Image
Abstract: “Schuster Libraries are Business Libraries”: The Schuster & Co. Department Store Library as Special Library, 1912 to 1944
This paper tells the story of one library: the Schuster & Co. department store’s employee library, located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the first half of the twentieth century. The Schuster libraries, as their librarian announced in 1939, were “business libraries.”1 They played a central role in the systematic management of the business enterprise, helping the organization filter, organize, manage, and employ the plethora of information that they collected about retailing, business, efficiency, personnel management, and other related topics. Despite this primary role of information work, however, the Schuster libraries also assumed other duties, including training and entertaining employees, complicating the story of the business library as a primarily reference endeavor.
The goals of this presentation are two-fold. First, this micro-history begins to fill a gap in the broader field of library and information history, as library and information historians – with some notable exceptions – have neglected this type of special library. Second, the paper employs the history of special libraries and the Special Libraries Association (SLA) to contextualize the tale of the Schuster & Co. employee libraries. This comparison illustrates the commonalities and differences in their trajectories. The Schuster & Co. story closely follows the development of the special libraries’ movement and the SLA until the beginning of the 1940s. While the department store library tale ends during World War II, that of the special libraries’ movement continues to the present. This divergence has much to do with the company of which the employees’ library was a part.
To tell the parallel and divergent histories of the Schuster & Co. department store libraries and the special libraries movement, this work uses qualitative historical research conducted using the archival records of the Schuster department store; contemporary newspaper, trade journal, magazine, and Special Libraries articles; as well as secondary sources about special libraries and the Special Libraries Association. As of this abstract submission, the archival research component is complete and work into the history of the Special Libraries Association is in progress. Additional primary and secondary source reading will occur during the summer months, including the professional journal Special Libraries from 1910 to 1950 as well as Guy St. Clair’s SLA at 100: From Putting Knowledge to Work to Building the Knowledge Culture.2 The presentation will be prepared in advance of the conference dates to enable me to tell the story of the Schuster & Co. employee library at the Library Research Seminar 8: Telling Library Stories at the University of Kentucky.
The goals of this presentation are two-fold. First, this micro-history begins to fill a gap in the broader field of library and information history, as library and information historians – with some notable exceptions – have neglected this type of special library. Second, the paper employs the history of special libraries and the Special Libraries Association (SLA) to contextualize the tale of the Schuster & Co. employee libraries. This comparison illustrates the commonalities and differences in their trajectories. The Schuster & Co. story closely follows the development of the special libraries’ movement and the SLA until the beginning of the 1940s. While the department store library tale ends during World War II, that of the special libraries’ movement continues to the present. This divergence has much to do with the company of which the employees’ library was a part.
To tell the parallel and divergent histories of the Schuster & Co. department store libraries and the special libraries movement, this work uses qualitative historical research conducted using the archival records of the Schuster department store; contemporary newspaper, trade journal, magazine, and Special Libraries articles; as well as secondary sources about special libraries and the Special Libraries Association. As of this abstract submission, the archival research component is complete and work into the history of the Special Libraries Association is in progress. Additional primary and secondary source reading will occur during the summer months, including the professional journal Special Libraries from 1910 to 1950 as well as Guy St. Clair’s SLA at 100: From Putting Knowledge to Work to Building the Knowledge Culture.2 The presentation will be prepared in advance of the conference dates to enable me to tell the story of the Schuster & Co. employee library at the Library Research Seminar 8: Telling Library Stories at the University of Kentucky.