Althea Warren

Althea Hester Warren (December 18, 1886 – December 19, 1958) was the director of the Los Angeles (California) Public Library from 1933 to 1947 and president of the American Library Association in 1943-1944.[1] She was inducted into the California Library Association's Library Hall of Fame in 2013.[2]

Althea Warren
President of the American Library Association
In office
1943–1944
Preceded byKeyes D. Metcalf
Succeeded byCarl Vitz
Personal details
Born(1886-12-18)December 18, 1886
Waukegan, Illinois, US
DiedDecember 19, 1958(1958-12-19) (aged 72)
NationalityAmerican
OccupationLibrarian

Biography and career

Warren was born on December 18, 1886 in Waukegan, Illinois, to Lansing Warren and Emma Blodgett. She attended the University of Chicago from 1904 to 1908. After traveling abroad in Europe, Warren started library school at the University of Wisconsin, graduating in 1911. She was a branch manager in a "poor neighborhood" in the Chicago Public Library system,[1] and she also managed a branch in the Sears, Roebuck store in that city, which served the store's employees.[3]:28 In 1914 she relocated with her family to San Diego, California, and during World War I she helped furnish books to soldiers at Camp Kearny, California, outside of San Diego.[3]:30 She worked in the San Diego Public Library system and was the head librarian there from 1916 to 1926. She moved to the Los Angeles Public Library in the latter year, having been chosen to oversee all the system's branch libraries. In 1933 she became LAPL head librarian, one of six women overseeing large public libraries in the United States at that time.[1]

In November 1941, Warren, who was considered "#1 in the field of Women Librarians," took a leave from her Los Angeles job to become director of the ALA's National Defense Book Campaign, which sought to collect and organize distribution of books to American servicemen. The campaign, headquartered in New York City, eventually became known among her closest friends as "Warren's child."[3] Warren was California Library Association president in 1921 and American Library Association (ALA) president in 1943-1944. She worked on the national level to increase federal aid to libraries and to end discrimination faced by African American librarians at ALA conference hotels.[1]

Warren retired in 1947 and then taught in library science programs in Wisconsin and Michigan and at the University of Southern California.[1]

Non-profit organization positions
Preceded by
Keyes D. Metcalf		 President of the American Library Association
1943–1944		 Succeeded by
Carl Vitz

Personal life

Warren was gay. She and Gladys English, the Los Angeles Public Library's head of the Children's Department, were in love, (Orlean, The Library Book, pg. 197), living and traveling together for years.[4] After English died, Warren created the American Library Association's Gladys English Memorial Collection, also called the Gladys English Collection.[5][4]

References
  1. Martha Boaz, Fervent and Full of Gifts: The Life of Althea Warren (New York: Scarecrow Press, 1961); Dorothy Drake and Virginia Milbank Fromme, Althea Warren, Librarian, N.P.: California Library Association, 1962, and "Happy 125th Birthday, Althea Warren," Library History Buff, as cited at California History Hall of Fame: Althea Warren
  2. https://www.cla-net.org/page/669/California-Library-Hall-of-Fame-Althea-Warren.htm
  3. :28, 29 and 54Molly Guptill Manning, When Books Went to War (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014), ISBN 9780544535022
  4. http://www.ajbdesign.com/work/Read-Like-a-Cat-Sleeps.pdf
  5. https://www.lapl.org/collections-resources/lapl-indexes/gladys-english
  • Althea B. Warren Papers, 1942-1945, The American Library Association Archives
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