Langsdale Link
Fall 2008

Contents:

Leading Langsdale Library
by Robert Shindle

This past summer saw a changing of the guard at Langsdale Library. We saw the retirement of Director Steve LaBash, followed shortly therafter by the return of Lucy Holman to Langsdale to take up the director's mantle. In light of this, we thought this would be a good time to take a look at past directors of Langsdale Library.

Harriette W. Shelton , a graduate of the Columbia University School of Library Service, had been appointed Chief Librarian by President Theodore Wilson in 1957. During her tenure the Law Library moved from Howard Hall to the main library location in the "Charles Hall Annex" building at Oliver and Charles Streets and plans for a new library were brought to fruition. Most of her work took place in the old facility, however, and she enjoyed the new Langsdale Library for only two years before leaving for a position with Catonsville Community College. At the time of the move to Langsdale, she had renewed the acquaintance of a classmate from Columbia, John Nicholson, who had just moved to Maryland from Ohio to develop a library technician program for Catonsville Community College. Two years later, the two essentially traded institutions, with Mrs. Shelton moving to Catonsville and Prof. Nicholson to UB.

John B. Nicholson, Jr ., appointed by Provost H. Mebane Turner in 1968, was an alumnus of Washington and Lee University and the Columbia University School of Library Service. For twenty years before coming to Maryland, he was Librarian at Kent State University in Ohio. At Kent he developed and directed the Library School Program for the College of Education, culminating in accreditation by the American Library Association in 1963 and the department’s establishment as Ohio’s only Graduate School of Library Service in 1966.

In that year, the same year in which Langsdale Library opened, John Nicholson came to Maryland. When he took over at Langsdale two years later the library held just over 60,000 volumes, including 20,000 in the Law Library which occupied the fourth floor. Langsdale’s new leader said "I’m involved in administration, of course, but I don’t much care for it. I prefer to gather books." In his first three years at Langsdale the library’s holdings had doubled and by 1976 the holdings had again doubled to more than 250,000 volumes.

Though a self described "book man" Nicholson recognized that the library could no longer be described as simply the "keeper of printed books." In 1973, Langsdale became a selective Federal Depository Library, receiving approximately 25% of the total number of federal government documents made available through the Federal Depository Library program each year. In 1975 a Learning Resource Center was opened with an Audio-Visual technician serving the classroom instructional needs of the campus. Archives and Special Collections were acquired both in Langsdale and in old Howard Hall where Langsdale librarians were assigned to the Baltimore Regional Institution Studies Center (BRISC).

In Ohio, John Nicholson had been active in the formation of the Ohio College Library Center (OCLC), a project which came to fruition a year after he came to Maryland. In 1977, OCLC expanded beyond Ohio colleges to become the Online Computer Library Center and Langsdale was among the first libraries to join the expanded organization.

Nicholson retired from UB in 1981 and his collected essays, first printed by the UB Library as Printer’s Letters from Anagnostes Solitarium, were published in 1986 as Reading and the Art of Librarianship .

Thomas Ellis Hodgin was appointed by Provost Betty J. Stirling in 1981. A native of North Carolina, he was an alumnus of High Point College and the University of North Carolina School of Library Science. He came to Baltimore having just obtained an MS in Administration from Central Michigan University which he put to use at UB, reorganizing Langsdale physically and administratively.

While his tenure at UB was short it was dramatic, occurring in the aftermath of a March 30, 1980 fire that caused $150,000 damage to Langsdale and required the efforts of Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory to salvage a number of documents. Hodgin also managed the redeployment of space made possible by the move of the Law Library across Maryland Avenue into the Law Center and the consolidation of the Learning Resource Center, renamed the "Instructional Technology Center"

Hodgin left Baltimore to continue his career as an academic library director which took him to the Open University of Hong Kong and the University of Petroleum & Minerals in Saudi Ararbia. His career ended at Davis & Elkins College, Elkins, West Virginia, where he died April 2, 2006.

William Newman was appointed by Provost Catherine R. Gira in 1983. A graduate of the Columbia University School of Library Service, he came to Baltimore from New Orleans where he had directed the Tulane University Library for five years. He also held a degree in Mathematics from Brooklyn College and had experience in automated library systems and in grant resource development, skills which matched the needs of the library at the time.

Much of his tenure at UB would be dedicated to increasing automation of its resources. In the Fall of 1983 Langsdale began offering DIALOG and ORBIT bibliographic services at a fee. At the same time, the library began updating its own catalog and its entries in OCLC by adding entries for periodicals and federal documents.

For the three years previous, the Enoch Pratt Free Library, Maryland’s State Library Resource Center, had been surveying the film archive of WMAR-TV news under a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant. In 1984, Langsdale’s Special Collections became the repository of the film archive which was repaired and restored using a grant of $55,000.00 from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) and stored in an environmentally suitable space in Langsdale’s lower level. At the same time Langsdale absorbed archival collections gathered by BRISC over the past decade in old Howard Hall. Both became the responsibility of Langsdale’s Special Collections though it was noted that "[t]he responsibility of servicing these collections on a limited basis comes with no additional staff." As a result of budget cuts in the 1990’s, the staff was in fact cut back further and the Reference and Special Collections departments merged.

The layout of the library stacks was also altered significantly. In 1985, it was announced that oversize books (28-33 cm high) would also be integrated in the regular stacks as would all bound periodicals. The periodical stacks which had occupied the first floor were eliminated and microfilm periodicals joined the Instructional Technology Center, the film archive, and a study lounge on the Lower Level. For the comfort of students the first floor was then refurnished with wing chairs and couches. A notice in the February 1985 Langsdale Library Newsletter announced that

"Smoking is permitted in the public areas of the lower level, 3rd and 4th floors only. No Smoking on the second floor. Food is permitted in the study lounge (lower level) only."

The first public access to computer databases was offered in 1988 when a National Endowment for the Arts grant enabled purchase of WilsonDisc Humanities, Social Science and Modern Language Association indexes on CD-ROM. By 1988, the work of the library’s Instructional Technology Center had increased dramatically. Films, tapes and the equipment on which to play them were all loaned and delivered to classrooms by library personnel. Tha year a NEH grant enabled the library to purchase VCR monitors for use by patrons in the library.

The Council of Library Directors of the University System of Maryland planned ahead in 1988 with the appointment of an Inter-institutional Library Automation Committee to contemplate a system-wide cataloging and circulation system that would eventually lead to the "Victor" online catalog. That fall the University System instituted reciprocal borrowing privileges among its campuses and an Interactive Video Network facility was launched on Langsdale’s fourth floor, linking the campus with other campuses of the USM and with area community colleges.

Wanda Breitenbach , the longtime Associate Director took the helm of the Library upon Newman’s retirement in and remained its Acting Director for several years.

Myrna McCallister , was appointed by Provost Ronald Legon in 1999. An alumna of the University of California at Los Angeles, she received Masters degrees in Library Science and in French Literature from the University of Michigan. She came to Baltimore after several years as Director of Trexler Library at Muhlenburg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, having served previously as Associate University Librarian at Appalachian State University and as Acquisitions Librarian at the University of Maine.

Her four-year tenure at UB included the migration of the online catalog from the "Victor" system to the current catalog USMAI. The Reference and Special Collections departments were separated administratively, the latter working in partnership with UB’s Center for Regional & Baltimore Studies (CRABS). McCallister also oversaw physical improvements to the facility as carpeting and signage were replaced for the first time in many years.

In 2003, McCallister was appointed Dean of Library Services at Indiana State University in Terra Haute and was one of twenty five U.S. librarians honored as Librarians of the Year by the New York Times in 2006, the first year in which the honor was open to academic librarians.


Stephen Peter LaBash took the helm of the library on the departure of Myrna McCallister in 2003, and was appointed Director by newly arrived provost Wim Weival the next year. He received his MLS from the Pratt Institute Library School in New York, and later an MA in Legal, Ethical and Historical Studies from the University of Baltimore

An indexer and cataloger with the Public Affairs Information Service (PAIS) before coming to Baltimore, he expected to spend no more than three years building electronic resources here. As it turned out, LaBash would spend the rest of his career at UB. He began in 1984, as a Reference Librarian and Coordinator of Bibliographic Instruction (what is today referred to as Information Literacy), later became Head of Reference & Special Collections, then moved up to the position of Associate Director before finishing his carrer as Director.

In his time as director, the Instructional Technology Center, which had physically left the library several years earlier, was administratively reassigned to the Office of Technology Services.

Much of his work as Director involved the physical state of the now 40 year old library building. The arrangement of stacks was dramatically improved by reestablishing separate periodical stacks on the second floor, relocating the reference stacks to the first floor, the entire circulating collection to the third floor, and all of Special Collections to the fourth floor. However, a series of floods forced unplanned closures of parts of the building and the unplanned relocation of staff from its lower level.

On retirement, he told the UB Post that when he came to Baltimore in 1984, the university "anticipated building a new library—and now, 24 years later, we still do not have it." Still, he recalled that much had changed from that year when "we had no computers, we used an overhead projector and card catalog—everything was in print." In Langsdale Link, he remembered that "[f]rom the first moment of my arrival until today, the staff has committed itself to providing quick and efficient service to the University community. We have always emphasized our commitment to providing you with the best service in a friendly and supportive atmosphere."

 
 

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