30 Vintage Photos of People in Libraries

Story time duty is nothing new for librarians, as you can see in this image, taken by Jessie Tarbox Beals in 1910. A librarian is sharing a Native American legend about the Northern Lights with an audience of youngsters from a nearby Jewish school.

Librarians Helping People 

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Librarians are vital in helping people locate and check out books. Here we see a 1941 image of two different librarians struggling to keep up with the crowd of youngsters at the Brooklyn Public Library’s children’s room.

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Until 1976, blind children had their own schools and libraries with books written in braille. Blind children collect books from the braille library at the Berlin Institute for the Blind, 1920. 

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Here’s a view from the perspective of one of the librarians, as we see her help a young girl check out a book.

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This Woodrow Wilson High School student librarian doesn’t look too excited to be learning the ropes for her new position, does she? The image was taken by Ester Bubley in 1943.

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During WWII, rationing registration often took place at local schools. Here we see one such event occurring in a school library in Lititz, Pennsylvania. The school principal, M.C. Demmy, handled the registration while the town librarian, Mrs. Searle, overlooked the process and kept a watchful eye on the library itself. This image reminds us that libraries often play important roles in communities that extend beyond the simple lending of books. Photo taken by Marjory Collins in 1942.

Checking Out the Books

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Not all of a librarian’s duties involve directly helping the public though. They also must organize new additions to the collection, put back books taken from the shelves, and otherwise keep things running smoothly. Here is Dr. Giles E. Dawson, a reference librarian at the Folger Library, inspecting a new collection of 9,000 rare, antique books valued at $2.5 million. All of the books were printed before 1640, and 787 of them were the only copy known to exist at the time the titles were purchased. 1938, Harris & Ewing

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A woman inspects a map bigger than she is. The giant book was loaned for an exhibition at the Manchester Central Library in February, 1937. 

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Remember that before television became the norm as a means of entertainment, books were a critical part of a person’s recreation. That’s why even Farm Security Administration camps developed during the Great Depression would often feature libraries, like this one at the Arvin camp for migrant workers. Here is the librarian for the small collection, as shot by Dorothea Lange in 1938.

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Similarly, here is a librarian at work for the small library built for the Casa Grande Valley Farm Collective that was created as part of the New Deal. 1940 image by Russell Lee

See Also: 24 Awesome Librarian Tatoos

Groups of Librarians 

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Just like any occupation, librarians have a number of trade organizations to represent the interests of their profession, and many of these organizations are over 100 years old. In fact, the American Library Association has been going strong for over 136 years now, helping to fight censorship, support libraries, and promote literacy all the while. Here’s a shot of the association after a big 1919 meeting at the New Monterey Hotel in New Jersey. I’ve broke it into multiple sections so you can actually see the entire image, but if you want to see it all assembled, click this link to see the whole thing on The Library of Congress site.

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This smaller group shot features members of the Special Libraries Association and was taken after their 20th annual convention in Washington D.C. in 1928. While the Special Libraries Association currently represents a number of information professionals who do not even work in libraries, at the time they differed from the ALA in that the members of this group all worked for business, government, law, finance, non-profit and academic organizations and institutions, whereas members of the ALA could work in any type of library anywhere.

Librarians Posing 

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While most librarians operate on a local level, a few reach national positions like the Librarian of Congress. Here is one such success story, that of Ainsworth Rand Spofford, the sixth Librarian of Congress, photographed sometime around the time his term ended in 1897.

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His successor, Dr. Herbert Putnam, was relatively young when he started working in the position. Here he is around 1900.

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And here is Dr. Putnam again near the end of his 44 years of service in the Library of Congress in 1939.

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All the way over in Australia, in 1901, the two houses of Parliament decided they needed to establish a library where all records of parliamentary hearings could be stored. Arthur Wadsworth, Head Librarian of the Victorian Parliamentary Library, was named as a temporary librarian for the new Commonwealth Parliamentary Library until it found a permanent home – and he kept the position for 26 years. Image courtesy of the National Library of Australia.

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While it might not be as big of a deal as the Library of Congress or the Commonwealth Parliamentary Library, I’m sure most librarians would jump at the opportunity to serve as the Librarian of the Smithsonian National Academy of Science. Here is the 1924 librarian in the position, Paul Brockett.

Around the World 

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Librarians at El Azhar Mosque at Cairo in 1950. 

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Russian refugees look for books at a compact Russian library in Paris, 1906. 

Interiors

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The inside of the Gladstone Library in 1920. If you find yourself completely engrossed in a book, you can always stay the night. 

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Karl Marx was a frequent visitor of this enormous library known as the Reading Room in the British Museum. Picture taken in 1925.

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An inside peek at Mudie's lending library in 1910. 

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Here is the gorgeous personal library of Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, circa 1930. 

Hard at Work

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The House of Commons Library in London has adopted the saying, "contributing to a well-informed democracy." Here are some men working to do just that, November 1919.

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A woman sorts photographs at the Keystone Press Agency picture library in 1951. 

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A librarian in the (at the time) new National Central Library places books into a dumbwaiter to transport them to another floor. The Carnegie United Kingdon Trustees poured $50,000 into the library, which was a lot of money back in 1933.

Students

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A librarian explains the progress of the war to schoolchildren at Roath Library, Cardiff, November 1939.

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Libraries often double as an art gallery for young students' creations. See children gather around a student-created model of Battersea Fair displayed in the Beckenham Central Library. It took the hard work of four Beckenham students to create in 7 months. 21st November, 1952. 

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1955: A student leafs through a book in the Bennet Library at the Wyoming Seminary, a prep school in Northern Pennsylvania. 

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A young boy repurposes a pile of books as a step ladder to reach a higher shelf at the Police Athletic League library in 1955. The library was designed to provide children with recreational activities to keep them off the streets and out of trouble. 

Bonus: A young boy checks out a book from the mobile library in 1955. Mobile libraries and book mobiles are still around, transporting books to retirement homes and areas with no library.