Speaking of History:The Words of South Carolina Librarians

Listen to Frances Lander Spain

Frances Lander Spain talks about the SCLA constitution

"Yes, yes. We went up (my gracious, I'd forgotten). Yes, I was quite shocked when I became president of the South Carolina Library Association and read its constitution -- which I had never bothered to read before -- I'd been a member for some time. It was to develop public libraries in South Carolina, and here were school libraries, here were college libraries, here were special libraries. So I think it was during my administration that we changed that wording of the constitution."

Frances Lander Spain talks about the start of the library training program at Winthrop

"... I look back now and think a little learning is a dangerous thing. I thought I knew everything about library schools. The Emory library school had a desk for each student and each student sat at that desk, so I wanted a desk for each student up there in the library science department. They, Winthrop, provided that. It was fine, it was good, but it was not necessary. I look back now, but there were good [things] about that. They did give me some equipment; they let me select books that I could use for cataloging. I tried to get different kinds of title pages -- subject matter -- so we'd have book selection. We used a good many of the books in the college library for reference work. The school did support it very nicely, and this was good."





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