I
McCreery
Of course.
Deanship of Raynard C. Swank, 1963-1970
CubieExcept for what I generally observed from comments and, again, attitudes on the part of other faculty members toward each other, of course. We all had that, naturally. And students' comments and reactions. In that way I knew them. And I would say that what I've already said about Mr. Merritt, would be general like this, though as a person I thought I knew him well. Similarly when Mr.--let's see now--
McCreery
Mr. Swank.
Cubie
Professor Swank was asked to come and assume the deanship. And of course he was then the real choice as successor after the interim period.
McCreery
Right. Now he had been a visiting professor from the Stanford Library some ten years earlier, from 1953, teaching book selection, if I'm right. But then as you say in 1963 he was chosen as the new permanent dean. What do you recall about his coming and how that all took place?
Cubie
Not really. And I think the real reason is the one I've already given. I don't think that all the decisions made at the various administrative levels and involving the academic senate, and all of these real factors in making appointments and choosing him, were things to which I personally was very close. I think this would have been really, on the whole, true for all deans.
McCreery
Okay, but do you know, though, or do you recall how the library school faculty responded upon learning that he was to be dean?
Cubie
Well, I think that--[pause]
McCreery
Did the faculty know him very well before he came?
Cubie
They knew him pretty well, though probably not very well until he actually came, because Stanford and UC being very close together geographically are not close in carrying their work out as institutions. The faculty interests only overlap in the
He was a man of enormous goodwill, with an open approachable way of dealing with people. He created interest and enthusiasm for the work, partly because of his own very engaging personality. I think it was probably just that particular characteristic of being entirely open and welcoming to any problem to which he could make a contribution. And so I think in a way he had some of the characteristics of Mr. Mitchell of earlier days. Very different people in many respects, so I don't mean to say that their personalities were the same, but I think their readiness to seriously enter a situation when asked to help with it or to give advice--I think they had something in common there. And for that reason he was a very popular dean.
And I think you will find that expressed in the alumni reactions to his deanship over the years, because there was, wasn't there, a scholarship established in his name. There was a great deal published, though I don't remember exactly where. Of course there is the In Memoriam volume, but that's a more formal one that comes from the Academic Senate. But I think that in the Calibrarian--though I think by that time it probably had become South Hall News, a lot was said by alumni about him.
McCreery
Well, you've characterized his style as open and welcoming. I'm interested, also, in what he may have tried to accomplish. You made a point of saying that Professor Danton as dean was very much interested in academic and research libraries and in making Berkeley's school more like the other schools in the east and sort of professionalizing and bumping up the degrees offered and so on.
Cubie
Yes.
McCreery
So I'm curious, how would you summarize the main interests or goals of Swank?
I think the main interests and goals of Swank in all those years was to meet the challenges of that time as they developed, you know, from the outside and inside and do as well as he could with them. I don't think he was an innovator in any way. He didn't have some particular ideas he particularly wanted to press. Nothing stands out that was so much started by Mr. Swank and to which he clung and promoted throughout all the years of deanship. It was more a matter of stewardship and doing a very good job of being a dean and being of service to the profession in all these different ways in which he saw that could be expressed.
In some ways he was a little bit like Mr. Wight--Ed Wight--in his relationship to public and county librarianship. Mr. Wight became a very favorite member of the profession because--this is an aside, it was not about deans because he was acting dean once when Mr. Danton was away, but that's another thing. But similarly these men might be summed up by their approach of always saying, "What can I do to do well by what is presented to me?"
The school was big by this time. There were problems of meeting the challenges of growth--I think these challenges were perhaps much more real than they ever were in--although the student body doubled during Mr. Danton's time, I think that the full effects of all this growth--and expansion of the curriculum, as well--all these things really came to full flower under Mr. Swank's deanship.
McCreery
Yes, and as we mentioned off tape, the California master plan for higher education was in place by that time.
Cubie
That's right.
McCreery
And so there were I'm sure a lot of larger issues of growth and change.
Cubie
That's right, and Mr. Swank would address himself to these. Yes, he would. He would address himself to it and he would participate in a way that was more active from day to day, I think, in some of these decisions, so far as representing his own department was concerned. All this came out in rather--not in very formal ways, but just in ways that always had a good effect because of the way it came across to people. He listened well to them, and he had enough experience over many years in meeting problems in his own library before, and all that he had done up to that time, that I think he made some good contributions that way.
Yes, and you make an important point about his connection with public librarianship.
Cubie
Well, that of course was Mr. Wight. I said he was rather like Mr. Wight in this respect. Mr. Wight created or recreated something that had been very real in the early days when public librarianship was well represented in a very small school--when that was very easy. You had a faculty member or lecturer come in from the outside for this, that, and the other, and we had altogether perhaps half a dozen people who never had much problem communicating and the total library picture was a simpler one in those days. But by the time Mr. Swank came, the activities, both within the university with all of these new programs--and they were all added to what this department, as such, would already be doing. And so Mr. Wight--and it is only an aside. I was making a parallel between how they carried on their work and how they had an influence. They saw their work to be of service in an ongoing everyday way that went beyond teaching of courses, being very much involved in aiding, to the extent possible, any programs beyond the school.
McCreery
Okay, thank you for clarifying. Around the same time that Mr. Swank became dean, the California Library Association also published a master plan for public libraries in California. Now that may have been beyond the purview of the school, but do you have any recollection?
Cubie
Well I think that is where--I just happened to mention Mr. Wight, but that was Mr. Wight's tremendous concentrated work of aiding them because Mr. Wight had come from--what was it, now? Was it Newark Public Library? He had been assistant librarian, had he been, at Newark? Mr. Wight having very extended public library experience in the east, rather like Mr. Joeckel, though Mr. Joeckel's years were of a different character. Mr. Wight brought to the school ideas on public relations, on publicity, on finance, on all sorts of problems that large institutions have to meet, large public libraries and small public libraries. He had worked with these institutions before and he made quite a contribution to these activities in California. And I remember he was enormously appreciated. It was even more than the kind of thing I've been saying about Mr. Swank. People liked working with him. People in the profession were very glad to see him there.
McCreery
I don't know if you can comment extensively, but also around the time that Mr. Swank became dean, 1963, the Institute of Library Research was established in the school in the fall of that year. I take it some faculty members were quite involved
Cubie
No, I don't think I remember.
McCreery
Okay.
Cubie
Again, I think it would be quite natural that given the subject matter and the kinds of fields different members of the faculty represented, that it would have been natural for some of them to be very involved and others--like what Miss Markley and I did, we felt that our time was concentrated within the school, but also of course on a larger basis on all the activities that the technical services divisions and committees in ALA and CLA had to work with. Miss Markley was very active that way.
Promotion to Lecturer; Teaching with Ethelyn Markley
McCreeryThat's fine. Now, you've alluded a couple of times to the fact that, I think it was around 1964 you were promoted from your job as reviser that you had held for so long.
Cubie
Yes, I think actually the very first--I mean, it began a little sooner. '64 is the date when it actually happened formally. Did it?
McCreery
Well, at least that's when it began appearing in the school announcement. That's the only document I've been able to--
Cubie
It's funny about how actual dates when they no longer matter have a way of merging. I think it was probably a little farther back, with the growth of the classes and the need. We had several times invited instructors, people generally that Miss Markley had known from the past. And when the question then arose as to getting a permanent additional teacher, somehow at that moment it occurred to us that carrying this on with her being in total charge of instruction--being along exactly the same lines, rather than having a parallel but somewhat different program going on--would be a sound thing.
I think that I already brought up an example of what happened with Mr. Ready and Mr. Mosher. Most cordial relations, always, personally. Mr. Ready was a marvelously interesting man, and a good librarian and a teacher students appreciated in the classroom up to a point. But the uneasiness that was felt--and this was only an obvious example--about
It was remarkable how well that happened later on between Mr. Mosher and Mr. Held. And he, of course, was another dean after this and so I can briefly say about Mr. Held that he was a very hardworking, very good librarian, a very good reference librarian, a very intelligent man, but a very reserved person--and I can say reserved not in the way of just being in the room with him. Person to person it was easy to talk to Mr. Held and he was a pleasant man and everyone always got along very well with Mr. Held, but Mr. Held did not impose ideas of his own. He was very happy to go along with an already established program.
##
Cubie
I was talking about Miss Markley and what happened at the time I began sharing the courses with her.
Having just reviewed what I said on the previous tape [laughs] about Mr. Held, it was such a parallel as an example of the relationship between Mr. Mosher and Mr. Held and the program they devised between them of very fruitful efforts toward reference courses over many years.
With Miss Markley and me there was a similar way of--and reason for, in a way--dividing up classes with her after the many years in which I had served as reviser with her. The faculty agreed to this when it was introduced to them at a meeting and decided then and there that instead of looking elsewhere for another teacher, it would be best to continue the kind of program Miss Markley had established over years that was very much appreciated by the students and the profession--that perhaps we should center on that program and continue to be centered on it. And that is why I was asked, first by her and then invited by the faculty, to become a co-teacher. And we did then work--we had always worked--closely together, and as her assistant, I had done all I could to make what contributions I could to the program and to the daily work with students.
Now we sat down together and came up with outlines in the syllabus that you have already seen. But more than outlines, I mean, we sat down and hammered out some substantive material for classes. Obviously we were two different women in the classroom, but we were not diverging very much on subject matter. We were teaching the same course. And that worked
McCreery
Did the invitation come as any surprise by that time?
Cubie
No, I don't think so. [laughs] I don't think she actually asked me one day, "What do you think about this?" When we were talking about the need to think of making these invitations more permanent for someone, I think we possibly came up with the very same idea together at the same time in just talking about it quite informally. But she simply said, "You know, I don't think we could invite anybody who could do the course as well as you could. Why don't we go along those lines?" And that's what happened.
McCreery
Did your job change much, in fact, or was it really similar?
Cubie
Oh, it changed in having the whole classroom side and the responsibility of teaching. I mean, I now became a faculty member with all the responsibilities attached thereto, when before I was an assistant in the laboratories and the reviser--making myself useful in many ways to Miss Markley, of course, in her work in addition to this--but it was never with the responsibility of teaching a course. And now you see, it was an interesting division. It simply meant there were now two of us. [laughs]
If I were asked how did it work, I don't think anyone ever really could quite be able to analyze it. I don't think she could or I could. We had worked together so closely for so long. I admired her values, I admired her way of dealing with them, and I admired the results of what happened in her courses. And I was very happy to be part of that. I assimilated much of this, so that in a way the two of us were really coming up with something not very different. And the students did not mind this. We never had a feeling that, "If I only were in another section..." I don't think that honestly came up. I think we both managed our courses, or our particular sections of the courses, in such a way that I think the students appreciated that we also worked very closely together, that the lectures were--they were her lectures, they were my lectures. The laboratories were for the whole class, dividing them up with new assistants, new revisers doing that work.
So you see, my own duties changed, yes. What was happening in carrying out those duties was already very familiar to me, that's why I could do it. And at the same time, the whole enlarged, but the total structure of what we did and why we did it was continuous. I mean, it never really had any great change. And so much so that when Miss Markley retired, because of ill health really, a little sooner than she might have (I thought she might have perhaps stayed another year or two), she simply left. When I say simply--she was very much missed because she was a very popular person on campus and in the faculty. But because she had to leave, there wasn't any feeling of a disruption; I now just expanded into the whole. And I could take on larger student bodies because the patterns were so well set and worked out reasonably well over the years that we didn't have to really put something aside and come up with something else and all these kinds of new challenges that might have just made it entirely too much. There was never any question about looking again for someone else in those years. You see, it was all done more with more laboratory sections in an expanded physical environment. It could be handled very well the way we did in the next five or six years until I retired.
McCreery
What did you think of the classroom teaching that you took on?
Cubie
What did I think of it? You mean the idea of classroom teaching?
McCreery
Yes, how did you find it once you began?
Cubie
I found it as a natural next step in my own work and development because there was already so much--I had become so much part of the planning for the courses, including the classroom presentations. A peculiarity of cataloging is simply its whole structural entity. And therefore, because of having worked so closely with Miss Markley, I didn't find it a new challenge, I simply found it a very happy way of carrying on, in those particular ways, something in which I was participating in a supportive way before. And it was all very easy and obvious, so that I didn't have any enormous challenge in meeting something unfamiliar and new.
Cataloging and Classification for Special Disciplines
McCreeryOkay. Now we've talked a couple of times about the 201 course, "Introduction to Cataloging and Classification." Now I also
Cubie
Well, perhaps to describe the difference--the obvious difference in words. The special problems--I think with the syllabus, if you look at the syllabus, you'll see a little of what is covered. The first-year course was--until it really came to the point, and that was very late on in my association with the school, when students were not required to take any particular course, and there might have been a few that might not have taken the introductory course of cataloging. But because it was assumed that they really couldn't be librarians without some insight into making materials available in a library, that course was taken by just about everybody. The special problems course was an elective and always had been, and even in going back to some early catalogs of the school from the time when I would have been a student, before and after.
There was always a second level of cataloging instruction that went beyond the all-embracing, all-types-of-library kind of course. And in that second course we put much more emphasis--in fact, the entire emphasis--on research libraries, large university libraries, and special subject libraries. Quite obviously, it didn't mean that we were in a position to teach the subject of medicine, anthropology, art, whatever it was, but rather, those things that a person working in a special library would have to consider in making the collection of use to a special clientele. The librarian would have to inform himself in one way or another and perhaps already bring his own expert knowledge to the field, whoever that person was, but there were problems of how to approach materials in a special field, how to run a small library, and how to handle a special library in relation to the people served. All these kinds of problems would be included in that kind of course.
And then because of the subject aspects of that course, the students had very much more choice in what they would choose to pursue. As an example, a student who later became the map librarian for the university library, Phil Hoehn, said his particular interest was in maps. It was something he could choose as his special project in that course. And that is what the students did; there were the common problems of how to run a special library, and how to organize the materials, and how to make them available to the people they served. But to really find out what special librarians did, the thing was to go to the university library in various departments or branches
The librarians at the UC library--I don't think there was one, ever, that wasn't very welcoming. Librarians are supposed to be welcoming [laughter], and the best ones always are. Asking students to come, make themselves at home, ask questions in pursuit of their projects. The special problems course meant anything beyond the encompassing, basic elements of cataloging and classification. The first course dealt very largely with the Dewey system because public libraries--many of them, anyway--adopted it. More attention was paid to Library of Congress classification in that second course, but most of all we did deal with an assortment of subject-based libraries--many using general subject classifications. The students would, at UC, be in a fairly good position to find out more about such libraries. You know, if the person said, "I'm going to be a law librarian," it wasn't very hard for him to try to pursue this. So there would be papers, there would be individual study projects.
McCreery
Am I right then that you would tailor the content to the interests of the students?
Cubie
Both ways. I mean, there was, as I said, a great deal in the lecture part of the course meant to be of interest to everybody because of common elements.
McCreery
And that part didn't change from one semester to the next?
Cubie
And that didn't change. Also, because they had common elements, there was an opportunity sometime in the latter part of the course when students would actually bring back to the class what they thought might be of interest in their individual projects. The classes were smaller than the very large introduction course was, in total students, because it was an elective. Perhaps half the class might come back. They were pretty large classes, too, because--well, there were many people, and many of them had a specific interest and wanted to take this course. In fact, the last course I ever taught was in special problems--a summer school course in the extension division in '75. And I don't remember the exact student number, but there were at least thirty-five.
So that there were things to be learned that people found useful in their daily work in whatever they were going to do as librarians. And that is why they would come to these courses, because it's not something that was easily picked up by just being there and observing, and that was of course the whole
McCreery
Well, that's quite a feat that you and Miss Markley taught together so closely and so cooperatively. Do you think that was an unusual arrangement--again, because of the subject matter?
Cubie
I think it's very unusual. I don't think anything quite like that ever happened anywhere. It was not in any way something that was done in one university and someone else thought it was a good idea. No, I think it was really the way it happened in Berkeley because we were who we were, and the fact we had worked together the way we had and had so much in common in all these things we were doing from day to day.
Friendship and Professional Collaboration With Ethelyn Markley
CubieWe had other interests in common. After she retired and traveled more, later when I had a chance to do more of that, we would exchange information with each other about where to go in travel and introduce each other to mutual friends abroad. As a matter of fact--this is a thing much later--it was Miss Markley who was along on the day when I first met my husband, Dr. [Alexander] Cubie. Miss Markley and I were traveling with another librarian, another great friend--a student from Greece, who was in the school for a year and a half with us, sent by the Bank of Greece to inform herself on how to establish a financial library for the Bank of Greece--Ellie Marsellou, a very close friend of both of us, but especially of mine because in later years I traveled to Greece.
And as a fluke, as so many things in my life happened all at once without any thought beforehand, one morning when I was visiting Ellie south of Athens, in an apartment she had bought on the Saronic Gulf, I was standing on her balcony saying "This is so lovely. When I retire, I wish I could have a place like this." And she said, "You can. They're selling one right down here by the sea." [laughter] Well, as it happened later that day I had bought this little studio apartment with a view toward later years of spending quite a bit more time there. It happened that the three of us--Ethelyn, Ellie, and I--were in Sicily on a certain date when we happened to meet my husband several times on sightseeing buses. And about that story I may give you one or two little things later on.
Oh, go ahead now if you like.
Cubie
No, I will wait, because we're really getting away from the central subject, and that is one of Miss Markley and me just having very parallel interests and getting along well together.
UCLA and Other Library Schools
McCreeryNow, your whole joint approach to teaching cataloging--you were very much in agreement and accustomed to working together and so on and so forth. In meeting other colleagues from other library schools, did you ever have occasion to find that you were doing anything much differently from what others were doing?
Cubie
We are on the Pacific Rim. Pretty much at that time--UCLA was established, but UCLA was established by fellow alumni and colleagues.
McCreery
Berkeley fellows. [laughter]
Cubie
Different personalities, altogether, with the special stamp given by the person with the positive personality of their first dean, Larry Powell, a classmate of mine. The stamp on that school in some ways was very different, but we also were very, very aware of what they were about to do. Andy [Andrew H.] Horn, who was again in that first class in which I assisted Ethelyn, was as much of an organizer of that school in the beginning--I would say more than Larry Powell. Larry Powell had the idea of establishing it, and set the tone according to his own values and personality very much, but it was Andy Horn who carried it out in all of the way of building that had to be done. Later of course he became dean when Larry retired, but it was Andy Horn, you see, who was again a very close friend of all of us.
And it was like that out here. Other schools and faculties of other schools--we didn't see them very often. Now that does not mean that Miss Markley had not in the past been very much in cooperation with people in the east. And for that reason she brought to Berkeley a large network of relationships to other catalogers, to other librarians. And because of the kind of person she was, people enjoyed being with her and she had many friends, professionally and otherwise.
There was a great network of connections with other schools, but out here we didn't see them often. Now the few we did see, and who came occasionally, were important to me--there was Maurice Tauber of Columbia, with whom I taught a summer course in about--let's see, when would that have been? 1958, I would say. If it wasn't '58, it was very close. Maurice Tauber came out. Several teachers Ethelyn Markley had known in the past.
But what was not possible out here, geographically speaking--people did not travel all that much. Air travel was still something that only some people did, and other people still took the train. You know, traveling really became almost a daily activity for most of us who get about at all, but it wasn't then. The comings and goings were more planned, much more occasionally than they are now. So really, comparing notes with other schools in an informal way--to know what they were really doing--didn't happen very much out here.
McCreery
Okay.
Cubie
Miss Markley brought much of that with her and kept it up through relationships in ALA and all these activities, but not in any way of being really together very often.
McCreery
Well, that's a good point about the Pacific Rim really being a separate "continent." [laughs]
Cubie
For a long time we were the only graduate school west of the Mississippi. And it was just like that, and so I don't know--at the present time, I don't think that has anything to do with it--where we are. I think just the opposite has happened now, that everybody is together in one particular way wherever that is, and again, not together. I think this is what is happening in the new phase of services of this kind.
McCreery
It's a big difference, isn't it?
Cubie
Tremendous difference, yes.
McCreery
Well, you must have watched the development of the new school at UCLA with great interest.
Cubie
Oh, yes! And with very happy interest because we wished well the faculty there. They were all good friends and there was obviously some exchange of views and ideas, but it was in a very general way because Larry Powell in starting the school knew exactly what he was going to do, and as long as he had Andy Horn doing it for him, [laughter] he did it very well.
McCreery
Well, I think San Jose State.
Cubie
I don't mean state--I mean, except for San Jose which has been going on as a parallel school of instruction, which for many years was more limited to school, public, college librarianship, but not including anything that had to do with the research picture that was so very much part, always, of UC's interests. From the beginning, that was always very much included in the Berkeley school's total curriculum. San Jose did this for many librarians who were going to work in these other kinds of libraries. Our program was all-inclusive, but now the San Jose school may have expanded its curriculum because someone must do something. [laughs] And with the shrinking of the kind of services to be prepared for--not the services, but I don't know what happens--I just don't know because not being there I can only have a general impression of what comes to me piecemeal. But San Jose State probably now has a greater responsibility for the whole of the profession.
What I was going to say about UCLA is that they managed to keep the substance of some of their curriculum by going over into the Graduate School of Education.
McCreery
Yes, it was a very different solution to the problem of what to do than that Berkeley made, yes.
Cubie
It serves the profession, while the profession that we have been talking about--librarianship--is being set aside more and more at UC by some very overt acts that one hears about--like the latest one, saying that accreditation by the ALA is of no consequence to them. I mean, that's simply a telling description of what is happening. There are now fewer schools than there were, but there never were very many within any sort of easy reach.
McCreery
And as you say, geographic separation was a much larger factor even in the sixties. That's a good reminder for me.
Cubie
Geographic separation always involved very much more time and effort in getting together. Airplane travel is now used so much by people throughout the population in ways it was certainly not in the forties and fifties at all. People going
McCreery
Okay, well, I think we're at a good stopping point for today.
Cubie
Fine.
Deanship of Patrick G. Wilson, 1970-1975
We agreed that we would start this morning with a discussion of the time period beginning in 1970 when Patrick Wilson became dean of the library school. Can you tell me what you remember about that event?
Cubie
Well, I would say that his deanship began shortly before the move to South Hall so that he could be, as dean, in charge of the move. And it ended shortly after my retirement, so that it was an interesting period in which there was a much closer association between us than there had been before.
There were some new opportunities coming along in our use of the building, in all the developments vis-a-vis the students and the student movements.
When I say his deanship came to an end in '75, I know that he was acting dean several times after that, not surprisingly. [laughs] But that is another story.
Pat brought qualities to this office, that is, to the office of dean, that were especially well suited to that time. He brought great flexibility toward great challenges. He was quite open to experimentation. He introduced ideas at faculty meetings and even, for a while, experimented with a course that did include cataloging, which I'll tell you about in a moment. He introduced stimulating ideas that concerned bibliographical control in both the intellectual and practical aspects. And all along he brought to all this energy and good humor, and this was not easy to do in these unsettled times. So I think we were very fortunate that we had Patrick Wilson in those years.
When I talk about the experimentation with courses, there was a period, not a very long one--it did not take, either with the students or perhaps with the rest of the staff, but mostly
In a practical way, what was done for about a year was that several of us--that is, the revisers in the cataloging courses, the assistants in the reference courses, the instructors of reference and cataloging, and the librarian, Miss [Virginia] Pratt--all conducted sections, similar to cataloging in some ways, but they were class sessions, actually. After Pat Wilson had given his own bibliographical lecture--I think it was a three-times-a-week thing, the smaller class sections met afterwards--it was up to each member of this considerable team to conduct class in his own way.
It was stimulating. It was most interesting to me. It was very interesting to some students, because students philosophically and intellectually inclined toward the stimulus that comes from these kinds of ideas just loved the course. Other students found it extremely irritating [laughs] that they had to be thinking deeply about things, when in fact their purpose of being in the school was to get on with it and to get all the information on how to conduct themselves in an actual library. So you see, it was something that eventually was not continued, but that was one of the curriculum ideas that, you know, put some sort of yeast into the situation.
McCreery
Was the course required?
Cubie
Yes. It was the introductory course so everyone took it. And in some ways it perhaps was a disappointment that it couldn't go on or develop further, but I could also see that something as wide open and informally carried on with staff that comes and goes inevitably very often--and even staff with somewhat different experience, perhaps--just cannot make a whole for a course [laughs] that can be added on an ongoing basis. It was an interesting time.
McCreery
What were some of the other changes to the curriculum during that period?
Cubie
You know, it's interesting, my own memory now--I only know how the courses would be introduced. When I say that Pat was very open to experimentation, it was he, of course, with the cooperation of the faculty. At faculty meetings, every member of the faculty in those days--almost all of them--[laughs]
This was probably somewhat in response to the whole period of students' demand for participation, and of ideas that would be thrown about, "Why can't we have some more of this--and can't something else take place?"
I don't now really have much to offer in the actual subject content of these courses. That's why I'm hoping that as you interview some of my colleagues of that time who stayed much longer and who would remember better how this worked out in the long run, than I could--
Early Use of Computers to Facilitate Teaching
CubieMy own memory is fairly vivid of what happened to my own courses. [laughter] And there are some things of interest there, at least to illustrate how things were going at a time when computerized cataloging procedures were in fact being developed. That is, not everywhere and not very noticeable in actual libraries in a comprehensive way, but it was the time of the "MARC" project being developed and very much under way at the Library of Congress.
The whole process of retrospective conversion of the card catalogs, that was still some years away, so it meant that there was not much change in cataloging instruction. Libraries still expected to make use of what was happening in the library school, except that it was, of course, a time when it was important to make students aware of what was to come and at the same time, of taking advantage of what computers could actually do for us in a practical way.
And one of them was aiding instruction. Several of our students who had experience with computers, and who took a great interest in cataloging and what we were doing there, offered to set up some aids of this kind. I'll give you one example because it's a particularly interesting one in another connection that comes later. A student graduating about '72--it was in the early seventies--Carol McAllister--do you want me to write this down?
McCreery
Well, we can do that later.
Okay, so Carol McAllister had had previous experience with IBM and really was very knowledgeable. She offered to devise a computer-assisted format for a laboratory problem that had been rather awkward for us to handle, or for students to handle--for all of us to handle. It was an exercise in applying rules of filing, filing entries for large dictionary catalogs. And you've already noticed that these filing patterns are intricate. And for students to learn what the problems are, they would be given little bundles of paper slips, very hard to handle, very hard to revise later on. The whole thing was very awkward, so she suggested putting all this on IBM cards and having the computer do this for us. We would save time and would have a printout to work from.
And that is exactly what happened. Carol and her husband, who worked out the actual program, supplied these to us. The students would arrange their decks of cards, we would carry them to the central computer center in the engineering building--you know, the big fellows that hugely filled those halls--and the next day we would pick up the result, with printouts excellently suited to review and discussion.
This is where there was the first illustration to many of our students who hadn't yet been near computers--knowing how to use them was not at that time even envisaged--[doorbell rings] so here was an example that was quite salutary for everyone. Excuse me. [tape interruption] Interruption while the doorbell rang. [laughs] So that this was a very, very helpful thing to us.
Return Visits to Germany
CubieMrs. McAllister graduated. I met her again a couple of years later in Dortmund, Germany.
McCreery
Oh!
Cubie
Not by accident. It was by design. I knew she was there. IBM had sent her and her husband to Dortmund to devise a digital library catalog for a newly created university--I think it's called, you know, in German, of course, the University of Dortmund--a university of a new postwar system (in European terms probably a little bit like the red-brick universities after the war in England--it would be that kind of place). Being new, they wanted the newest type and shape, and the McAllisters went to do it for them.
At the time this was going on, I was visiting my aunt in Essen, and so they invited me one day to spend a day with them in Dortmund. They met me at the railroad station, took me to lunch to the outskirts of my city, to an historic monument where I had last been on a school outing when I was eleven years old. [laughs]
And when all those personal things were over, we went to the university. Carol showed me what she was doing, and of course I met the staff. They all found it very intriguing to think--as she of course introduced me--that her cataloging teacher in California had actually started her early years of education in Dortmund. They were all rather pleased with the idea that whatever Carol was doing for them was in some way touched by [laughs] something that had come from Dortmund.
McCreery
Was that your first trip back to Germany?
Cubie
Oh no, it was not. I began going back the very first time in 1959. That had been twenty-nine years after my leaving there--the first time it really was possible for me to be away. And after that it became possible to travel rather more frequently, and as the years went by I went more and more--at least once a year. But the beginning was after nearly three decades.
And one of those times, again, oh, quite a long time later, in 1973, for my mother's eightieth birthday, she went with me for a visit for the first time. And for her it had been forty-three years. Wonderful time. Her sister was still living, some cousins were still there, we could visit in Essen and in Dortmund. It was wonderful, personal time.
Thoughts on Changes to Library Education
CubieI was going to say something now, if I may, about the--and then of course if you want to go back to something else, I'd be glad to do that--but my years with the school spanned the decades when librarianship was understood to be a profession of unquestioned worth in society. And I think I've made that point more than once, that it was held meaningful to individuals, to institutions, to many and varied enterprises. It was engaged and forward-looking and strove mightily toward ever-improving service. So that to have been part of that, or to be part of that all along, was very satisfying and rewarding, as it is to many librarians--more often among reference librarians who have the direct communication with
Now, the rapid changes that were brought about in techniques and in technologies have not been part of my experience. As I've said a little while ago, they were well known to be taking place and would be taking place, but the rapidity with which they developed and the all-embracing way in which they developed and replaced so much of what was done then, about which of course I can not really comment, since I was away.
I have, since my retirement, been living an entirely private life and much of it abroad, so that even the normal being in touch with movements--for me this can only be in a very general way.
When education for librarianship particularly comes to my attention, and it does with discussion with friends and alumni association news, then I can't help but discern a displacement [laughs] and what I can only describe as, at least partially, a neglect of the ways and means of passing on what has guided over 100, 150 years, in an ever more organized and structured way, the creation of libraries, the maintenance of libraries, the giving of good service in libraries. And so it makes me uneasy to read that a spokesman for the library school's successor, under its new title [School of Information Management and Systems], is quoted as saying that, "We never meant to be a library school," or that the idea of seeking accreditation from the American Library Association is not even entertained. The denial in those words at least--since a spokesman stands for what the school consensus is--the denial seems to me very strong and excessive [laughs] if libraries are still expected to look to South Hall for new staff. And to that extent, it seems incomprehensible. So since I have not talked to these people, I do not know what their answer would be.
Another rather symbolic, small manifestation of this is when I pick up now the South Hall News and look at that little bracket that appeals for support of the alumni association. There is a column that says identification--you know, to whom do you belong--and it says, "employing company name." There's nothing about the idea, even, that such an organization might be a library. It uses the word "employing company." Now it seems to me that's very symbolic of an attitude and a commitment to a curriculum and a philosophy of the school that
It is so particularly disturbing when one thinks back on Melvil Dewey's letter, that I read to you not long ago, to Benjamin Ide Wheeler, when he looked forward to a strong library school at Berkeley. So the change has been, if not absolute, then nearly so. And we'll have to see what comes of it.
McCreery
Do you think your regret about this is shared by most of your retired colleagues?
Cubie
Yes, by my retired colleagues. And yes, of course, because by this time just about all the ones with whom I'm really in close touch are retired by now. Many of them--well, certainly all of them by now are people who were students during the years I was in the school, because the people who were my contemporaries, of course, are not many now. Yes, it's very much making everyone very uneasy. And the feeling is that the embracing of a system that is perhaps just not entirely, or not sufficiently, understood--and the shocking abandonment of something without anything very sound taking its place--seems a great worry to them.
The worry seems to be that, bibliographically, libraries have worked out systems of carrying out their work that cannot be abandoned without creating some real problems. The collections might in some ways, for example, if not disappear as collections, not be very useful or used. Books in the computerized catalogs--they may get lost.
And I read the article of Nicholson Baker [in The New Yorker], who makes quite a point that much of the cost of the computerized catalog is so very great, but what actually comes out in a useful way is somewhat limited. He also says, quite fairly, that there is obviously an ever-ongoing effort to get around problems of the waste in actual use that is created by too much appearing in search results that people do not want, and the search becomes in some ways less convenient. While at the same time he quite praises all the convenience that is gained by the access people can have to collections anywhere. It's a wonderful thing that this can take place, but in his observation, there is entirely too much presented in a way that is wasteful of a user's time. Worse than that, the entries themselves have not been controlled enough by knowledgeable
McCreery
And this goes back to a cataloging function.
Cubie
It goes back to the way--this particular thing goes back to the cataloging functions, yes, because it brings in the problem of the way conversions were carried out. The old catalogs--as of course is the burden of that article--were quickly destroyed without any possibility of reviewing some of the things that were done.
But in other ways--and quite beyond cataloging--all of librarianship, the acquisition of books and other works, the selection, all these processes of making them not only available but using them and using them by this process of easily and well-controlled catalogs on the one hand and knowledgeable people to use them. This whole art that has developed in organization and use of the collections is not passed on to the next generation of people who work in libraries, and this is the worry. It looks as though one were forced toward reinventing the wheel at some point, because of the closing of schools, the turning students over to some few schools that remain, whose instruction is at a level that is not really just to research and university libraries. Many materials would present great difficulties to someone whose instruction had been in a school like the only one that remains in the state at the moment, because they simply aren't dealt with. So that does worry every librarian who ever thinks about the hasty abandonment of the totality of education for librarianship.
McCreery
Was that New Yorker article much discussed among you and your friends?
Cubie
Yes, it certainly was at the time. What was particularly interesting to my friends and me was that it happened to use Berkeley as an example, and so naturally it was personally interesting. The fascinating thing about the whole article is that the young man--I don't know how old he is; everyone is young to me [laughs]--I visualize him as a young man--Mr. Baker having worked at this conversion effort--obviously a man of very good observation--put it so very well. He's not a librarian, but with complete insight into the problems created by hasty abandonment of these older forms, instead of giving it a chance to work out what problems remain and doing greater justice to the collections. This is entirely about the cataloging. But if a library school like ours in Berkeley, or
McCreery
Yes.
Cubie
And about that perhaps a little later when we talk about leadership in librarianship as you had suggested we do, perhaps I can come back to one or two of the thoughts that I think might connect with that. Shall we do that?
McCreery
Very well. That would be great. I'll just turn this tape over.
V A New Life in Retirement; Thoughts on Librarianship
Deciding to Retire, 1975
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McCreeryCan you tell me a little bit about your decision to retire?
Cubie
The decision to retire just when I did, in that particular year, had something to do with the health of my parents. My mother and my father were not well. My mother had some emergency hospitalization that lasted for about a couple of weeks, in which my seeing her and helping her through her illness was a very troubling thing to me, because my time was intensely used in Berkeley on the one hand and still I had to find time for my parents.
My father was an invalid at home. My father lived until the middle of 1975. It was in 1974 when all these personal demands coincided that I thought that perhaps it was best for me to plan to retire. And I then announced that I would be retiring and made my plans accordingly so that I was not going to be in a situation where two absolutely inescapable [laughs] duties were going to come in conflict. And this might be happening more and more as they got older.
As it did turn out, my father then lived only until the middle of '75; he died before I gave my last course in the school. And my mother, happily, lived for many years after that, even joined my husband and me in Santa Cruz. I'll come back to that a little later.
Meeting and Marrying Alexander Cubie, 1975
CubieThe year of my retirement coincided quite unexpectedly with my marriage to Alexander Cubie, a retired physician of Edinburgh.
And this is what happened. When I taught my last class in September, a few days later I was on my way. And so we did have our day together in Rome, enjoying our shared interest in archeological matters, and I went on to Greece. There was an exchange of some letters for about three weeks or more--not much more, less than a month--and at the end of this we found ourselves engaged to be married. [laughter]
I returned to Berkeley in November and Alex soon followed for us to be married before Christmas. Now, with both of us retired, we were free to move about and very fortunate to be able to alternate our residence between Berkeley and Edinburgh, where my husband still owned a house. And I gained another family, a very welcoming family, of two sons George and Andrew, and their families--wives and children, little children at that time; some of them still to be born in the years since. Now those children are young adults and they visit us, as do their parents, as often as they can. And that means that we can expect someone from either Scotland or England--one son, in Edinburgh, is a lawyer there; the other in London, in the clerk's department of the House of Commons. So we have the family in both countries, if one wants to say countries, between Scotland and England.
Retirement Interests and Activities
CubieWe are no longer traveling abroad, but only stopped in the last year and a half. We have been grounded, quite literally, so it's a very wonderful thing that this family likes to come and see us--likes to come to California. And we are very glad to have them.
Were you able to spend much time at your apartment in Greece together?
Cubie
Yes, in the twenty years we were able to travel, we enjoyed living part of the time in--it would be winter and summer in Berkeley and spring and autumn in Edinburgh. And from there, of course--and in this country, too--we were having great opportunities for seeing more of the United States, for my husband--and for me, to some extent--and traveling in Britain and the Continent.
And we always found time for a good little period in both seasons for our little place at the Saronic Gulf and with our friends there. And when I think of these Greek friends, the whole idea of the friendships that I have gained because of my work in the school--a quite wonderful thing. They are lifelong friendships and most cherished friendships for me and my husband. We've enjoyed together--as of course I, in turn, then became great friends in the years we could be living over there with all of my husband's family and friends. So what started, interestingly, with Ethelyn Markley and that first meeting [laughs] could not have happened at a more joyful time for me.
In 1978 we moved our California residence to Santa Cruz. My mother made her home with us, then, for twelve more years, when she died at the age of ninety-seven. She enjoyed being in this little town, having been a resident of San Francisco all those years before. She loved the opportunity of a big garden, and whenever my husband and I were in Britain, over the years when my mother was still very vigorous and active, she much enjoyed being in charge of the house, its being her own, literally. But there came a time when our travel had to be reduced for some years before she died.
As a town, Santa Cruz suits us particularly. We are within ten minutes' walking distance of the ocean, and fortunately all of our connections and our friendships can be maintained by visits in the Bay region and the Bay region coming to us. And the Monterey Peninsula is even visible when we are standing on our shore--we can look across--so while big travel has been eliminated, we're very happy to be so close to some great country that's good to live in.
McCreery
I know Dr. Cubie is fond of painting the landscapes around here.
Cubie
That's right.
McCreery
I enjoyed seeing his small studio area in your house.
Yes, and I hope that there will be a chance for all of us to spend a little more time in that part of the house. [laughs] Well, my husband usually makes himself only silently present whenever we are connected on this machine.
McCreery
[laughs] Okay, well, did you want to record any thoughts about other friends from the library school? I know you have kept up with quite a few of them.
Cubie
The close friendship now of the few people--that is, of the faculty and the older people at the school--the close friendship is with Fred Mosher and his wife. With others, we're not in close association; we're always, you know, glad to hear from and about them, but we don't actually see them.
We have not had an automobile now for about fifteen years. Until then we were driving in this country and abroad, but at some point my husband's health seemed to make it desirable to give up all that and to look for transportation in other ways. And it rather does curtail our ability to go often and easily. Visiting has to be carefully planned, but we can do it, and people come to us.
McCreery
Well, it's nice that you've had another whole life since retirement, haven't you?
Cubie
Yes, yes, I've been very fortunate.
Summary Thoughts on Teaching Career
McCreeryWell, just thinking then about your summary of your teaching years, I wonder, are there particular accomplishments, either specific or general, that you are most proud of in your career?
Cubie
No, I don't think there would be anything I would single out. I have always seen that whole opportunity to teach and to do my part--as it came to me in really often quite unplanned and unintended and wonderful ways. the opportunity to be of use to the school and to students--I've always seen it a bit in a rather round way, as many librarians do. And the librarians who most enjoy their work are the ones who see themselves as having an opportunity, in a given stretch of time, to do particular things that fit into a very fine and comprehensive structure. The rewards are in being a part of a very large whole to which many, many other people make contributions. I
There are, after all, certain outstanding people to whom some great opportunity comes and they make very specific contributions. I think people like Melvil Dewey are outstanding, but other librarians see librarianship as being always very much part of a whole, total cooperative effort. I think that a special characteristic of librarianship, as I understand it and as we have been talking about it in the past, is really its cooperative nature, so that one isn't so likely to say, "This is what I have done," or be moved to want to say it, [laughs] or to look for opportunities in that way.
If such opportunities are sought by those people who do see themselves as individuals who want to make a mark of their own, they would be the librarians less interested in the day-to-day library functions and the service they give. They see their opportunities in administration and that is a perfectly good aim, but it is a different one, and one we might touch on, perhaps, as we talk about what has moved at least some library administrators, and how that has influenced some of the developments of recent times.
Women and Men in Librarianship
CubieAnd at the same time, it also would come up, perhaps, as we talk about men and women in the field, and why or in what way this profession has been one in which both have participated and for some periods one or the other of the two sexes have been more in the lead.
McCreery
Well, let's do that right now, if it's a good time. I'm remembering that you said when you joined the school as a student in the thirties, there were forty women students out of a class of fifty. And we did talk a little bit about the reasons for that at that time and how that might have changed, but I wonder what thoughts you have overall about gender and how that enters into the library profession over the course of all these decades.
Cubie
You were saying as we first began talking together today--you were referring to an article about women in the profession with the indication that there was a time when women were very much the majority. And this was true for a time, but even that period was preceded by an earlier one in which that was not the
It had happened to some extent before, because all the women who were striving toward working, either in a professional life or an active life of some kind outside the home--that had been going on on a small scale for some decades. And while teaching had always been one obvious pursuit that gradually became very much theirs, but also librarianship began to be accepted and to accept them. And so between that earlier movement and the great influx of women into public life after the First World War then brought it to the point that you were reading about where women seemed to be in the great majority.
To the question I think you asked me not so long ago, why in library administration are there more men than women, I would say that in public librarianship, that on the whole never went quite so far. Women were in charge of public libraries, large and small, right along with the fewer and fewer men who were entering the profession at all.
The change that came then, again, was after the Second World War when we'd had a period of long unemployment for men and women. But men were still considered in society as the breadwinners, who must be given more opportunities than the women, because more women with families were still staying at home. So there was a period of giving men rather more attention and bringing them in with the hope of at least alleviating the unemployment problem that way. So all that had been considered and was behind the fact that the schools were very glad to admit men in rather large numbers in the 1940s.
The leadership and the tendency of men toward going into administration, I think, in a very general way parallels the culture in every other way. The fact is that, although in the last twenty or thirty years we've had an astonishingly rapid--because twenty or thirty years is not very long--considerable change of views on that, until then it was a solid view that
The other day I was mentioning this to Sheila Dowd as we talked about it and she said that by now it's gone the other way, as well. Many young women have this in view, that they want to be the leaders of whatever group they finally join or whoever employs them. They see themselves as administrators first, before they have actually performed in that function I described a while ago, where librarians are seen as a part of a whole team and very happily carry on with that part that fits in with the next one and the next one.
These views of being leaders until very recently were entirely masculine, or almost entirely masculine, and so women then in turn saw themselves also more naturally on the service side of activity. And so I think that when it comes to numbers it doesn't seem astonishing that it would be see-sawing a little for a while. But now, with the more agreed-upon view of the role of men and women having more in common, and working out or trying to push aside the altogether competitive ideas and assigning preassumed and prearranged roles to men or women, this of course, as you know better than I do--I have the impression that this is disappearing. Though it probably hasn't disappeared [laughter], because I can't believe that any such movement, even in two or three decades, can have reached that point. But it seems well on the way.
Stereotypes of Librarians; Relation to Automation
CubieBut also, I'm afraid that because of the fact that, in all this time we are discussing, some people entered the library profession because they thought of it as an opportunity for administration. To some of these librarianship, while an opportunity, was also a bit of an embarrassment because of the stereotype of a librarian as a timid person working with rather boring things, whatever they were. That has been all along, in all the years in which I was a student myself and would observe some of the young men--there weren't many then--but that problem of how librarians are viewed, or had been viewed in society in a certain way, was more troubling to them than it
That has influenced, I'm afraid, some of the haste in which some traditional ways of dealing with things have been given too little--or are given perhaps now, too little attention, really. By that I mean the abandonment--such sheer neglect is something troubling. And I think that the embarrassment felt by--not most librarians--or I have not noticed that a large number of students with whom I dealt really had this, men or women--but the embarrassment has not, on the other hand, been absent.
And some of these people have reached and fulfilled their aim of running libraries without being really at heart as sympathetic with what is in fact the essence of a library--not paying enough attention, in other words. They would not be consciously adverse, but they would just not be very fostering. And so that there have been some problems coming out of that fact.
McCreery
That's an interesting idea, that the advent of computers was embraced as a way to dispel the stereotype of the timid librarian.
Cubie
That's right. It was such a wonderful answer to "How would we ever be accepted by the public--by the whole public--for what we really are?" Even the librarians who took this view weren't themselves convinced that what librarians did or do is a simple matter of, you know, something that can be learned with a bit of observation--because it's not understood by most people. But it was the position of being a little ashamed of not being viewed as doing anything of consequence. And I think that idea of not doing anything of consequence in society, vis-a-vis the professions of the law and medicine and all those that we know very well and are generally respected--in our century, at least--[laughs] this troublesome inner conflict I think has done some harm to the profession because some of these people, in fact, have been in a position to do exactly what we have just said with almost indecent haste toward [laughs] taking on something new--uncritically, that is.
Obviously the automation has created great new opportunities, has dealt with problems that could not have been indefinitely solved entirely in the traditional way; but it has
Why was there this view of embarrassment? Why is there the public idea of boring things carried out by people who are too timid to do anything else? Because there really is no way of its being obvious, in observing what any librarian does, except of course a reference librarian who helps someone. And then the gratitude may be enormous and the appreciation is almost too large in proportion to what has actually happened. But there is nothing to observe. We all have experience with what doctors do for us and what lawyers do for us and what teachers do for us. We've been part of the process; we're not doing it, but we know what they do. What librarians do is generally never at all perceived.
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McCreery
You were talking about the source of the stereotype about librarians.
Cubie
Well, it seems to me that the source is one of there being no real way for most people to observe in their own daily lives, through the various connections, what it is that makes a library, what maintains a library, and even totally what services the library does and can give to tremendously varied needs and situations. Because that is not seen, what most people of course experience is that they go to a desk and something is charged out to them and they return it. They assume they want to use a library and are glad to read whatever is available. But because it is so, if a librarian is troubled by that, and would like to be personally appreciated as someone who does something important, I can see that such a person would be glad to welcome something that makes for better public image. And I think there is some of that that has not been a good development, but it is happening.
McCreery
Okay, so computers would have contributed to that, do you--
Cubie
Only the perception--well, only the insufficient understanding, really, of the great opportunities, on the one hand, and the insufficiencies; the abandonment of one thing [the card catalog] completely in favor of something else [the online catalog], when that something else is not entirely understood in its ramifications. That has not been worked out very well
When people say proudly the Internet gives them everything in libraries the world over, what about the libraries? You see, it is just that whole picture. I tend to, of course, come back to the technical services part of this, but I don't mean to. I mean of course when I talk about librarianship now: everything that goes on in libraries is not understood to be taking place, and so we don't need to be preparing for it, we don't need to plan for it, we don't have to see that it perpetuates itself. And that is why I made my remarks earlier about these little symbolic small events that came to my attention in Berkeley. When someone speaks for the library school--excuse me, for the School of Information Management and Systems--to be so excluding on purpose, quite consciously, that I think is about as far as they can go.
Identity of Librarianship and of Berkeley's School
McCreeryYes, well, one could almost ask whether librarianship has an identity crisis.
Cubie
You know, I don't know that--yes, it's a way of putting it, and it's a good word, but you see, an identity crisis means that we are searching for an identity; I think it's gone beyond that. No one is searching for anything. There has been a readiness--well, I'm probably exaggerating. Remember, I'm talking from the point of view of someone who is very interested and was once very involved but has been away from the really day-to-day reality, so I don't want to be unfair to anyone. I may be wrong about this impression, to some extent, but I don't think I'm altogether wrong in saying that the indifference that has arisen, partly because there is such an all-embracing emphasis on new technologies, that are quite wonderful in their way, but have not been altogether well integrated with what came before. When that happens, you can have a real break, and the break seems to be taking place. So it's a matter of ignoring it, rather than looking for a reinterpretation or for a new identity.
I don't know. I'll be very interested to--I would love to hear what most librarians who are now still very actively engaged in librarianship, in actual libraries think about the new school's position that it really doesn't have any particular obligation to library matters; the companies are
McCreery
I'm interested that you mentioned several times this idea--going back in time, now--that some librarians had a sense of embarrassment about their work, perhaps in part relating to this stereotype.
Cubie
I think almost entirely. Fortunately, these some would be certainly a minority of the total student body and the total body of librarians working. Most librarians have really been very happy and quite fulfilled by what they are doing. I have been one and I have certainly known thousands; it's only that this minority nevertheless has--because they have been employed, they have found their way into the total fabric, and this attitude I've just described has not been very healthy for what then has happened in maintaining the health of the institution for which they work.
The University Library
CubieThe university library in Berkeley, for example, has--and I'm not speaking now particularly about their leadership, but I think their leadership over years has varied quite a bit, in which some librarians have been very successful in getting the total support of the whole university for the library needs. After all, they are supported by a faculty committee who know very well what they hope to get from the university library. It also takes the librarian to stand for keeping it a healthy institution and speaking for it. Some of them have been very much more successful in doing that--because it comes from a total belief and a total awareness of what they should be bringing forward--than others.
McCreery
Who would you say has been successful as university librarian?
I don't think--well, we're talking really about the period in which there has been what seems to me an almost rapid turnover, therefore I really don't know.
McCreery
Oh, I know. Recently, yes.
Cubie
I'm not even speaking of the last few years. I think I've said once before that the amazing thing about the university library was that in 100 years, there were three librarians.
McCreery
Yes.
Cubie
And since then I don't know the count, but it's quite a few by now, and it's accelerating. I don't know. I mean, I really do not know this, because while even from within the school--my absence from the school is so long now, that I can only observe very generally. And all I'm really saying is an overall observation and I want to be clear on that.
Is Librarianship a Distinct Profession?
McCreeryWell, speaking of what librarianship is really about, you've mentioned the profession of librarianship and how it's viewed by the public, for example, and so on. And certainly the idea of a profession in a traditional sense, such as medicine or law, involves a specific body of knowledge to be mastered. Are you suggesting that librarianship as you knew it and taught it was such a profession?
Cubie
Yes, there was a body of knowledge. There is a body of knowledge; it hasn't disappeared, but it's sort of sitting there with people paying little attention to it. [laughs] This body of knowledge is large enough and complex enough and reaching in many different directions, so that there is quite a lot--not only in technical services, with which I was involved. Total librarianship has a lot of content, and in carrying it out really well and building collections of real consequence that are an important heritage and will always be nurtured, this fact isn't a clerical function that could be easily maintained by passing on certain methods of doing things and that's all there is to that, because it was developed over time by people who did give thought to the fact that librarianship has real content.
But it is not obvious to people that this is so, so it's a profession that's not been speaking for itself well. And to
McCreery
It does seem like a big change. I remember seeing references going back to the early part of the century, that there was a desire to have librarianship recognized as a profession on par with medicine and law, and a real desire to work towards that.
Cubie
Yes, and again, comparing the worth and the importance of one profession with another, of course, is quite silly anyway. We certainly need medicine, we also need law, and they're utterly unlike, and they have their own strengths and liabilities. So that the "on par with" doesn't really matter. And it is again that problem of its being on the one hand so difficult on the part of most of society to recognize that there is anything at all and therefore such a special problem to many people who are engaged in it. We know that it has content, but how do we go about making it appreciated? [laughs] It didn't used to matter when there wasn't this challenge that has developed in more recent decades. It seemed to be going very well, and I felt that there was great confidence for a while in things developing in an ongoing way.
But there is an interruption, and we know why there is an interruption. But it was to some extent made very much worse by people who were looking for some way out of the kind of embarrassment that some of them felt. Yes, when you said that earlier in the century there was of course the need--especially in the university, as many various large and small research libraries developed--with that, the profession grew in content, but at the same time it was also then felt that it was important that this be recognized. And that is why we have, in
McCreery
And not usually in the university; it was the state library.
Cubie
That's right, it came to universities because it is the whole realm of academic librarianship and special librarianship where the need was most felt.
The Library Profession's Lack of Effective Public Communication
McCreeryLet's return for a moment to the idea of the public image of librarianship. Do you think the profession has spoken for itself well?
Cubie
No, I don't. And I think some of what I've been trying to say in a rather unorganized way [laughs]--because these are thoughts that I've had, that my colleagues have had, we all say so--"Why doesn't the profession speak better for itself?" And this is why it seems to me that some of the things we've been discussing are exactly behind the problem of even bringing it to the attention of people who might be interested or perhaps should be interested. [laughs] It's hard to make a case for something that is not easily understood.
If the medical profession wants to say something about itself, you can disagree or agree about their right and their claims and what is just or unjust, but there is not, at least in this way, any doubt in people's minds that there is some important content to be handed on to the people learning to become members of the profession. But if there is no awareness of any content it is hard to make this start, and I think librarians have not been good at bridging this--what they can give, how they give it, and why they should give it to people who don't really think there's anything there. It's hard to do because, as I say, how do you do it except to ask someone to please sit down and have a little lecture about, "This is what it takes to run a library," [laughter] you know, when nobody really cares until they come to the point of a library suddenly not doing what people hoped it would do for them.
McCreery
Well, I wonder, can you think of any exceptions--of any individuals who are unusually good at communicating to the public what librarians do?
Well, again, the public--you know, it's such a comprehensive idea. It's very interesting that in the total public there are the various levels of librarianship and libraries that serve the public. Therefore it has to be sort of sectioned off: in the public library, there will be people who speak very well for it at times while they are in administration. But the university library has, again, a sufficiently distinct problem of communicating and serving its public, utterly unlike in many ways that of the public or the population in general. So to speak in an overall way about librarianship and how to represent it. Right away, there's a difficulty there: what kind of librarianship and who is to speak for it.
Lawrence Clark Powell, the lover of books and reading--well, we all love books and reading, so that was not such an astonishingly different thing--but his fervor and his love for publicizing--he was certainly someone who tried and did. And with the help of Andrew Horn, who then did all the organizational things so beautifully, they created a new school [at UCLA] that was quite a success just in this way.
But it hasn't made any lasting difference, because whom did they really address? You know, the meaning isn't all of the same kind. Different audiences are going to have to be approached by different people who can speak for them. And much of this would have to be in particular situations, so it's a pretty tough problem, really. I can't easily see how any one person has spoken for us eloquently, except for the actual work and performance. I mean, there certainly have been great librarians who are not known to the general public as ever having lived at all. But in the profession they have done some very important things that have made libraries possible and have made the great collections possible, things that would not be there and available to people in the traditional way or through the Internet. But how to single them out and hope to make public who they were and what they said--it isn't so likely to happen because we are now in a period of receding from this kind of speaking forth. It's a period, as I say, of neglect. At Berkeley we have problems of having to start all over again, in some respects, I'm afraid.
McCreery
What kind of thoughts do you have when you go into libraries, now, either academic or public?
Cubie
Living the way I now do, and have for many years, in moving about a great deal, and with residence for periods here or there or somewhere else, I don't have any good, consistent pattern to describe what happens when I go into a library. For someone who is as old as I am and goes back to the way
McCreery
I'm just thinking of changes that are particularly noticeable to you in the kinds of services offered--
Cubie
Well, you see, when an individual like me enters a library and looks for something on the one hand to take, or goes to the reference desk to ask for some particular material, there I see only what I expect--very happily, because for me this is likely to be the public library of Santa Cruz. But for most of my own needs and for our own reading, we buy the books we want. You know, we don't often have the need for the services of libraries and haven't had for quite a long time.
McCreery
Okay.
Cubie
But then when I observe just what goes on, and when this does happen, I feel that the librarians at the desk are behaving in a very familiar way. [laughter] Fortunately, they are all, as they have always been, eager to serve and I've not found them deficient at any time.
McCreery
Okay.
Cubie
But I think in those ways, someone who is closer to libraries--especially to the university library--than I could possibly be now would be able to make comments of this kind that would have real meaning. You know, someone like Sheila Dowd. I mean, if I were now really using such service, or even being there to observe its being given--as I'm simply not; this is why I say I can only make very, very overall observations based on my experience in the past and what comes to me.
But if I were now Fred Mosher and working as he does with the German "Lexikon des Gesamten Buchwesens"--to which he's still connected as a contributor on American printing, I would be very much aware, and in a way that would be disturbing to me, about the changes in getting at the collections. I mean, what has happened, for example, in bibliography and all the book-related subjects in doing away with the Library School Library and the dispersal of material--as a person working with such materials, I think there would be much to observe there. But I don't have that need and opportunity to observe.
McCreery
Okay. You mentioned the opportunity to live abroad and travel widely since your retirement. I don't suppose you've made
Cubie
No. No, because libraries did not enter into this. My husband and I in our travels would be pursuing those interests that we both have, which have a great deal to do with art and art history and architecture and archeology.
McCreery
The four A's. [laughter]
Cubie
That's right. We share those, therefore when we travel we're likely to visit and view where we do the things together.
McCreery
That's wonderful. Well, going back, then--just a little bit, if I may--to the last five years or so of your teaching career at the library school, I do have a couple of other questions.
Cubie
Yes.
Additional Recollections of Patrick Wilson as Dean, 1970-1975
McCreeryYou talked a little bit about the things that Mr. Wilson was interested in during his tenure as dean, some of the experimentation with courses and curriculum and so on. I wonder, just for our record, could you just characterize his style a little bit more in interacting with the faculty and students? I know that this period of the early seventies was very interesting period, with the Vietnam War. We did talk a lot about the sixties last time, but I just wonder if you could fill us in his style in relation to some of those events.
##
Cubie
Patrick Wilson's feeling of responsibility to every aspect of his job was very strong and very real. It seemed to me that he handled it in those years with a particular grace, I would say, because he was open, he was good-humored in the way in which he dealt with students, and at faculty meetings he brought everything to us that we needed, and the discussion was free and open and everyone was invited to suggest and work out together what we should do next. And I think he was that way vis-a-vis the students. He was not--as a very conservative faculty member might, and some of them were--finding it a mere nuisance that there was so much agitation. I think he quite understood, being a rather young person, himself--[laughs]--and one who did not automatically or at any time find himself just
As I said earlier, we arrived at a way of working together very well, because he took the trouble to understand what was happening in the cataloging courses and then gave it full support.
McCreery
So you had an ally in him.
Cubie
Yes, I would say yes, I did. And we appreciated each other, and he was very open and encouraging to students who were troubled by that whole period of agitation on campus. And I've told you some time ago, when they asked to come to faculty meetings--with easy access given, with enough of a sense of humor to make it all come out right--it worked out very well for us.
We certainly didn't have a real difficulty within the school itself, except to move about on campus [laughs] when things weren't going very well with marchings and control of crowds and all that sort of thing. It was more intense and more of a problem all over Berkeley, spreading out away from the campus as well, in the seventies, than it was ever in the mid-sixties when the question was, how was the university administration going to behave vis-a-vis the student body and free expression of speech. It quite went beyond that later on.
McCreery
Now, I note that in early seventies--I think 1971--the library school ended its foreign language requirements for students. Do you recall much discussion of that beforehand?
Cubie
The discussion was never very long and ongoing, because the people who made these decisions and were most involved in them were of course the people who gave the advanced courses in the second year and in the Ph.D. curriculum. How much difference would it make from that point of view? And of course that remained a criterion that had to be taken seriously, even though there was no longer the requirement for everyone coming into the first-year course.
With the change in the source of our students--the student body--over time and over the decades, especially since the Second World War, there was an approach and an expectation that once people had their bachelor's degrees and qualified to take advanced courses of any kind, there oughtn't to be specific hurdles put in their way that went beyond those of all the other graduate students. There was an evolving impatience with
I think that attitudes in the population were changing. And while we, in my day, were accepting the idea that librarianship and instruction in librarianship--that is, librarianship as a teaching subject, after all, had evolved but it wasn't very old. The people who set the criteria were the people who were themselves in academic libraries. Mr. Mitchell and his first faculty for many years did the thing that came quite naturally to university librarians, emphasizing that languages are important because materials in such libraries are of that kind. It would seem to them obvious that anyone admitted--especially to a restricted number of people with only fifty people admitted--that languages besides their own were very desirable, and some languages, particularly, because so much, worldwide, was published in those languages. That didn't seem to have to be justified in the earlier years.
Later this became less obvious to people because they would begin to ask, "What about all the other languages?" You know, if I'm a Finn and I can bring that as a second language, why doesn't it count? The need to make it apply to everyone, or to that group that had been selected for what seemed to be then a common goal, was not felt to be quite so strong.
McCreery
Was it controversial to make that change?
Cubie
No, I don't think it caused great disturbance in the faculty when this was happening. They were certain there would be regrets on just the part of those people for whom in turn it mattered the most, who saw the absence of foreign languages more. But there would have been some agreement that every young person going out into librarianship, or working in all the many different organizations in which a librarian could in fact work, was not necessarily going to have to know much about German or French or any other modern language. So that was accepted without a great deal of objection.
McCreery
Now I know Dean Wilson was trained as a librarian, but also holds a Ph.D. in philosophy. I wonder, how did that manifest itself?
Cubie
Well, very much in his own writings ever since. I know that he's done several that sound quite esoteric to me since I'm not a professional philosopher. You know the old notion about
As I remember it, he came to join the faculty after he had been teaching philosophy briefly, but I think the philosophy part of his education came after having been a librarian. As a librarian, I think he graduated in '53, didn't he? He then worked for the university library for--
McCreery
Yes, I believe so.
Cubie
The university, I think he was in reference in some way. I think in maps, even--some special aspect of reference services. But he also worked for one of the institutes.
McCreery
That I don't know yet.
Cubie
He had several bibliographical assignments, and the result of all that was that he thoroughly exercised what he had learned in the library school in this way, because whatever Pat Wilson does, from whatever approach he takes, practical or theoretical, it's going to be thorough and it's going to be serious. And I think that's why he was a good dean, because he has several facets to his personality which altogether make more of a whole that is very sound in an academic situation.
McCreery
How was he received by the other faculty?
Cubie
In the years he was dean, I think, cordially. People were glad that he was giving us a thorough leadership as dean and chairman of the department. On the other hand, I think he also tended to mystify some people, who simply felt that he was introducing rather esoteric ideas into what is a practicing profession--in which certain practical things have to happen in libraries every day.
Miss Markley was one of these. As I say, she became rather--well, she was frankly disappointed that he was not, for example, prepared to carry on with teaching her course of her devising--and simply couldn't have done that. Probably originally there was a mistake made in even assuming that he
McCreery
Okay. Now, the school had a round of self-study and review for ALA accreditation during that period. Do you recall much about that process?
Cubie
I remember that it happened. It was never something into which the whole faculty worked through in a sort of working situation from day to day to day, until of course visitors would actually appear. That did not happen--no one, in these years I'm describing now, appeared. Much of it, of course, was done from a distance. The deans would be representing the school there. But a review by the American Library Association is something that took place--and not just at once. I mean, I think certainly periodically it's done for all schools. And all the material to describe what we did would be an ongoing, fairly lengthy process.
McCreery
Yes, I'm sure. Right. I suppose even if you're not going through it, you're getting ready for the next one on some level all the time.
Cubie
Yes.
McCreery
Well, I wonder, did Dean Wilson face any particular challenges from faculty members over issues that arose in the school?
Cubie
No, I don't think any that was everyone's concern in any way, no. Not that way.
McCreery
Okay.
Cubie
No, they would not have elected him again, and he would probably not have accepted again the--it must have been somewhat irksome periods later when they simply couldn't decide on a dean and could not get very far with that very important appointment. And so much of the history was one of a certain struggle, that again it's not clear to me why it remained so difficult. Certainly, the changes that were coming along in librarianship altogether were, very probably, largely responsible for part of that, but Mr. Wilson was willing to take on acting deanship twice, I think, isn't it?
I think so.
Cubie
Yes, and oh, that just gives the answer. That he was always with confidence and willingness ready to serve, I think, is the good thing about Pat Wilson. He is a man of extremely active mind and was engaged in all ways when he had a particular position to fill.
Views of Censorship; Experiences at Public Libraries
McCreeryOkay, thank you. One thing that we haven't touched on much in any of our discussions--and I just wonder if you want to share any thoughts--is just the topic of censorship in libraries. And particularly, I'm wondering did it come up much in the school's curriculum when you were teaching? I know your own courses didn't involve it.
Cubie
No, they did not involve it. At all times those courses that had to do with selecting, and especially those that were pointed toward public librarianship, of course, would have to take that up and did, and always very consistently took the same positions that librarians have always taken: that we are in charge of intellectual products put into some form that we can house and make available to people. And censorship within libraries--I've never known a librarian who has defended it, as such. How they have gone about making that clear and representing that view, of course, has been extremely different and various--with much eloquence in many cases, undoubtedly very awkwardly in others.
It's simply been one of the tenets of librarianship that you must not deny people what is essentially theirs. Librarians are not giving something they have created from their wealth to give to people and have some say over what should be given and disseminated; they actually are the custodians of what society has and owns. It's in their stewardship, so that it would be a very unsound position to say that "We say what you should or shouldn't read or what you should or shouldn't buy."
The totality of professional thinking is what would be presented to our students: this is what the profession stands for and its obligations, and these are the ways in which we do the work in libraries. And I think that would be a pretty universal attitude.
Was censorship a big topic, let's say at the CLA meetings that you attended? Was it a particularly prominent topic?
Cubie
No, not in any overall encompassing way. I think that the only thing that ever troubled librarians in intellectual--how should I say it--interference was in the period of the loyalty oath when librarians were viewing this--it was an academic problem, but it was one in which librarians certainly took positions. And this would have been in library meetings of the ALA and so forth, or the CLA. As I think I told you, it came out very much at the time, in about 1950, of the meeting in Sacramento. But in other ways it would be met as a problem in particular situations. It was a well-known problem, one understood what it was and why it was, and undoubtedly it came up in quite important situations during those years, but nothing that would go on for a while and affect the school as such.
McCreery
In public libraries, of course, there's always this image of the locked case, where certain materials are kept separately. I wondered, was that the case in any of the public libraries where you worked?
Cubie
No--well, I'm not saying that, because as a student I worked for the San Francisco Public Library, and no doubt there were a lot of things I simply didn't get near because I was a young student at the loan desk in my part-time work in my student time. After that I was an assistant in a branch library where there was a head librarian and I was the assistant, and there would be one or two clerical people. And that was the total library, and I would not have been aware of what these things were in the central library--it wouldn't have come to my attention.
In Sacramento there was no such thing. We had a very lively, extremely participating librarian very close to all the leadership in her community and in city hall. After some years she married the city manager, but that wasn't at the time I was there. It was later on. But she was always very ready to give total service to all the community. Anything bought for that library would have been used, and used for a purpose. To own something that couldn't have been made available would have seemed ridiculous in that particular public library.
But again, I daresay that there were situations like that. But every situation undoubtedly had problems of its own that the profession as a whole could have identified, but didn't necessarily have to deal with. [laughs]
Yes. Now of course it's interesting that censorship in libraries is such a big issue because of the Internet and the whole--
Cubie
That's right, it is. It is and all the other complications of irresponsibility that are created in any wide-open systems. I mean, there are a lot of real problems that have to be worked out there. Yes, indeed.
Friendships with Former Students
McCreeryWell, I wonder, have you kept up with many of your students since you retired?
Cubie
My closest friends, really--I think this is generational because friends of my own time are few now, since I'm in the second half of my eighties, or just entered it recently, but that's where I am--I mean, inevitably most of the friends with whom I'm now in touch are all former students, really. One of the great rewards of what I did is that I have lifelong cherished friendships. And you know some of them. You've heard some of the names and others you haven't but, yes, I do keep in touch. And that has been part of my life in all this long period since I have been retired.
McCreery
Yes, it's nice to see how long some of those friendships can endure.
Cubie
Yes.
McCreery
Even when there's some distance separating you, now that you're here in Santa Cruz.
Cubie
That's right. That friendship abroad of a young woman who was sent by the Bank of Greece to enroll in our school so that she could find out ways and means of creating a financial library for that nation--Ellie Marsellou--now, she became a lifelong friend. And that led to some ongoing interest and even part-time residence in her country. She appeared as a student in 1960, very shortly after Jim Kantor, who is another lifelong friend since that period.
Another friend I've never mentioned because it didn't come up in this way was a student--in that particular case, one not younger than I, as of course most students naturally are. This one was actually a little older, but Viola Hagopian, a music
Viola was a pianist who decided at one point that because her hands were giving her some trouble she should prepare for something else. She then came to us and became music librarian eventually in the conservatory in San Francisco for many years. She took a course in her year with us from Vincent Duckles in music bibliography. And as a result of that, she wrote a book very much used still. She contributed in her own specialty of music bibliography later on to Grove's Dictionary and so forth, but she wrote a book published by the University Press. The title is Ars Nova. [Italian Ars Nova Music] I have it. Do you want me to get it?
McCreery
Perhaps I'll write it down later for the manuscript.
Cubie
Yes, I'll give you--it's a bibliography of fifteenth century Italian music, a very important work to music bibliographers in the world. And so this was something she was very happy to do and twice--I think once at least--revised.
Viola was a close friend. For a short time she worked in our office. Miss Markley and I asked her to help us in the laboratory work there for a little while, while she was waiting for a job to materialize for her in San Francisco.
Sheila [Dowd], interestingly--as my first year and her year in the school coincided and she's one of our closest friends.
McCreery
Yes, well, I hope as time goes on I'll be able to interview some of your former students for this project. Some of them I've talked to on the phone.
Cubie
Yes, and that is interesting. I've just read the other day in the South Hall News the announcement of this project, asking alumni if they would like to be part of this. And I've been meaning to ask you what is the interest there.
McCreery
Oh, I'll tell you about it. We've had a number of people contact us to either suggest people to be interviewed or perhaps be interviewed themselves as time goes on. But I hope very much that that will happen.
Cubie
Oh, that is interesting. Great. I'll be very interested to hear who they are someday.
Well, we've come kind of to the end of the things that we planned to talk about. Can you think of anything else that you particularly wanted to say?
Cubie
No, we have more than given time to this and I often feel a real feeling of immodesty here of having been so long [laughter] in going on and on and on about some of these things. But you didn't stop me, so that's where we are.
McCreery
Well, that's kind of how the process works, and I think you've handled it beautifully.
Cubie
Thank you. While you, of course, have been leading it so beautifully that I have enjoyed it and been led on and on and on. But I couldn't possibly say that we haven't given it more than thorough attention, and I think perhaps the time is long overdue that other people should be talking instead of me. [laughs] I hope I haven't encroached too much on the time allotted for the total procedure here, because it would take several years if there were going to be given as much time to all the other interviews as you and I have worked on. But I have very much enjoyed it.
McCreery
Thank you.
Transcriber: Amelia Archer
Final Typist: Elaine Yue
Appendix
Tape Guide
Interview 1: November 13, 1998
Interview 2: November 17, 1998
-
Interview 2:
November 17, 1998
- Tape 3, Side A *
- Tape 3, Side B *
- Tape 4, Side A *
- Tape 4, Side B not recorded
Interview 3: November 24, 1998
Interview 4: December 11, 1998
-
Interview 4:
December 11, 1998
- Tape 7, Side A *
- Tape 7, Side B *
- Tape 8, Side A *
- Tape 8, Side B not recorded
Interview 5: January 7, 1999
Interview 6: January 29, 1999
-
Interview 6:
January 29, 1999
- Tape 11, Side A *
- Tape 11, Side B *
- Tape 12, Side A *
- Tape 12, Side B *
Index
- academic librarianship, 30, 76, 93, 117
- accreditation of library schools, 158, 164, 188
- administration of libraries, courses in, 33, 39, 143
- alumni association, School of Librarianship, 141-144. See also
- Calibrarian and South Hall News alumni newsletters;
- secretary of, 141-142
- American Library Association, 80, 84-86, 87-88, 126, 158, 164, 188
- Anderson, Katherine, 33, 41, 52, 63
- Argiewicz, Artur, 28-29
- Baker, Nicholson, 165-167
- Bancroft Library, The, 40, 90, 91, 118
- Berkeley Public Library, 31
- bibliography, courses in, 160. See also Coulter, Edith M.
- Book Club of California, 101
- book selection and ordering, courses in, 33, 38, 39. See also
- Anderson, Katherine;
- Mitchell, Sydney B.;
- Danton, J. Periam
- books, classification of. See
- Library of Congress;
- Dewey Decimal;
- Rowell, Joseph C.
- Boyd, Jessie E., 33
- Bronstein, Dorothy. See Thorne
- Buckland, Michael K., 128
- Bumstead, Frank M., 119
- Caldwell, James R., 19-20
- Calibrarian alumni newsletter, 138-141, 143, 146
- California Library Association, 75, 102, 105-107, 112-113, 122, 141, 190
- California State Library, 33, 57, 63, 64, 70, 90. See also
- Frugé, August K.;
- Gillis, Mabel;
- Leigh, Carma Zimmerman
- card catalog, 49-50;
- computerization of, 161-163
- Casa Hispana sorority, 15-16, 22
- cataloging and classification of books, courses in, 33, 39-50, 125-128. See also Sisler, Della J.
- cataloging, history of, United States, 46, 83-86. See also Library of Congress
- Caughey, John, 123
- censorship, 189-191
- children's librarianship, 33
- civil service, effect on libraries, 65-66
- classification of books. See
- Library of Congress;
- Dewey Decimal;
- Rowell, Joseph C.
- computers in libraries, 161-163, 174-177
- Coney, Donald, 115, 116
- Cooke, Julia J., 127-128
- Cory, John M., 87
- Coulter, Edith M., 23-25, 33, 36-38, 50-56, 74, 89-91, 93, 95-100;
- Coulter, Mabel, 25, 37, 52, 90-91, 95
- Cowles, Barbara, 73-74
- Cubie, Alexander (husband), 155, 168-171
- Cutter, Charles Ammi, 46, 83-84, 126
- Danton, J. Periam, 55, 58, 74, 75, 76, 89, 93, 105-106, 114-118, 137, 146
- Debus, Ernst (uncle), 9-11, 21, 24
- Dennes, Margaret, 14, 16
- Dennes, William, 14, 16, 21, 28
- depression, effects of, 1930s, 10, 20-21, 23, 30, 34-35, 57-58, 88
- Deutsch, Monroe E., 99-100
- Dewey Decimal classification system for books, 42, 64, 154
- Dewey, Melvil, 36-38, 140, 165, 172
- Dinsmore, Margaret, 62, 66
- doctoral programs. See School of Librarianship
- Doe Library, 32, 78, 91-92, 113, 127. See also
- Coney, Donald;
- Leupp, Harold;
- Rowell, Joseph C.
- Dolliver, Kathrine Green Thayer, 77
- Dornin, May, 139
- Dowd, Sheila T., 79, 174, 183, 192
- Evans, Herbert M., 123
- Farquhar, Samuel, 69, 71, 118-120
- foreign language requirements. See School of Librarianship
- Free Speech Movement, 129-131, 134, 136
- Frugé, August K., 17, 31-32, 61, 64, 69-71, 73, 74, 101, 118-120
- gender, issues of in librarianship, 172-174
- Germany, emigration from, 9-10
- Germany, youth in, 1-9
- Gillis, Mabel, 70, 111-112, 139
- Girdner, Margaret V., 141
- Greek Theatre, 73-74
- Hagopian, Viola, 191-192
- Harlow, Neal, 58, 70
- Held, Ray E., 94, 133, 150
- Henderson, John Dale, 33, 63
- Heron, David W., 141
- Higher Education Act of 1965, 110
- history of the book, courses in, 48-49, 71
- Hodges, Theodora, 87, 122, 128
- Hoehn, Philip, 153
- Horn, Andrew H., 79, 156-58, 182
- Hume, Samuel, 73
- Hutson, Arthur, 17
- Institute of Library Research. See School of Librarianship
- Jepson, William, 49
- Joeckel, Carleton B., 76-78, 93, 106, 117, 148;
- Joeckel internships in public libraries, 104
- Kaiser, John Boynton, 65, 66
- Kantor, J. R. K., 143, 191
- Kerr, Clark, 138
- Lange Library, School of Education, 90
- Leigh, Carma Zimmerman, 111-112
- Leupp, Harold, 34, 37
- librarianship;
- Librarianship, School of. See School of Librarianship
- Library of Congress, 80, 93;
- Library and Information Studies, School of. See School of Librarianship
- Library School Library. See School of Librarianship
- Lottinville, Savoie, 102
- Lowell High School, San Francisco, 10-14, 17, 24
- loyalty oath, 122-125
- McAllister, Carol, 161-163
- MacIver, Ivander, 34
- Markley, Anne Ethelyn, 40, 74-76, 78-82, 90, 92, 94, 107-111, 121, 124, 149-152, 155-157, 169, 187-188, 192
- Marsellou, Ellie, 155, 169, 191
- Manutius, Aldus, 49
- master plan for public libraries, California, 148
- Merritt, LeRoy C., 75, 106, 137-138, 144
- Mission High School, San Francisco, 11-12
- Mitchell, Sydney B., 18, 22-26, 33, 35-38, 40, 52, 55, 75, 101, 104, 115, 186;
- Monihan, (Father) William J., 87
- Morrison, Katherine R., 30
- Mosher, Fredric J., 93-94, 132, 133, 149-150, 171, 183
- Müller, Wilhelm (maternal grandfather), 2-3
- Müller, Wilhelmine (maternal grandmother), 2-3
- New York State Library School, 36-37
- Nicke, Karl (stepfather), 4, 5, 10, 15, 21
- Nolan, Charlotte, 127
- Oakland Public Library, 31-32, 47, 64-66
- Oppenheimer, J. Robert, 14
- Paul, Rodman W., 101
- Peiss, Reuben, 93
- Powell, Lawrence Clark, 62, 156-157, 182
- Pratt, Virginia, 77, 132, 133, 160
- public librarianship, courses in, 38-39, 76, 106, 107-108. See also
- Joeckel, Carleton B.;
- Wight, Edward A.
- public libraries, role of, 38, 60-61
- Ready, William B., 93-94, 149-150
- reference service, courses in, 33, 39. See also
- Coulter, Edith M.;
- Held, Ray E.;
- Mosher, Fredric J.;
- Ready, William B.
- Rowell, Joseph C., 34, 44, 83-84
- Sacramento, life in, 1930s to 1940s, 70-71
- Sacramento Public Library, 31-32, 54, 59-64, 66-67, 74, 190
- San Francisco Public Library, 31, 53-54, 59, 190
- San Jose State University, library school of, 158
- Sayers, Frances Clarke, 33, 47, 56
- School of Information Management and Systems (SIMS), 164
- School of Librarianship, Berkeley;
- School of Library and Information Studies. See School of Librarianship
- Shaw, Tom, 93
- Sisler, Della J., 23-26, 29, 31, 33, 35, 40-56, 71, 75;
- South Hall, 34, 92, 110, 127, 132-134
- South Hall News alumni newsletter, 139, 146, 164, 192
- special librarianship, 93, 152-155
- Sproul, Robert Gordon, 74, 100, 120
- Stanford University, 13, 22, 23, 24, 26, 36, 37, 115, 145
- Stebbins, Lucy, 18
- Swank, Raynard Coe, 115, 129, 145-148
- Tauber, Maurice, 157
- Taylor, Grace, 62
- Thayer, Kathrine. See Dolliver
- Thorne, Dorothy Bronstein, 25, 42, 45, 81-82
- Tompkins, John Barr, 51, 76, 118
- University of California, Berkeley;
- University of California, Los Angeles, 57, 58, 62, 112, 123, 156-158, 182
- University of California Press, 69, 73, 104, 118-120. See also
- Farquhar, Samuel;
- Fruge, August K.
- Wheeler, Benjamin Ide, 140, 165
- Wiese, Adele Müller (mother), 1, 3-5, 8-9, 10, 15, 21, 163, 170
- Wiese, Jürgen (father), 1, 3-4
- Wiese, Wilhelm (paternal grandfather), 2
- Wiese, Wilhelmine Meyer (paternal grandmother), 2, 24
- Wight, Edward A., 76, 93, 106, 112, 117, 147-148
- Wilson, Patrick G., 108, 133, 137, 159-161, 184-189
- World War II, 8, 14, 23, 34, 58, 67-69, 76, 185
- Zimmerman, Carma. See Leigh
CV: Laura McCreery
Laura McCreery is a writer and oral history consultant whose interests include California social and political history, history of libraries, public policy, higher education, and journalism. She has been a consulting interviewer/editor at ROHO since the inception of the Library School Oral History Series in 1998. She has also done oral history consulting, project management, training, interviewing, and editing for such clients as the East Bay Regional Park District, Prytanean Alumnae, Inc., and the Berkeley Historical Society. She holds a B.A. in Speech Communication from San Diego State University and an M.S. in Mass Communications from San Jose State University.
Courtesy of University Archives, The Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-6000; http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/info
http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=kt5k40046b&brand=oac4
Title: A Career in Public Libraries and at UC Berkeley's School of Librarianship, 1937-1975
By: Grete W. (Frugé) Cubie, Creator, Laura McCreery, Interviewer
Date: 1998-1999
Contributing Institution: University Archives, The Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-6000; http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/info
Copyright Note: Copyright status unknown. Some materials in these collections may be - protected by the U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S.C.). In addition, the - reproduction, and/or commercial use, of some materials may be restricted - by gift or purchase agreements, donor restrictions, privacy and - publicity rights, licensing agreements, and/or trademark rights. - Distribution or reproduction of materials protected by copyright beyond - that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the - copyright owners. To the extent that restrictions other than copyright - apply, permission for distribution or reproduction from the applicable - rights holder is also required. Responsibility for obtaining - permissions, and for any use rests exclusively with the user.