The Ohio State Summer Library School

 

It’s 1917. You’ve decided you would like to be a librarian, or maybe you’re working in a library and you’d like to further your education. Where might you attend classes? For a number of young women – and one man – living in Ohio, the answer was the summer library school, held at The Ohio State University and conducted by the Ohio Board of Library Commissioners.

In Ohio Memory you can view documents from that first summer school, from rosters, applications, course outlines, and accounting information, to student record (report) cards. Imagine being graded on neatness, on attitude, and on breeding! In this school these were every bit as important as coursework and were reflected on a student’s report card, including one student’s “marked lack of cheerfulness,” and another being a “typical school teacher,” whatever that might have meant at the time. These and the other comments found in the cards leave us to wonder how the teachers of 1917 might have graded later students and the students of today.

 

 

A second summer school was planned for 1918 until World War I intervened and the director of the school, J. Howard Dice, was called to fight. Meanwhile, we can view this collection of records from the school of 1917… and perhaps be grateful that our being dignified, or not, never showed up on our own report cards!

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Thank you to Shannon Kupfer, Digital/Tangible Media Cataloger at the State Library of Ohio, for this week’s post!