Scarecrow Press
Pages: 362
Trim: 6½ x 9
978-0-8108-5106-1 • Paperback • August 2006 • $89.00 • (£68.00)
978-1-4616-7334-7 • eBook • August 2006 • $84.50 • (£65.00)
Clare Beck is emeritus professor at Eastern Michigan University, where she served as government documents librarian.
Part 1 Preface
Part 2 Abbreviations
Part 3 Acknowledgments
Part 4 Prologue: American Library Association, 1891
Part 5 Part I: Beginnings
Chapter 6 1. Origins, 1868-1889
Chapter 7 2. Los Angeles Public Library, 1889-1895
Chapter 8 3. Government Printing Office, 1895-1897
Part 9 Part II: New York
Chapter 10 4. Astor Library, 1897-1904
Chapter 11 5. Astor Library, 1905-1910
Chapter 12 6. Documents Division, 1911-1914
Chapter 13 7. Economics Division, 1915-1916
Chapter 14 8. Economics Division, 1917-1918
Chapter 15 9. Crisis, 1918-1919
Part 16 Part III: Washington
Chapter 17 10. War Agencies, 1919-1923
Chapter 18 11. Brookings Institution, 1923-1932
Chapter 19 12. New Deal and After, 1933-1953
Part 20 Epilogue: History of a Reputation
Part 21 Index
Part 22 About the Author
...highly satisfying....thoughtful analysis of a spirited and talented woman. Definitely worth a read.
— Information & Culture
[Adelaide Hasse] is now vibrantly alive to me and anyone else who reads Clare Beck's outstanding biographical study....Beck artfully interweaves primary source material...with secondary interpretations...using her considerable talent for historical synthesis and good old-fashioned storytelling....I urge everyone to read this book.
— (GODORT Newsletter); Documents To The People
...a comprehensive and gripping biography....Beck is to be praised for this impressive and long overdue biography of Adelaide Hasse.
— College & Research Libraries
Hasse toiled rather quietly, given that she was fairly obvious in what had been a male enterprise, a collector, controller and disseminator of information. She spent 21 years at New York Public Library, until her conscience made her controversial, with significant sojourns before at the Los Angeles Public Library, the Government Printing Office, the Astor Library, and after at war agencies and the Brookings Institution. In those years she learned to speak her mind, and sometimes what she said was directed at professionals and library users as well: what shall we read? What shall we keep openly and what shall we hide away? What role does documentation play in a democracy? Beck (government documents library emerita, Eastern Michigan U.) frames her biography in the larger issues Hasse handled in her long and distinguished career and focuses on how her work affects librarianship and library policies now.
— Reference and Research Book News