The Lady Librarian of Toronto
March 1, 2012
Ah, the good old days. Canada’s The Globe and Mail profiles a powerhouse of a librarian who recently passed away at the age of 100 in “When Lady Librarians Always Wore Skirts and You didn’t Dare Make Noise.” When Alice Moulton began her career, libraries were very different than they are today. Writer Judy Stoffman describes:
“When Alice Moulton went to work at the University of Toronto library in 1942, libraries were forbidding, restricted spaces organized around the near-sacred instrument known as the card catalogue. They were ruled by a chief librarian, always male, whose word was law. Staff usually consisted of prim maiden ladies, dressed in skirts and wearing serious glasses, like the character played by Donna Reed in It’s a Wonderful Life, in the alternate life she would have had without Jimmy Stewart.”
The article is worth reading if only as a profile of a strong woman from a bygone era, but it also paints a portrait of libraries in the 20th Century. Among other things, Stoffman reveals that, in the ‘40s and ‘50s, libraries had a locked room called the “inferno” where the banned books were kept. In the spirit of free access to information, such volumes had been released from captivity by the time Moulton retired.
With the modern-day censorship issues that have emerged online, we would not be surprised if brick-and-mortar libraries experienced a resurgence. They may be back if censorship kicks into high gear and we return to the printed word.
Cynthia Murrell, March 1, 2012
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