Interview of Miriam Dudley

1.1. Session 1 (August 8, 2009)

Grassian

This is Esther Grassian interviewing Mimi Dudley, Miriam Sue Dudley, on Sunday, August 8, 2009, at Mimi's apartment in Van Nuys. It is about ten to eleven in the morning.So Mimi, let's start with your family background and your early childhood. When and where were you born?

Dudley

I was born in Minot, North Dakota. My family--my mother [Gita Lea Feldman Feinstein; in 1939 changed to Leah Feldman Fine] came to North Dakota when she was eleven, from Estonia. My father [Henry "Hank" Phillips Feinstein; in 1939 changed to Henry Hank Phillips Fine] was born in Grand Forks North Dakota. They met in Minneapolis and returned to Minot, where she'd been since she was eleven. She was one of seven children [Gita Lea Feldman Fine, Norman Feldman, Rose Feldman Straus, Esther Feldman, Zalman Feldman, Edel Feldman, Rivala Feldman], and Minot was a very important place in our lives, although I left at fifteen months. However, I did go visit relatives.I was born in 1924, December twenty-fifth.

Grassian

Okay. When you said you left, did you mean that you--

Dudley

At fifteen months, my folks established roots in Los Angeles, and the grandparents did as well.

Grassian

Okay. Were those your mother's parents [Chaim Feldman and Shayne Feldman] or your father's parents [Nahum Labe and Jenny Phillips Feinstien]?

Dudley

Yes, my mother's. No, no, no, no, no. My father's parents came with us to Los Angeles. My mother's parents stayed in Minot and several of her brothers and sisters stayed there, so I visited them in my teens and later on.

Grassian

How much education did your parents have?

Dudley

My father went to school in Grand Forks [North Dakota] and then later in Minneapolis, and he went through high school. That was it. My mother went to school in Minot, and she went to secretarial school in Minneapolis. She met somebody in Minneapolis and married and had a son. However, I guess she came back to Minot and then my father came to visit somebody in Minot and fell madly in love with her, and with the help of her father persuaded her to marry. It was a wonderful, tempestuous, exciting marriage. They were exciting people.

Grassian

Did your parents work?

Dudley

Oh, my mother was--yes, she did secretarial work. She was very political, and she was with the Wobblies in Minneapolis. My father, he studied a great deal. He studied in public libraries, and he learned what he needed to know about vitamins, and he established the Vitamin Flour and Milling Company in downtown Los Angeles on Alpine Street. Then from then on he--well, they used food-pressing equipment, and he learned about presses and went into the record business later. He owned a record--well, he worked with Mercury Records, as did Norm [husband, Norman Dudley] later.

Grassian

Well, that's very interesting. But just a quick question. When you said Vitamin Flour and Milling, did you mean they milled things to make vitamins?

Dudley

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. He really learned what he was doing about food chemistry by going to public libraries and studying. He studied in Chicago. He made a particular trip to Chicago to study what he needed to know. He was a very, very bright, intense kind of person.

Grassian

So libraries figured largely in your family background.

Dudley

Yes, yes.

Grassian

Did he talk about it a lot?

Dudley

It was very, very important, yes. When I was six--we moved around a great deal. It was in the depression. I think we moved whenever the rent was due, but that's how I knew so many areas, why I know so many areas of Los Angeles. The first thing that he would do is look for the public library and from the time I was six on, I had a library card and spent a lot of time in libraries. It's interesting, I never connected that.

Grassian

That's very interesting. You mentioned that you have a brother, or a half-brother [Fred Fine]. Did you have any other brothers or sisters?

Dudley

It was a deep, dark secret in Minot, North Dakota, that Mother had been married twice, so we didn't know that we were half-brother and sister until after my mother's death. [laughs] So he was three years older than I. My sister [Edelle Fine] is six years younger. My sister died at the age of eleven. My brother lived into fairly old age.

Grassian

You love to read. How did your family influence your reading interests?

Dudley

Well, my father was a library user, and my mother--Mother, as I said, there were seven of them in the family, and two of her sisters [Esther and Rivala] lived with us almost their whole lives, well, no, until marriage. She too, the younger sister [Edelle], she was ten years older than I, always saw to it that I could get to libraries. It's really through family. I didn't know any librarians personally. I probably worshipped them and was afraid of them, but I didn't--it was not through the influence of librarians. It was family. And my father had a lot of books. In the family are still some of my father's bookcases. Oh, and I had to have permission to read them. I wasn't allowed just to read something without his permission, which, of course, led to a great deal of sneaking of books.

Grassian

So that made them more mysterious and valuable, because you weren't permitted to read them.

Dudley

Yes, yes, yes. And I could only use the children's section of the library for--I finally did get permission--I think I was about ten or eleven--to go into the adult section of the library. I don't know if that's still a rule or not.

Grassian

I don't know. Okay, so now let's talk about where you grew up. You said that your family moved to L.A. when you were fifteen months old, so where--

Dudley

Yes. We lived in--again, what was important to my father was that we be in a particular school district. The school district--it was 24th Street School [in Los Angeles], very near the Clark Library, and although we moved--this was the West Adams area. It had big, huge old houses, and in every house in that area was a library and a butler's pantry and, oh, three or four or five bedrooms, and I think probably during the depression they rented for very, very little, because they wanted to have them occupied. That was near the 24th Street School, so that was West Adams area.Later we moved to Venice [California] and still later to the Beverly-Robertson area, yes, and then around La Cienega, Beverly [Boulevard] and La Cienega [Boulevard in Los Angeles], where there were oil wells, and about then is when I left home, I think, and moved. My first home was in Tujunga [in southern California]. I had a four-hundred-square-foot house in Tujunga when I was in college [UCLA], and it was quite a distance from UCLA, but it worked. Later I told Norm that that was my favorite house, and it hurt his feelings terribly. [laughs] It was my first house.

Grassian

So you mentioned the 24th Street School. That was a public school, I'm guessing.

Dudley

Yes.

Grassian

Did it have a library, and do you remember other schools you went to?

Dudley

It had a book room. It had a book room where, yes, there were books available that you could read in the daytime. You couldn't take them home with you. But I could read during recess, and I was a very early reader and an intense reader.

Grassian

The libraries that were in the houses that you lived in, in the West Adams area, were those stocked with books?

Dudley

Oh, no, no, no. This was our own--they rented them. They were not furnished. We brought our own furniture with us, and we brought my father's bookcases all over with us.

Grassian

Okay, so you moved your books, his books.

Dudley

We moved. Oh, when I say we probably moved, yes, we probably moved four or five times.

Grassian

Within the L.A. [Los Angeles] area.

Dudley

Yes. And my father loved L.A., and he knew a great deal about it too.

Grassian

And so you lived in the West Adams area and the Venice area. Do you remember the other--

Dudley

Well, Beverly-La Cienega. I don't know what area that is. But during the early years it was mostly West Adams. A wonderful principal at the 24th Street School, and it is interesting. Well, in my present day life I meet people who went to that school, and through life I have. I've never quite understood that, but it was a very sought-after school with a little system, library system.The Clark Library attracted me. It was always a few blocks from where we lived, and I couldn't go into the Clark Library, but I could look into it. Oh, and the grounds were available, and they still are available. There was a telescope that [William Andrews] Clark meant to be--it's still in the will actually--available to the public, and the kids could climb up into the tower and use the telescope.

Grassian

Did you do that?

Dudley

Yes, yes, yes. But mostly I'd look at the house. The house is now gone. The library was built; now I don't remember the date. But the old house stayed there until I would think maybe the seventies or something like that. It was used as a storehouse for "L.A. Times" for a while. But by the time I saw it, the grounds had been enlarged.

Grassian

Wow. When you said a storehouse for the "L.A. Times", do you mean the print copies of old newspapers?

Dudley

Yes, old newspapers. I think probably in the sixties they needed to empty the house and tear it down, but that would be interesting to check the date of it.

Grassian

I'll see if I can find that. Okay, let's talk a little bit about the kinds of careers that you considered and what influenced you to become a librarian when you were young.

Dudley

I did my undergraduate work at UCLA and loved it. Well, I became an English major, and that was meant for me and I for it. After I completed my undergraduate work, I rather aimlessly started to work on a master's in English under Hugh Dick. My term project was a bibliography. The library had just obtained the Olive Percival Collection, which was a collection of children's books. Olive [May Graves] Percival was a local realtor, who was a collector. There are books written about Olive Percival. But she had just died, and I don't know how we got the collection, but we did.It's an historical collection of children's books and of miniatures, and I did a descriptive bibliography of the poetry in the collection. I met Bob [Robert] Vosper, who was the assistant university librarian at the time. Hugh Dick introduced us, and I was a goner for bibliography. I continued the course, and in the course of taking Hugh Dick's course I met a guy who had come to Los Angeles to complete a degree. He was a librarian in New York, and he needed to go see the dean at USC, because I think it was connected with his work. She turned to me--I don't remember, her name may have been Pulling [Hazel Adele Pulling] or Pullman. She turned to me in the middle of the conversation and said, "And what are you doing?" [laughs] And before I left, I decided to go to library school there. We didn't have a library school at UCLA. We had one at [University of California] Berkeley and one at, it wasn't Mount St. Mary's, it was another Catholic school. I can't remember the name of it anymore.So I entered library school totally because of that bibliography course, and my first job was as bibliographer, which I will go into now. No?

Grassian

If you would like.

Dudley

All right. [laughs] I didn't like library school very much, because it didn't focus on bibliography, which was my interest. But I did take a reference course and whatever else was required at the time. I still lived in Tujunga, and it was a long drive to USC, so the first thing that I did was make arrangements to have the course completed in two years instead of one, so that I wouldn't have to drive to USC from Tujunga all that often. But I did stick it out. I didn't like library school, but I certainly liked everything that I knew about bibliography and reference. I did fall in love with reference.When I was ready to graduate from library school, I didn't have anything particular in mind. I think I just wanted more bibliography. My friend Fauna Finger, who was graduating at the same time I was, said, "Well, are you starting work on Monday?" And I said, "No." And she said, "Well, you know, Bob Vosper is expecting you. That position is being held for you." And either I didn't understand, or it didn't--at any rate, I phoned and he said, "Is Monday going to work for you?" I said, "Yes." And I was what was called a bibliographic checker, which meant checking orders to be sure--it was in acquisitions, and they were orders initiated by Lawrence Clark Powell for the most part, but faculty and bibliographers. So it was a small library then. I remember when we got our millionth volume that was a very big deal. But it was large enough so that we did need to check all orders. We weren't swamped with orders, but there were four of us [Mimi Dudley, Charlotte Spence, Dorothy Harmon, and Kathy].It was very interesting that Larry Powell did a lot of ordering himself, and I did some in the people I was interested in, and after I'd been there a couple of weeks, he came out and asked if I was going to do a book on--it was Ivy Compton Burnett, because I was ordering her as she appeared. And, no, I wasn't. I was just interested in that. But that he could notice who ordered what gives you an idea of how small the library was.

Grassian

So there were four librarians doing bib checking?

Dudley

Right, in acquisitions. Two of them had been there for a long time and knew the library and knew the library system, but it took me a while to learn. And I stayed in that position all the time, that early period at the library. That was in--oh, I was going to look this up. It was 1949, yes, July first, 1949, because Norah Jones started work the same day and just recently she called me and said, "We celebrate July first, don't we?" [laughter] So I started in 1949.

Grassian

So you, in a way, accidentally started working at the UCLA Library.

Dudley

Yes, yes, yes.

Grassian

But it wasn't something that you planned, because you didn't really know about it.

Dudley

No, no, no, I didn't really. I didn't. I was very misty. I guess I didn't know what I was doing, but I remember that it was a shocker to me that, oh, I didn't know that I'd made a commitment. Well, and another thing is that my career at SC [University of Southern California], when graduation came close, the dean [Hazel Adele Pulling] told me that I needed one more course, and I wasn't about to do that. So she arranged that all I had to do was pay tuition for the one course, which was a real, real shocker to me, but she took care of it. Isn't that a shocker? They didn't do that at UCLA.

Grassian

You paid tuition, but you didn't take the class.

Dudley

That's right.

Grassian

Interesting. So when you were working at the UCLA Library, there was just one library, right, Powell [Library]?

Dudley

Yes, yes.

Grassian

What was the physical environment like in Powell then?

Dudley

Oh, the remodeling of the Powell has all been--it's really been rearrangement of departments. Very little changes were done for a number of years. Any additions--a wing was added in, I think, '45. It was L-shaped until '45, but by the time I got there, that was really all the exterior changes. When you entered that library, the Reserve Book Room was up the short flight of stairs to your right. Downstairs to your right as you entered was the Music Library, the Engineering [Library] or as much as we had of the engineering, and the Biomedical Library. The Biomedical Library was in one room. That was--Louise Darling came very shortly--about the same time I did, and there were other libraries there that I'm not remembering. But it was all in one--we were a one-building library, and it was very good, because we could watch all of the collections develop.I believe that there was the beginning of a Music Library. That's sort of vague. Upstairs was the library. The Reference [Department], the main reading room, didn't change much, although at one time they did block off one end of it for offices, but that's gone now. The West Wing, I guess, is what it was, was blocked off, and I had an office there. All of the--we were later bibliographers. No, later we were called bibliographers, yes; reference librarians. There were bibliographers, yes. Bibliographers were hired later. But Reference did take over the space at the end of the building at the main reading room, and let's see what else upstairs. Well, everything, everything was there.

Grassian

Sort of behind the scenes?

Dudley

Yes. Of course, the stacks were all contained in the building. It was much later, I think, that there were additional stacks built. That was after I left, really. That must have been in the--

Grassian

And the staff that worked behind the scenes, catalogers, acquisitions--

Dudley

Oh, all of us. They were all up there, catalog and acquisitions in the--am I right? Was it the North Wing or the West Wing? The wing you're in now.

Grassian

I'm directionally challenged. I get mixed up.

Dudley

Let me think. Yes, it was the West Wing, and it still is the West Wing, yes, where you guys are.

Grassian

Do you remember about what percentage of the librarian workforce were men?

Dudley

Administrators were all men. The librarian, the assistant librarian, the associate librarians, they were all men. Lawrence Clark Powell was the librarian, and Bob Vosper was assistant. Andy [Andrew Harlis] Horn and Neal Harlow were Special Collections. Gifts and Exchanges grew, and it was a man. Oh, yes, yes, there were a couple of reference librarians who were men [David Herron, Richard O'Brian], but the rest were all women, so I don't know what percentage that would be.

Grassian

Well, how many just total librarians do you think there were, but not counting administrators?

Dudley

Oh, total reference librarians at that time was probably eight or ten. Acquisitions, there were six librarians. All of us were women. Oh, the head of acquisitions was a man; that was [John] Johnny Smith. Cataloging, let me thing. In cataloging at that time the head of cataloging was a man [Rudolph "Rudy" Ingelbarts], and maybe there were twenty catalogers.

Grassian

Were there dress codes for women librarians then?

Dudley

Oh, yes. Oh, yes. It was just assumed that they wouldn't need any, but at one point, women started wearing slacks, and it was decided by--well, this was a great deal later. Oh, by that time it was the sixties. Nobody ever, ever wore pants to work. A meeting was called, and it was decreed that women could wear pants to work, but it was pantsuits, not pants. I remember being told that by that they meant to dress the way Janice Koyama dressed, and Janice Koyama was properly dressed.

Grassian

How about the men? How did the men dress?

Dudley

Men wore suits. Men wore suits. Yes, all of them wore suits. They continued really to wear suits for almost all the time I was there.

Grassian

Do you remember any sort of behavior that we might call sexual harassment now?

Dudley

No, I don't. I don't. There were no episodes that I experienced or that were brought to my attention. There were marriages within the staff. I want to think about that a little bit more. No, not that we knew about. The men were all managers. They were all in the management class, and I don't remember them even having much to do with us.

Grassian

So the men were managers and they didn't have much to do with you. So they made decisions on their own then?

Dudley

Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. There were no committees. There were, I'm sure, consultations when we started purchasing a great deal of purchasing. Then Larry Powell went to Europe. He took the whole Library of Congress catalog with him. But they did start hiring subject specialists who--almost all of them had doctorates, and they all had library degrees, but subject specialties as well. That was a while later.

Grassian

I'm not sure I know what you mean when you say he took the Library of Congress catalog with him.

Dudley

Well, the whole LC [Library of Congress] catalog. It was photographed volumes of the card catalog. At first it was photographed collection. It was many, many volumes, I don't remember how many, but, oh, surely into the hundreds. You do know it. You know it. Do you think maybe it's into the hundreds?

Grassian

It could be. What year was that, that he took--do you remember approximately?

Dudley

Well, it was in the early fifties, in the early fifties.

Grassian

So he took all those volumes with him for--

Dudley

He took it with him, yes, for purchasing, because he went on a purchasing expedition.

Grassian

Oh, and so he could check to see if we already, or LC--

Dudley

And he bought--that's right, right, right, what our holdings were, or what the LC--that's right. And LC did tell where those books were held.

Grassian

Okay, wow.

Dudley

Then, of course, later they sent--well, they sent bibliographers to do purchasing, but he was the first one who went to Europe himself and did all that, and to establish contacts with book sellers.

Grassian

So regarding the library administration, when Powell was the main library, since the librarians didn't have much contact with the administrators, and the administrators or the managers were mostly men and they made decisions, I'm guessing that there wasn't anything that you could do if there was something that you objected to.

Dudley

No, no. We were all nominally free to make suggestions about book collection, which was really my interest at that time. We were not only free, we were encouraged to select books. But as far as management is concerned, no, we--no.

Grassian

Okay. So I actually skipped over some things I was going to ask you.

Dudley

Please, please, go back, yes.

Grassian

So this is fascinating. I wanted to ask a few more things way back earlier. I wanted to ask you, going back to your field of interest, how you got interested in librarianship when you were young. So do you remember what you wanted to be when you were growing up? When did you first think about being a librarian?

Dudley

Not until I was a graduate in graduate library school, in graduate English at UCLA. It wasn't anything that I had thought about or considered. I didn't relate in that way to the librarians at the public libraries.

Grassian

Okay, so that's right. You did say that. Did you have any jobs when you were in high school or as an undergrad?

Dudley

I had one job. I worked in a soda and sandwich shop in high school, and I think it was very good experience for being a reference librarian. Later on, when I was helping interview and select people for the college library, I gave special credence to people who'd had that waitressing experience. I think public service experience is very, very important, and to me, that's really what was most appealing for a long time at my job at UCLA.

Grassian

So now I'm going forward chronologically, as I should have done before but I didn't.

Dudley

I interrupted you, that's why.

Grassian

No, no, my fault. So now talking about the major changes in your life. So you've been married to Norman for many years. Can you tell me how you met and when?

Dudley

Fifty-eight, fifty-eight years. Yes. Well, we met in our psychoanalyst's [Alex Blumstein] office. Our appointments were about the same time, and we met, and then we were in group therapy together, and we learned a great deal about each other, a great deal. Oh, after our appointments, we would talk for long, long, long periods of time, and we started dating, and as we were being--we went to Las Vegas when we decided to marry. We decided one evening, and we just drove there. And as we were being married, I looked over at Norm and realized he was much taller than I. Next day I went to work, and somebody said, "What color are his eyes?" And I had to phone him to ask. [laughter] Ours was very much a sitting and talking relationship. But I've always remembered that.And Norm at the time was doing sales work, and my father really, really wanted him in his business, which was the record business by that time, and Norman did become the West Coast distributor for Mercury Records. That was fun, and he enjoyed it. The headquarters for Mercury was Chicago, so I think I skipped part of my life. I don't know how that could have happened. But when I was fifteen, I did go to school in Chicago for a year, and I didn't like it at all. I could hardly wait to get back to Los Angeles. The cold of Chicago was all that I remembered, so when Norm first started going to Chicago a lot, I didn't go along. It took me some time to get to know it and love it again.

Grassian

I'm just curious. Why did you go to school [Hyde Park High School] in Chicago for a year?

Dudley

Oh, my father was putting up a record plant there. He and my mother and my younger sister were there for a long time before I decided that I needed to go too, or they decided I needed to. So I shopped for a proper winter coat in Los Angeles, and I liked it a lot. It was chic and wooly. Got to Chicago and got off the train and a chill struck me, and it lasted the whole year I was in Chicago. I really wasn't there for a whole year. My mother and I went to Carson, Pirie, Scott on Monday and bought a coat, a proper Chicago coat that weighted me down, and I felt that way that whole year, so that was my Chicago experience up until Norm started going there a lot, and then ALA [American Library Association] being there was what really won me over.

Grassian

Okay. So getting back to you and Norman, were you already a librarian when you and Norman got married?

Dudley

Yes, yes.

Grassian

But you said he was in the music industry--

Dudley

Right.

Grassian

--or he worked for your father.

Dudley

Well, he worked for my father for a while and then he became the West Coast distributor. My father was pressing records then, and Norm learned a lot about records and the record industry from my father. But he really liked--it was fun. It was fun for both of us. He needed to tout all the Mercury Records people around town and around the country, and I did some of that traveling with him, and that was a taste of showbiz that was fun. Norm did that for about ten years. We bought a house in the valley, and when the boys [Noah and Seth Dudley] were born, we bought a bigger house in the Hollywood Hills. Those were really fun years.But we figured out at the end of ten years that we could live on savings, in order for Norm to go to graduate school, saving and some scrimping, and he decided he wanted to go to library school. He liked everything he knew about it, and he liked our friends. So the boys were eleven and twelve when he went to library school, and he loved it. He loved being in library school, and his first job was at UCLA, went to UCLA Library School [UCLA Graduate School of Library Science]. They hired him immediately, and he had some interesting jobs. You want me to go into Norman's interesting jobs?

Grassian

Certainly.

Dudley

Okay. [laughs] Oh, by that time, of course, I had left. We had the two boys. I'm going to stop for a minute and talk about that. Our first son, Noah, was born in the valley [San Fernando Valley], and when he was seventeen months old, Seth was born. It was our goal to have five of them, but that's really as far as we went. But the two boys--that was Seth--grew up together in the house in Hollywood, and the boys went to Hollywood High School. The house was very meaningful to all of us. I'm getting lost.

Grassian

Okay. Well, you were saying that Norman had some interesting jobs when he became a librarian.

Dudley

Yes, yes. His first job was--the UCLA Library was just moving in to the University Research Library, into what's now the Young Research Library, and his first job was to figure out things about the move. He did that with Paul Miles, and it was an extremely--there are specialists to do that now, but at that time there weren't, and they figured it out, Paul and Andy Horn, who later became dean of the library school. So they did that and then Norman worked for a year as a reference librarian in the college library, which was downstairs by that time, in the college library.

Grassian

By downstairs you mean downstairs in the Powell Library building. The move happened, I believe, in 1965. Is that correct? About 1965, the move from Powell to what is now YRL but then was URL, University Research Library.

Dudley

Right. And the plan of moving the books was what he worked on.

Grassian

Yes, okay. So that was his first job.

Dudley

That was his first job, and then he worked for a year as a reference librarian. Then he became the Acquisitions Librarian, and that meant the Acquisitions Department was under him. Oh, yes, and the book selectors, that was it. It was the people who were hired by that time to do book selection were experts in their fields, and Norm by that time was establishing contracts with the booksellers around the world really, and hiring people to do that. Then I think the bibliographers themselves went to whichever country. That's right. Norman sent them to whichever country they were responsible for.

Grassian

So he was the first person who, it sounds like, sent bibliographers out to different countries to buy books, as opposed to Vosper [this was actually Powell], who went by himself and took the whole hundreds huge volumes with him.

Dudley

Yes, to help in selection.

Grassian

How did the bibliographers figure out what we had, or did they know their areas well enough?

Dudley

Oh, they knew their areas. They were extremely well educated in their areas, and they were librarians. I know since they have hired people without the library degree, but at the time, they had to be both.

Grassian

And they didn't have to take the hundred-volume catalog with them.

Dudley

No. [laughs]

Grassian

Okay. Who was Norman working under when he was an AUL [Assistant University Librarian]? When did he become an AUL, and who was he working under, do you remember?

Dudley

I think it was Vosper. It was Vosper, yes, I'm pretty sure it was. Yes, it was definitely Bob Vosper.

Grassian

Do you remember what his impressions were of library administration and the library?

Dudley

Norman's?

Grassian

Yes.

Dudley

He admired Bob Vosper. He admired him, and, of course, when Norm was in library school, Larry Powell was, and Norm and Larry and Bob really liked each other a lot.

Grassian

So Larry Powell was the university librarian when Norman was in library school?

Dudley

Yes, right, right. No, Bob Vosper was. Bob Vosper, yes. And Larry was dean of the library school.

Grassian

Okay, that's right.

Dudley

So he worked with them and with Paul Miles; Page Ackerman. Page Ackerman had been the Psychology and Education librarian, or one of them, under Gladys Coryell at first, and then she became university librarian after Vosper. Page was interested in aspects of management. Management was her interest and her specialty. I'm not remembering too much about that period, but it was different from a scholarly interest, which had been dominant earlier.

Grassian

Among the heads of the library?

Dudley

Yes. After Page, it was Russell Shank, and it was during that period that Norm retired.

Grassian

What year did he retire, do you remember?

Dudley

Oh, goodness. I'll have to think about it a minute.

Grassian

Okay, you can tell me later. Were you aware of any controversies in the library that Norman dealt with, problems, controversies?

Dudley

Oh, yes. [laughs] Yes. Largely personnel. At that time, no one had been fired. Nobody needed to be fired. They were very carefully selected and usually the manager of that section was the one who hired, and standards were very high. But there were a few times that that was necessary, and however, I think that was when Norm was in acquisitions rather than the bibliographers.

Grassian

Well, any time in his career, if you recall any controversies or issues, major problems that he was involved in or he dealt with.

Dudley

No, I really don't. No. I'll consider that, think more about it.

Grassian

Okay. Can you think of any other highlights that you remember about his career, other than what you've already mentioned?

Dudley

I'll have to think about that one.

Grassian

When you think back on his career, what do you think he was most proud of?

Dudley

Oh, I think his rapport and his understanding. They really loved him. The bibliographers all really, really liked Norm a lot. They were the prima donnas of the library, and I think that some people felt they were harder to get along with. Norm also worked with the faculty a lot, and in many cases, he worked with the faculty rather than the bibliographer in that field. I think that was what might be inherent in the position at that time. He enjoyed it. He enjoyed them and for the most part he enjoyed the people he worked with in the front offices, it was called at the time. There were exceptions, as I think the library became I guess more management-conscious is I guess what it was. Well, let's see. Page had come from the Graduate School of Management, did she not? I think she got her doctorate in management.

Grassian

So there was a definite turn away from the administrators being scholars and the administrators being more managers during the period that Norman was there.

Dudley

Yes, right, right.

Grassian

Would you consider him to have been more of a manager or more of a scholar?

Dudley

More of a scholar.

Grassian

But it sounds like he was also a--

Dudley

He did a really good job of working with the bibliographers.

Grassian

Of managing.

Dudley

Yes.

Grassian

He was sort of both.

Dudley

And cataloging, yes, yes.

Grassian

Okay. So he was in charge of acquisitions and cataloging and bibliographers?

Dudley

Yes, I guess that's true.

Grassian

Collections, tech services. Okay. Anything else that needs--

Dudley

I can't remember that, if cataloging was separate during Norm's time. I don't know. I just remember the catalogers from the 1950s is what I'm remembering.

Grassian

Okay. So is there anything else that you want to say about Norman?

Dudley

I'm going to think of a lot of things as soon as we turn the mic off. I like to talk about Norman.

Grassian

Okay. Well, we could stop here if you would like and then continue the next time.

Dudley

Good, good.

Grassian

I'll try to keep it more in a chronological sequence. But this has been great fun.

Dudley

Okay. Well, I've enjoyed it.[End of interview]

1.2. Session 2 (August 22, 2009)

Grassian

This is Esther Grassian. I'm interviewing Miriam Sue [Mimi] Dudley. This is our second interview and we are at Mimi's apartment in Sherman Oaks, not Van Nuys, California. Today is Saturday, August 22 [2009], and it is eleven a.m. So Mimi, I listened to our first interview, and I had a bunch of follow-up questions, so I hope you don't mind this. One was, you mentioned that your mother [Leah Feldman Fine] was eleven she left--she and her family came to the U.S.

Dudley

Right.

Grassian

Can you tell me why your mother's family left Estonia?

Dudley

Mother had a younger brother three years younger, and Jewish boys were being conscripted, and they needed to leave. My grandfather [Chaim Feldman] came first and came to Minot and was able to send for the rest of them. He worked--I think maybe I said this--for a hide and fur company. Somebody from their town had gone to Minot, North Dakota and established a fur business, and my grandfather traded furs. He went into--it was Indian country and traded--I don't know what they traded, but at any rate, trade with Indians, and brought furs into the hide and fur company [Hides and Furs Company] in Minot.

Grassian

When you said conscripted, was that into the Estonian--

Dudley

Russian, Russian Army. Yes. Estonia was in and out of Russian and German domains when my mother was three.

Grassian

So what did he do before, in Estonia? I was just curious.

Dudley

My grandfather, he was a merchant. He was a merchant, so he knew about trading.

Grassian

Okay, so he knew about trading. He came over, and he got into the trading business with the Indians.

Dudley

Yes.

Grassian

What year was that?

Dudley

It was 18--let's see. Mother was born in [18]98, so it was 1909, I guess.

Grassian

1909, wow. Did your mother ever talk about what her life was like in Estonia?

Dudley

Yes. Mother, from the time she was three, was in school. It was land of the midnight sun, and she remembers being carried to school and deposited. It was all-day school and sometimes they spoke German and sometimes Russian, and the children needed--when the government inspectors came, they needed to speak the right language.

Grassian

Was that a Jewish day school, or a public--

Dudley

No, it hadn't anything to do with being Jewish. It was a mixed community, as I remember Mother talking about it.

Grassian

So just a general school that they had.

Dudley

Yes, a neighborhood school.

Grassian

So she spoke Estonian, German, Russian and English, and maybe something else.

Dudley

Right, right. I don't think she spoke English there. She learned English when she came here. They also spoke a little French. She learned a little French in school.

Grassian

Okay. So they left Estonia in 1909, and she had seven sisters and brothers?

Dudley

Well, no, at that time there were four of them [Lea Feldman, Norman Feldman, Esther Feldman, Rose Feldman], and then the other three [Zalman Feldman, Edel Feldman, Rivala Feldman] were born in the United States.

Grassian

And so what was their life like in Minot?

Dudley

Well, Minot was I think maybe twenty-five hundred people when they moved there. Again, her father was a salesman in the hide and fur. Let's see. He had a cart. He had a cart of some kind that he drove into--he rode out of town and traded with Indians and homesteaders. Actually, I'm remembering now, he had pictures of Jesus [Christ] that he [laughs] framed, pictures that he--maybe he gave them to the farmers. Maybe that was it. I don't know. It's a dim recollection. I remember his talking about that.

Grassian

Now, how do you spell hide and fur?

Dudley

It's the hides, animal hides.

Grassian

Oh, h-i-d-e, I see. Just wondering.

Dudley

Hides and furs.

Grassian

Okay, got it. Hides and furs, and that was the name of the company. So you mentioned that your mother was one of seven children. What number child was she?

Dudley

She was the first.

Grassian

Oh, she was the oldest.

Dudley

Yes, was the oldest. That's why I think she received all that attention at school or taken to school. She was a treasured first child in quite a large family.

Grassian

So it wasn't typical for children there to go to school at age three, or you don't know?

Dudley

I don't know. Well, her brother three years later, I don't believe he was. I think it was very dangerous, because they were Jews. But she was, well, I think maybe she was an extra-bright little girl.

Grassian

You talked about visiting Minot and enjoying that when you were in your teens or maybe even younger, because you had moved to L.A. [Los Angeles] at the age of fifteen months. But you said you went back to Minot often and you visited relatives.

Dudley

Right. I just went twice, really. I went when I was fifteen, because my folks had moved to Chicago for a couple of years, and Chicago was too hot for me in the summer, it was deemed. So they sent me to visit the family in Minot, and it was a wonderful summer. I really enjoyed it thoroughly and learned about the family. The main street in Minot was two blocks long, called Main Street. There was a family owned clothing store, a family owned jewelry store. Of the six brothers and sisters, one remained in Minot, and many, many cousins stayed in North Dakota. When children reached college age, they went to Minneapolis and they never came back, so Minot became more--well, at one time there were twenty-five Jewish families in Minot, but since then something happened. The Army has stations near it or something. It's gotten to be quite a big town. Maybe Air Force, I don't know. Somebody has something big outside of Minot.

Grassian

Okay. And you said at one time, was that like in the twenties, the thirties?

Dudley

When Minot grew?

Grassian

Well, twenty-five Jewish families in Minot.

Dudley

Yes, that was at its peak, I believe. I think that was maybe in the forties, that much later.

Grassian

Okay. About your father [Henry "Hank" Feinstein-Fine]. Was he an only child, or did he have brothers and sisters?

Dudley

No, he had a younger sister [Adeline (T.V.) Yetive Feinstein Moss] and a younger brother [Mortimer Mozart Feinstein]. His father [Nahum Labe], he also was a merchant, and he was born in--they were in Grand Forks, North Dakota and some other--well, that's where he met mother, I think. What else can I tell you about Minot?I know that Norman [husband, Norman Dudley] and I were there for a holiday when our children [Noah and Seth Dudley] were older, and they had built a temple by that time, very, very small place. People came in and sat in front of us, and I could tell by the age of the children that they must be fourth cousins of our children, because the families did all know each other [laughs] and were very close. Oh, my grandfather was very instrumental, my mother's father, in uniting the town. A rabbi would come once a year to Minot, and so boys were bar mitzvah'd. There wasn't any education for girls.

Grassian

So thinking about your father, what do you know about his childhood? What was it like?

Dudley

He ran away when he was thirteen, and my grandfather knew where he ran. He ran with the circus. The circus came to town and when they left, Dad went with them. My grandfather went to him and told him that the circus owner would not continue to employ him if he didn't agree to come back at the end of the summer, and he did. So he traveled with the circus that one summer and came home afterwards. Let's see, what more do I know about his childhood?My grandmother [Jenny Phillips Feinstien] was very--she had a lot of theories and ideas about child raising and about music. Everybody in the family needed to play an instrument. My father's younger sister played violin. My father's younger sister is T.V. Moss, and she's quite well known in the book business. Her name is Adeline Yetive, and she died at 102 within the last couple of years. But she worked at--I'm getting out of sequence here. [laughs]

Grassian

Well, I'm making a note so we can come back to that. But tell me how you spell that, TV Moss? Were those initials?

Dudley

When they write about her, it's T-V.

Grassian

T period, V period.

Dudley

Yes.

Grassian

Okay, T.V. M-o-s-s?

Dudley

Yes.

Grassian

Okay. So your father ran away to the circus. Sounds like he was a very independent-minded person.

Dudley

Oh, he was, yes. He was an extremely strong and clever young man.

Grassian

So did that personality continue throughout his life?

Dudley

It did. He was a very, very strong man, quite remarkable, a wonderful man.

Grassian

Your mother, was she also very strong-willed?

Dudley

Yes.

Grassian

She was the first born.

Dudley

Yes, yes, she was, and he was first born, and they had a really great life. They enjoyed each other a lot, and they were both inventive and clever. Life was tough for them in the thirties.

Grassian

In what way?

Dudley

Financially. Things were terrible, terrible. We were right in the depression, the well-known depression. There were--do you want me to skip to the depression? Shall we build our way up to the depression?

Grassian

Yes. Because you were born in 1924--

Dudley

At the end of '24.

Grassian

Okay, so that would be skipping ahead five years, so hold that thought and I'm going to write down depression so that we talk about that. Okay, that and T.V. Moss. So there was you and there was your younger sister [Edelle Fine], who grew up together.

Dudley

Well, there was my brother [Fred Fine]. My brother was older than I.

Grassian

You didn't know about him, I thought.

Dudley

Well, I didn't know until--we were raised together.

Grassian

You were raised together?

Dudley

Yes, yes, yes.

Grassian

But you didn't know that he was your half brother.

Dudley

No, no, until--

Grassian

Well, who did you think he was, a cousin?

Dudley

No, I thought he was my brother.

Grassian

You thought he was your full brother.

Dudley

Yes.

Grassian

You didn't know that he was your half brother.

Dudley

That's right, that's right, that's right. That was a deeply kept secret by the town of Minot.

Grassian

Oh, I see. Okay, I misunderstood. I thought you didn't know he existed until you were an adult.

Dudley

No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no.

Grassian

Oh, okay. Now I understand. Okay, so he was not your father's son, but--

Dudley

He was my mother's son.

Grassian

He was your mother's son, but not your father's son.

Dudley

Right, that's right.

Grassian

You had different fathers, but your father treated him as though he was his son, and your father knew that he was not his son.

Dudley

Oh, yes, yes.

Grassian

Of course.

Dudley

But the town--as I said, my grandfather was influential in the town, my mother's father, and that whole town was sworn to secrecy. It was a very big deal. We knew people from Minot all of our lives, but it was never until after their death that, oh, yes, people knew about that and people kept it a secret.

Grassian

How did you find out?

Dudley

Oh, well, there were secrets in the atmosphere, and there were things that I knew were--I knew there was something I wasn't supposed to ask about. Fred must have known too. He would have had to have known.

Grassian

Fred was your brother.

Dudley

My brother, yes.

Grassian

I mean, did he know who his father [Howard Guilford], his real father was?

Dudley

I learned after my mother's death. I talked to one of her sisters, who said that when Mother had come home, brought the baby home--the baby was raised in Minot those first three years, his first three years, my mother was a big-time boss of the family, and she said that it was not to be discussed and so nobody discussed it. [laughs] And the whole town did not discuss it, and that he was to be raised as Hank's child.

Grassian

Hank was your father.

Dudley

My father, yes. So it was observed. So after their death, I learned a lot about Fred and Fred's father.

Grassian

Why did she want to keep that a secret? Was she really married?

Dudley

Oh, no. I had thought, well, they weren't married. That was certainly the conclusion that I came to. But I read in--his father was somebody who was in the papers, the newspapers, and I learned things about him. They were married. They were married.

Grassian

They were married and they divorced.

Dudley

No, they didn't divorce. He was--wait, yes. They did divorce. They divorced, and the reason there was so much publicity about him is that he was shot by gangsters on a drive-by shooting. He was a journalist, and there was a book written about him. He exposed yellow journalism, so there was quite a bit about him.

Grassian

What was his name, do you remember?

Dudley

I've forgotten. I've forgotten.

Grassian

Well, if you remember you can--

Dudley

I know that later Fred learned about it, was a Minneapolis family. He looked the family up. But why it was such a big deal for my father for it not to be known, I don't know. He was very young. He was a young guy.

Grassian

So your father didn't want it known, but it sounded like, and your mother too.

Dudley

Well, father, and mother's family didn't want it known either.

Grassian

Didn't want it known that she had ever married before.

Dudley

Yes, and that Fred was anybody but Dad's son. It's strange. It's so strange, those family mysteries.

Grassian

He must have known the date, the year that your parents got married and his birthday.

Dudley

Well, everything was very concealed, I remember. My father lied about his age. That was a deep, deep, dark secret, and I knew there was cover up about that, but I didn't understand what or why or how much, how much cover up. It all seems very silly now, but it was very important to them.

Grassian

At the time. Very interesting. So moving back to you, you mentioned you were fifteen months old when your family moved to L.A., and I don't remember you saying why they decided to move to L.A.

Dudley

I think it's the reason everyone did. I think it was climate. I think that's what drew them here. My grandmother and grandfather, my father's mother and father, moved here, and I think it was the "golden land." I think people from North Dakota moved here.

Grassian

And your father's parents moved to L.A. with you. Did they live with you?

Dudley

No, no, no. They moved here first, I think, and then Dad and Mom came.

Grassian

What would you say your childhood was like? How would you describe--

Dudley

My predominant memories are of the depression and worry and fear. My mother's, let see, first her one sister, Esther, lived with them, and two brothers came in and out. They took freight trains from Minot to L.A., everybody seeking employment. But he lived with us and then ultimately my mother's younger sister lived with us. It was a big family.

Grassian

Big family. And your mother did the cooking and cleaning for everybody?

Dudley

Mother cooked, yes. The girls--everybody worked. Yes, everybody helped. It was a very congenial family.

Grassian

Did you spend a lot of time with your grandparents in L.A.?

Dudley

My grandparents lived--we lived near USC [University of Southern California], and my grandparents owned an apartment house, and my earliest memories are living in a cottage down the street from the apartment house. So I remember learning to be able to go there by myself. My grandma would meet me at the corner, and Mother would take me to the edge of the sidewalk, and so I have great memories of that.

Grassian

And what were they like?

Dudley

My grandmother and grandfather?

Grassian

Yes.

Dudley

Well, my grandfather, he was an entrepreneur. He had had a clothing store in Grand Forks, and he had a soda pop factory and a glass factory. His was in Grand Forks and in Minneapolis. And when they came to L.A., they bought property, an apartment house, and they were absolutely wild about me. They were great, great, loving grandparents. They fared better in the depression. They always were okay, but just okay. My father was a hustler, and he did a lot of different things, but mostly I think he was like his dad, ultimately. He came out of the depression really well and did well the rest of his life. But those were tough, tough years.

Grassian

So from about, let's see. You moved here when you were fifteen months, so that was about 1926 maybe, something like '25, '26, because you were born in 1924--

Dudley

The end of '24.

Grassian

--so it must have been '26.

Dudley

Yes, I was December '24.

Grassian

Okay. So you lived here for a few years, and the depression hit in 1929, and so your family was in poor financial circumstances.

Dudley

Yes. We lived in many, many houses. Again, my father, very important to him that we live within the 24th Street School District, which was near the Clark Library. The people who owned the big houses around there were very eager to have tenants. They probably needed to pay people to keep those big houses up, so there was always a lot of space. But rent would come due and we would find another big, big house.

Grassian

You'd find another place to live, so you moved around from one place to another. Yes, yes.

Dudley

But stayed within that school district for four years, till fourth grade.

Grassian

Where you and your sister went, and your brother went there--

Dudley

My brother.

Grassian

All three of you.

Dudley

Yes. My sister was born. She was six years younger than I.

Grassian

Oh. What was her name?

Dudley

Edelle, E-d-e-l-l-e. She was named after one of my mother's brothers, who lived in those big houses with us. He died when she was born. He died in the same hospital that she was born in.

Grassian

And then she died at the age of eleven of what? What did she die of?

Dudley

She had strep throat, and it was just as penicillin was coming in. She probably died of medication, of wrong doses, but they really didn't know what they were doing.

Grassian

That must have been a very sad time.

Dudley

Yes, yes, yes, it was tough.

Grassian

So you talked about your elementary school period and growing up in L.A., and the last time you talked about the Clark Library and how you used to go and look in the house, and you weren't allowed in there. You also talked about your father's books, and you had to ask for permission to use his books.

Dudley

[laughs] Well, no, it was, was that an okay book for me to read. It was censorship on his part. No, no, he had books I wasn't supposed to read.

Grassian

You weren't allowed to read.

Dudley

And, of course, those were the books that I read most--

Grassian

Those were the ones you wanted to read.

Dudley

Yes, yes, yes.

Grassian

Was there anything else--your sister died when she was eleven, you were seventeen.

Dudley

When I was seventeen.

Grassian

But before that, you mentioned that your parents and your younger sister were in Chicago for a long time before you joined them.

Dudley

Yes. At one point, Dad was--well, let's see. He became very interested in food processing, and he had a flour mill. He built a flour mill, extremely interested in vitamins, and I don't know how or what, but he incorporated vitamins into flour. It was the Vitamin Flour and Milling Company, and he learned about food presses. It was presses for food he became--I know it was something with Laura Scudder too. So he knew about presses and ultimately produced records and pressed records. He had a pressing plant, and he opened one in Chicago, and so they went to Chicago. He and Mother and my sister went, but I was in school here, so I was here for the first year they were in Chicago, and then they stayed another year and I joined them when I was fifteen. Then from Chicago, when summer came, I went to Minot. But I did go to school in Chicago for a year.

Grassian

Okay. But going back to your father, what did he do? When he first came to L.A., did he then build a flour mill?

Dudley

Well, ultimately he did, yes. He learned about milling and was extremely interested in it. His flour mill was on Broadway and Alpine in downtown L.A.

Grassian

When he first came to L.A.--

Dudley

When he first came to L.A., he did lots of different things. Well, I know at one time he had something with General Foods and Laura Scudder, and that must have been the flour milling time.

Grassian

Do you remember what year that flour mill was built, or approximately?

Dudley

Well, let me see. I think I was about eight, eight or nine.

Grassian

So 1932, '33. So after the depression.

Dudley

Well, it was still--we were in the heart of depression, and how he financed it and did all of that, I don't know.

Grassian

I was going to ask you that. I was wondering if you had to move around from place to place because of finances, so he maybe got a loan of some kind, was able to--

Dudley

Don't know. He was pretty good. People liked him a lot. He was an appealing man. Actually, what his role was with people, and I don't know if it started that young or not, was he played a father role in many, many people's lives. I heard about that from the time I was a girl, somebody telling me, "Your father has been a father to me," and that was predominant, I think, in his relationships.

Grassian

Okay. So then he became interested in flour and built this flour mill.

Dudley

And food processing.

Grassian

And food processor in about 1933 or so?

Dudley

It would be in the thirties.

Grassian

In the early thirties. Then, let's see, if you were fifteen when you went to Chicago, when you were fourteen they moved to Chicago. That was 1938.

Dudley

That makes sense, yes.

Grassian

So who did you live with while your parents were in Chicago?

Dudley

My aunts, the aunts who always lived with us, my mother's younger sisters. From the time really that they came to Los Angeles, there was always Mother's family.

Grassian

Some family, grandparents, aunts?

Dudley

Well, no, not the grandparents. The North Dakota grandparents stayed there. My mother's family stayed in North Dakota, but two of her sisters and two of her brothers came to L.A.

Grassian

Right. But your father's parents came to L.A.?

Dudley

They were the ones who came to L.A. They were the first ones to come, yes.

Grassian

So you didn't live with them, you lived with your aunts?

Dudley

Well, I lived with my mother and father and, oh, yes, and when Mother and Dad were away I lived with my aunts.

Grassian

And then you made the decision yourself that you were going to go to Chicago to join them?

Dudley

Well, no. By that time, they knew they were staying another year. When they first went, they didn't know how long they would be there. But when they reached the decision that they were going to stay, I guess Dad was still establishing the record business, that they decided I needed to come.

Grassian

That record pressing. So the record pressing business he established in Chicago and then came back to L.A. after a couple of years, it sounds like--

Dudley

Well, he built a processing plant in Chicago and then came back here and built one.

Grassian

Okay, so he basically built two, and based on his experience with pressing vitamins, presses for vitamins--

Dudley

Pressing flour, yes, yes, right.

Grassian

--flour, then he knew enough to be able to construct these two plants. So then you all moved back to L.A., except you spent a summer in Minot, and then after that everybody came back to L.A.

Dudley

Came back to L.A.

Grassian

Okay, I've got the sequence of events then.

Dudley

Right, right.

Grassian

So when you came back to L.A., you were sixteen then?

Dudley

I was fifteen. I think I had my fifteenth birthday in Chicago. Yes, yes, I was fifteen when we came back here. And when we came back here, then we lived for a while with the grandmother and grandfather, with my father's folks, and I went to Fairfax High.

Grassian

What year was that?

Dudley

Well, it was my last--went to Fairfax, I guess, in '41, '42. Does all that add up?

Grassian

And that was your senior year?

Dudley

Yes.

Grassian

I'll have to figure that out. Okay, so you were seventeen to eighteen or so when you were there.

Dudley

Yes, sixteen, seventeen.

Grassian

Sixteen, seventeen, okay. So we've got that sequence of events. But I wanted to go back a little bit more and ask more about your mother. You said she did secretarial work. Who did she work for? What did she do?

Dudley

She did it in a law firm in Minneapolis, and she had to do with politics and the Wobblies. That's how she met the guy--isn't it awful that I can't remember that name of my brother's family? I don't know if there's any record of it. At any rate, that's when she met him, and they married, because I read in the papers that they did. Oh, and also there was a document. There was a document.

Grassian

Which paper did you read it in?

Dudley

Minneapolis papers.

Grassian

Minneapolis papers of around what year was that?

Dudley

When I read it?

Grassian

Or what year was it published in the paper that they got? It sounds like it was a big story.

Dudley

It was a big story. It was big stories, yes.

Grassian

What was your mother's maiden name?

Dudley

Feldman, F-e-l-d-m-a-n.

Grassian

Okay. So let's see. If your brother is three years older than you, and you were born in 1924, he was born in 1921.

Dudley

So it was probably '20 and '21 and '22 that all this went on. And yellow journalism I know is the big thing about that man, that he was exposing it and he was a reporter, so that's what that was about.

Grassian

So was your mother actually a member of the Wobblies?

Dudley

Yes.

Grassian

She was. What did she do?

Dudley

Well, I don't know, I don't know.

Grassian

She didn't talk about it.

Dudley

No, because those years were hidden.

Grassian

Oh, those were the secret years.

Dudley

Yes, yes, yes. She and I never discussed it.

Grassian

Did you ever find any documents or anything?

Dudley

About her?

Grassian

About her doing anything then?

Dudley

No, no. I did about him.

Grassian

What was her first name?

Dudley

Leah.

Grassian

Leah Feldman. You know, the Wobblies still exist. They have a website.

Dudley

Is that so?

Grassian

I found out they were established in 1905, so, interesting.

Dudley

I pieced this together when I was at ALA [American Library Association conference], and I can't remember if it was Minnesota or Illinois, but I know there was someone from ALA who was just delighted, and she and Norman [Dudley] and I had really fun in the library looking all this up. It was really a good time.

Grassian

Looking at the old newspapers?

Dudley

Yes.

Grassian

From Minneapolis?

Dudley

Yes.

Grassian

So it was the main Minneapolis newspaper or something like that.

Dudley

Oh, yes, yes. Carolyn Dusenbury [University Librarian, California State University, Chico] was the one who worked with us in the library, looking at microfilm.

Grassian

Microfilm of the newspaper, yes. So is there anything else that you want to say about your mother, what she was like, her personality?

Dudley

She and Dad were both very volatile and domineering and wonderful. They were wonderful together. Sparks flew, and they were very, very much in love really all of their lives. Did you meet Mother, Esther [Grassian, interviewer]?

Grassian

I don't think I did. I only saw her, I think, once or twice. She already was suffering from Alzheimer's and she was bedridden, so, yes, sadly, I didn't get to meet her. So going back to your father now, with the presses. Do you know anything about how he managed to translate from the vitamins to the record pressing?

Dudley

He studied. He learned a lot. I think it was the Crerar Library [at University of Chicago] he went to, in Chicago, the John Crerar. And he could absorb. He just had a remarkable mind. Oh, and then he was great with people, and there was somebody called "the Old Man" that Dad--I don't know his name at all, but I knew about him. He was a miller, and Dad learned a lot from him, and Dad took care of him. He was an old man. I know he found him someplace downtown where he had that plant.

Grassian

Where the vitamin milling plant--but I'm just curious. He went to Chicago, he established the record-pressing plant and back to L.A., established another one, after he had the vitamin-milling plant, because he knew about presses. Just wondering how that connection got made between the vitamin pressing and the record pressing.

Dudley

I don't know. He was in at the beginning of Mercury Records. Again, it was friends. Well, there were really three founders of Mercury, Irv Green and Dad and, oh, I don't remember the other one [Hank Sabis]. But they stayed in Chicago until quite late. Those guys were there. That's where Mercury Records was.

Grassian

So he was one of the founders of Mercury Records, and his name was Hank Dudley?

Dudley

Hank Fine.

Grassian

Hank Fine. Oh, that's right. Dudley is your married name.

Dudley

That's right, that's right.

Grassian

Hank Fine, okay. Okay, I see. So when he came back to L.A. and had the Mercury Records pressing business, you were about sixteen, or he established that, he built that plant and you were about sixteen or so?

Dudley

Wait, my mind is wandering. Let me think. In L.A.? Are we back to L.A.? Is that what we're talking about?

Grassian

Yes, yes.

Dudley

I know--gee, it was on Robertson, the record-pressing plant, oh, and Santa Monica; Santa Monica and Robertson. Oh, there were so many parts of that, that was making the plates and--I don't know. I'm fuzzy about it. I didn't know much about it, really. I didn't know much, or I wasn't very interested, I think, in that part of it. I know Dad involved other family members in pressing plants, yes. He had one of his cousins he put in business there.

Grassian

And so he had these two pressing plants, plus the vitamin plant?

Dudley

Well, no, I think he was through with the flour business by that time. Oh, in Indiana--have I talked about Indiana?

Grassian

No.

Dudley

Oh, well. By that time--he went to Indiana when my boys were little. I know the kids and I spent two summers there in Indiana. My mother really didn't like to be in Indiana. I'll think of the city [Richmond] in a minute. A big, big pressing plant, a huge pressing plant. He built--it was the old Starr Piano Company [in Indiana] had buildings by the river, and they bought those buildings and added more buildings for a very big pressing plant. And Dad needed to be there. He couldn't come back and forth. He really needed to be there, and Mother really didn't want to live in Indiana at all. So they lived in a hotel, and he had a bunch of rooms in the hotel combined, and he built a kitchen for Mother, wooing her to--so she did spend time there.And I was interested in the farming country, because the boys were in kindergarten and we wanted to show them farms. So we went a couple of summers and spent time there, and Mother was fine being there as long as we were. [laughs]

Grassian

Do you remember what city that was in Indiana?

Dudley

I'll think of it in a minute. Yes, it's a well-known city. And Dad could get--at that time it was very hard to get--there weren't enough people in that town, but people from Kentucky came. He got Kentuckians to work there. Oh, I'll think of the name of this city. It was a farming community, and I learned a lot about the farms and the farmhouses around there and farming people. This is something very new to me, and the boys were tiny and they absorbed a lot. It was really nice. I really liked it.

Grassian

They were about four and five years old? Because they're about a year and a half apart.

Dudley

Right, right, right.

Grassian

So about what year was that, do you think?

Dudley

Well, it was about 1960.

Grassian

About 1960. And it was called--the company that he bought, was that Old Starr Piano?

Dudley

It was Old Starr Piano Company.

Grassian

Old or all?

Dudley

No, it was the Starr Piano Company. That company at one time made airplane propellers for wooden planes, for wooden airplanes, and it was wonderful going through those old buildings. I know Lawrence Clark Powel was [UCLA University] librarian then, and I wanted very much--they had the records of the piano company and the airplane propeller company; they were still in that building. He made some contacts for me for libraries, for the records.

Grassian

So that was later. That was around 1960. So going back now, so you came back to L.A. from Chicago, and is that when you went to Fairfax High for about a year? You graduated then?

Dudley

Yes.

Grassian

Then you went to UCLA.

Dudley

I went to UCLA immediately, yes.

Grassian

How did you happen to pick UCLA?

Dudley

Well, this was '42, 1942. I went to look at UCLA and Los Angeles City College it was called then, LACC, and I decided I liked the looks of UCLA more and really didn't know much more about it. [laughs] There were five hundred students on campus then. No, no, no, no, no. There were five thousand students on the campus, and it was still--it wasn't Marines. There were five hundred of some unit of, not the Army, Coast Guard, I don't know, on campus, and there were five buildings on campus. There was Royce [Hall] and the library [later Powell Library] were there and the chemistry building, well, that's what they called it, Chemistry/Physics [building], and then the Education building [later Moore Hall] was built behind the library.

Grassian

Moore Hall?

Dudley

Yes.

Grassian

And the chemistry building is now called Young Hall. Is that the one that you mean?

Dudley

Yes.

Grassian

Not Young Library, but Young Hall. Okay, so Powell, Royce, Moore, and Young Hall?

Dudley

Well, no. Next door to Royce Hall was the--

Grassian

Haines Hall.

Dudley

What's it called now?

Grassian

Haines Hall. Or maybe it wasn't called that then.

Dudley

No, it was the chemistry building.

Grassian

That was the chemistry building?

Dudley

No, wait. Yes, wait, wait, wait. Well, there were those four buildings, then Moore Hall was behind the library. And the hills, the rest of it was Westwood Village. I suppose it belonged to the university, but it was just fields.

Grassian

All around it, just fields.

Dudley

Oh, and there was a bridge leading across to the buildings. They carted--where Murphy Hall is now.

Grassian

Administration building.

Dudley

You needed to cross a bridge. It was a deep gully, a deep gully where the Music Library, the Music building and the Art building are now. That was all gully. I'm sure you've seen pictures of that.

Grassian

I don't remember if I've seen it. I've heard that there was a bridge.

Dudley

Yes, the bridge is--you still walk across the bridge.

Grassian

You walk across it, but you can't see that there's a gully now. It's all filled in and covered over. So you started at UCLA in about 1942. What were you interested in then?

Dudley

Well, as soon as I took my first English course, I knew I wanted to be an English major. The requirements weren't very hefty as I remember it. You needed a science course and a history course and a lot of gym. Oh, yes, you had to have two years of gym, and that was very onerous. I really had a hard time with that, but I did it. Oh, Royce Hall was built then too. Is it called Royce Hall, where the student union is and everything? Yes.

Grassian

So what do you remember about that first class that made you want to be an English major?

Dudley

Well, actually, the first class was Subject A, because my records hadn't arrived. That's right, my records hadn't arrived, and so there was--yes, there was an administration building. I don't know how we got to it. Well, at any rate, I remember being in the Administration building and trying to get records, so it was Subject A and it was grammar. But my first English course was taught by Ernest Jones. I can't remember the name of the city where I spent so many years, but I can remember Ernest Jones. [laughs]

Grassian

Ernest Jones, okay. He taught you the first English class, and that was the English--Subject A.

Dudley

Well, it was English--no, no, no. When I first really, my first real literature course was--and Brad Booth [Bradford Allen Booth] was--Hugh [Gilchrist] Dick and Lily Bess Campbell, after whom Campbell Hall is named, and isn't there a Rolfe Hall?

Grassian

Yes.

Dudley

It was Victorian literature. Is there a Blanchard Library? Is the English Library [Grace M. Hunt Memorial English Reading Room] called Blanchard? It was his [Frederic Thomas Blanchard] library, and he became the nucleus of that English collection.

Grassian

His personal collection. The English reading room I believe now has a different name. I don't think that's the name of it, but it does have another name.

Dudley

It probably was integrated into the collection, I would think.

Grassian

No, it's a separate collection.

Dudley

They still have it separate?

Grassian

Yes. Okay. So what else were you interested in when you were an undergrad? What did you do?

Dudley

Oh, I was just--I sat in Royce Hall a lot and drank coffee and talked. We just talked. It was incessant talk, before and after literature classes. That's what I did.

Grassian

That's what you did. You enjoyed doing that.

Dudley

Yes. Oh, it was just a whole new world to me. It was a world opening to me and never ceased to be. We talked about what we were reading.

Grassian

So you had coffee. Was there a coffeehouse in Royce Hall?

Dudley

In Royce, the room that is now--well, I think maybe it's still coffee. It's stained-glass windows. Is there now still a room? You go up the stairs and--I'm confusing when I came back to work with that time. So much has been done with that building and so much added and so much changed.

Grassian

Yes, it's been remodeled quite a bit. Yes, yes.

Dudley

Yes, yes, yes. But, yes.

Grassian

Yes. So you became an English major and--

Dudley

And I don't think I knew anybody but English majors. That's what I did for those years.

Grassian

You hung out around Royce Hall because that's where the English classes were taught, I suppose, and the department was there.

Dudley

Yes. And, of course, there was just the one library.

Grassian

Right across from Royce Hall, Powell.

Dudley

Yes. Everything--of course, it wasn't the size it is now either. They added two wings and a lot more, and they filled in the wings, and it was a different building in many ways.

Grassian

So it didn't have either wing when it was first built?

Dudley

No, no, no, no.

Grassian

Just one building there. It was built, I think, in 1929, so it had already been built by the time you got there.

Dudley

Yes. I think there were four buildings; no, there were five. The more I think about it, I've added a sixth, haven't I? Because Royce was there. Yes, I'd forgotten about that. Yes, there was a path from the library down to Royce. There was a path that many, many, times they tried to plant on that path, and a psychology professor said, "You mark my words. The people will win. There will be a path from the library to Royce, and they're not going to be able to ever, ever plant there." Of course, later buildings were planned for it, but nothing was ever built there.

Grassian

So right across from each other they planned to fill it in, but they never did because people just kept--tried to. They just walked through.

Dudley

Well, yes, and people would walk over. They'd climb over--they didn't build a wall, but they would rope it off. But nothing they could really ever do about that.

Grassian

Do you remember--thinking back on your undergraduate years at UCLA, what else do you remember? Do you remember anything else, or what is your overall impression?

Dudley

I was just turned on. It was as if life started then for me. I commuted, and it took three buses to get from--by that time where were we? We were living near Beverly [Boulevard] and La Cienega [Boulevard], and from there I would take a bus on Beverly to Fairfax and another from Fairfax [Avenue] to Wilshire [Boulevard] and another from Wilshire to campus. I would get up before dark, and I'd get home in the dark. It was so wonderful, yes.

Grassian

So every day you took three buses. Was that throughout your four years?

Dudley

No. No, no, no. Then there were people driving and friends driving. Yes, I did, I had a car at the age of thirteen, but I didn't want to drive.

Grassian

Thirteen? At the age of thirteen you had a car?

Dudley

Yes. My father really thought I should drive, but I didn't. I didn't want to.

Grassian

Were you permitted to drive at the age of thirteen then?

Dudley

I think you could get a license. I know my brother got a license early, and I think you did it by cheating and lying and saying you had to transport your sick mother or something. I didn't. I didn't want to drive. I moved to Tujunga, but I think I was in graduate school by that time.

Grassian

So you lived at home the whole time you were an undergrad, and you took buses or friends drove you, but you didn't drive yourself.

Dudley

No, no, no.

Grassian

You didn't live on campus--I mean, they didn't have--did they--

Dudley

No, no. Oh, there was a place to live on campus. There was a women's--I think it's still there.

Grassian

Hershey Hall.

Dudley

Hershey Hall, yes, yes, yes. I did know a woman who lived there, and then people lived in private houses near campus. They rented rooms.

Grassian

But you didn't do that?

Dudley

No, no, no. There weren't dorms.

Grassian

So you became an English major pretty early on, and you have great memories of your undergraduate years at UCLA.

Dudley

Oh, yes, yes, and the faculty. I remember so many people. I probably remember all of the people who were in the English Department at the time. It wasn't huge. There were only five thousand kids on campus.

Grassian

About how many English majors would you say there were then?

Dudley

I don't know. I don't know.

Grassian

Not a lot. So you remember all the faculty, and you've mentioned Hugh Dick.

Dudley

Brad Booth, Franklin P. [Prescott] Rolfe, Lily Bess Campbell. Oh, you know, there were two women who, they weren't adjunct professors, they were--I don't think they had a title. They were what I suppose we would think of as student assistants now. Margaret Carhart was one, and I don't remember the name of the other. But Lilly Bess Campbell had a doctorate from University of Chicago, and she didn't believe in women on the faculty. She discouraged--finally while I was there, they did give a master's in English to a woman, but she didn't think women should be doing graduate work in English.

Grassian

But she herself did.

Dudley

She was, yes, but she was it for a very, very long time. She kept women out of the department for many years.

Grassian

Do you think she didn't want the competition?

Dudley

I don't know. Now I don't know. At the time, she was loathed and feared, very feared, and, of course, I don't know about the politics of it. I don't know what went on. Oh, [Majl] Ewing was another one in the department, Majl Ewing, M-a-j-l. The English Department was on the top floor of Royce, and all the English Department could be housed in one office with a balcony, and I think two of them shared an office. But it was very small, and the top of Royce was a labyrinth.

Grassian

So you got to wander around in the top, like in the tower parts?

Dudley

Yes. You could step onto the tower. You could step from one tower to the other.

Grassian

And so this woman Campbell, who was loathed yet had--

Dudley

Feared, feared.

Grassian

--feared and loathed, had a building named after her.

Dudley

Right, right. She taught Shakespeare, and I've always thought it was kind of interesting that that building, this very difficult, tyrannical, prudish woman, that that hall became, what did they call it at first, "Rainbow Coalition"? Was that what they called it? It was for the few black students we had, the few Chicano, I think we called them Chicano, Asian, but very, very small departments at UCLA. Well, that was later. That was later.

Grassian

Yes, for Ethnic Studies groups.

Dudley

That was many years later.

Grassian

So since you were so enthusiastic about being an English major as an undergrad, it probably was a natural progression for you to want to go to grad school, so how did you do it in spite of this woman who tried to block--

Dudley

Well, by that time, I don't think I could. Oh, probably, yes. I had a friend who did ultimately get a doctorate at UCLA, so Lily Bess Campbell was probably gone by--she was definitely gone by that time. Yes, yes.

Grassian

Okay, so that's how you got into grad school as a woman, grad school in English.

Dudley

Yes, yes. There were many of us by that time.

Grassian

Okay, so it was before--

Dudley

I'm talking about early on, when I first went to UCLA.

Grassian

So there were many women who became English--

Dudley

Well, I'm sure, I'm sure.

Grassian

--by the time you did.

Dudley

It was no longer extraordinary. And the first course I took was in bibliography from Hugh Dick. I had had Brad Booth for English 1A, 1B, whatever they were at that time, and then I took courses from them later. But, yes, I like thinking about that time. It's exciting just to think about it, yes.

Grassian

You really enjoyed it. It sounds like it was a great time.

Dudley

Yes. I was an asthmatic, and it got more and more serious. I needed to, or it was thought that I needed to move to Tujunga, which at the time was a very small population, a very small town composed mostly of churches. I think when I moved there, there were twelve churches, and crazies lived in Tujunga. People seeking a cure moved there. The air was supposed to be pure, and there were sanitariums, and I moved into--I got a little house for twenty-five hundred dollars, paid twenty-five dollars a month were my payments on the house.

Grassian

You bought it for twenty-five--

Dudley

Well, my father bought it, yes. Right, right.

Grassian

Your father bought it for you and then you paid him back, twenty-five dollars a month?

Dudley

I don't know if I paid him back. He put the payment down and then I paid twenty-five a month. Wait a minute. I think the house--it was five thousand, twenty-five hundred down and twenty-five a month. That's what it was. So it wasn't a twenty-five-hundred-dollar house, it was a five-thousand-dollar house. It was a tiny, tiny house, and the city was mostly boulders. It was a dirt road, a house down the street, but I lived there for a year without coming down, and I did get stronger.

Grassian

What year was that?

Dudley

I'd have to figure it out. I think probably '45. I graduated from high school in '42, and I went to UCLA, and in '45 I moved to Tujunga. Then I went to graduate school. I think I went in '46.

Grassian

Approximately. So you don't seem to have any asthmatic problems now. You got over it.

Dudley

No, no, no, no. I got over it. It might have been age. It could possibly have been the air. I don't really think so, but, yes, and there was no more asthma. I had a final attack in 1952, but a slight one.

Grassian

And you haven't had a problem since then?

Dudley

No, no.

Grassian

Without medication or anything, you just simply got out of it.

Dudley

Yes. It just went away.

Grassian

So that was why you moved to Tujunga was because of the climate, to help you with your asthma.

Dudley

Right.

Grassian

How long did you have asthma? Was it all your life up to then?

Dudley

Well, from the age of about eight, and it got worse and worse, particularly those wonderful years as an English major at UCLA. I wheezed a lot and ultimately I really was crippled by it.

Grassian

Okay. And then you spent a year just--

Dudley

A year without coming down, and then all the way through graduate school I lived in Tujunga, but I drove by that time and I did drive to campus.

Grassian

So what did you do for that year you were living in Tujunga not coming to L.A.?

Dudley

I read and I met people. I met the Young Democrats, and I became as active as I could be and made a lot of friends, just knew a lot of great people, all of whom had asthma in the family. Nobody was up there who wasn't sick.

Grassian

And your father supported you. Did you see your parents? Did they come visit you?

Dudley

Oh, sure. Oh, sure. They came up, and people came to see me. In those days, there weren't freeways, and it seemed to me that--is it possible that it could have taken a couple of hours? I don't think that's possible, but it seemed to me, and there was no question of my coming down. I was supposed to stay there. And the doctor, my doctor came to see me there, so life was really different.

Grassian

Doctors made house calls then. Your doctor came from L.A., near West Adams or near wherever you--

Dudley

No. Let's see. The doctor was at Wilshire and La Brea.

Grassian

And that's around where your parents lived, La Cienega.

Dudley

Yes, not far.

Grassian

Okay. So you talked about your graduate work in English. Was it about a year that you spent being a grad student in English before you decided to go to library school? Was it longer? About a year?

Dudley

It was a year. Do you want to hear about that now? Are we up that far? I took Hugh Dick's course in bibliography and was really, really just enamored of it. He did some lectures at the Clark, and that was revisiting an old world and a new world to me. And for my, I suppose, I don't know, term paper or whatever, he introduced me to Bob Vosper, and the library had just gotten--Bob Vosper was the acquisitions librarian at the time, and they had just gotten a collection of children's books, the Olive [May Graves] Percival collection, and I did a descriptive bibliography of the poetry in the Olive Percival collection and learned more and more about bibliography and the collection itself. She was a real estate developer in Los Angeles, and she had died, and the university bought this collection.Some of her books were one inch by one inch, and she had cutouts throughout the collection. She had cutouts in all sorts of beautiful papers and inserted them into her books, so when you picked up a book, all these papers would fly out. [laughs]

Grassian

Like confetti almost, it sounds like.

Dudley

Well, yes, yes, oh, yes. I wish that I had known her. She was a tough, hard-boiled real estate person, but she wrote these party invitations of parties she made up in her head and sent to make-believe characters in minute handwriting, beautiful, beautiful material, which we've had on exhibit from time to time. And she did a lot of first editions of children's books, a rare, rare children's book, and I loved working on that collection. That's how I met Bob Vosper, because he--when I was taking it the bibliography course.

Grassian

So you liked working on the collection because of--I mean, what do you like about bibliography?

Dudley

Well, it was a descriptive bibliography, so I learned a lot about bibliography. That's still a requirement, I think, for any graduate student in English.

Grassian

So by bibliography you mean cataloging?

Dudley

No, no, no, no, no. The study of, well, it was physical and descriptive bibliography, and we learned how to do a bibliography, and we learned about the famous bibliographies. We learned about things like [Michael] Sadleir.

Grassian

Okay. So tell me what you mean when you say--let's say somebody doesn't know what descriptive bibliography is.

Dudley

It's a physical description of the book.

Grassian

So you did a physical description of the book, like--

Dudley

Of some of the poetry in the collection.

Grassian

So this was like an index to the poetry in the collection, or?

Dudley

No, no. I described the books. I described them by size, by cover, by paper, so you really learned a lot in that class; print. Not the contents of the book, it was the physical description of the book.

Grassian

Okay, the physical description. But then what does poetry have to do with it? That is the contents, right?

Dudley

Well, because her collection was massive, and I had to select a part of it, and I couldn't possibly in one semester do a descriptive bibliography of all the books in the collection. So I just chose in the collection. I went through the collection and separated the poetry.

Grassian

Oh, okay. I didn't understand that. Okay. So you took the books of poetry, some of which were one inch by one inch--

Dudley

Oh, yes. That wasn't just the poetry. A lot of miniatures, but a lot of other things too, and described them.

Grassian

So walk me through that. How did you do that? Did you have a magnifying glass? I mean, if it was tiny, you had a magnifying glass to--

Dudley

Oh, well. I have a box of miniatures here I'll show you.

Grassian

Maybe later, but yes.

Dudley

Okay, it's over there. Well, they weren't so small that you couldn't read them. You could read them, and the cuttings were of particular interest, what flowed out of the books. So that was my term project. So I got to know Bob Vosper. And there was a guy in this class, in Hugh Dick's class, again whose name I've forgot, but he was a librarian from I think it was New York Public [Library], but someplace in New York, and he had come for the summer to take this course in bibliography. He needed to go to USC [University of Southern California] to interview--he was a librarian--interview the library school dean, and I went with him. She talked to him, but then she talked to me about library school, and that was the first I knew anything at all about library school or being a librarian. I hadn't had any indoctrination or any knowledge really of libraries or librarians. I know I admired the reference librarian, a particular one at UCLA, and I was sort of awed by her, but I didn't know anything about the subject. And I decided to go, that day I think I decided to go to library school and be like Ardis Lodge, I guess.

Grassian

That was the woman that you admired, Ardis Lodge?

Dudley

Yes, yes.

Grassian

I mean, as a grad student or undergrad did you get any tours of the library or have anybody tell you anything about what the library contained? Because you were an English major. You had to use the library, I suppose.

Dudley

Yes, yes. Well, I did use the library.

Grassian

But nobody told you anything about it.

Dudley

No, no, no, I didn't have any--well, Hugh Dick, yes, Hugh Dick, our library and Clark, so, yes, that's really what a bibliography course does do. And you learn about the famous bibliographies. So then I went to library school. I still lived in Tujunga and driving there, and I did not like the courses. I didn't like it.

Grassian

What didn't you like about it?

Dudley

I didn't like the faculty very much. I didn't in all the time I was there meet anyone who was exciting or inspiring or interesting. It seemed more a how to than an expansion, an intellectual expansion.

Grassian

So it was very practical, and you wanted something theoretical or something to expand your horizons.

Dudley

Well, I don't know what I wanted. I just wanted to go be like Ardis Lodge, I guess. I wanted to learn all of that.

Grassian

What was she like? What did you like about her?

Dudley

She was a reference librarian, and she had an ability to focus, which I hope I ultimately did too, on the person at the reference desk. I didn't know her personally. I never really knew Ardis personally, although there were some other tie-overs, but not at that time. She just--I didn't know anything about reference books. I knew what you needed to know as a student and a graduate student, but she inspired me. It was her manner, I think.

Grassian

Her manner inspired you, that she focused on the person and their need.

Dudley

Yes, and she knew a great deal too. You had to know a lot in those days. She knew reference materials.

Grassian

So it sounded like you interacted with her at the reference desk, or you observed her.

Dudley

Oh, no. When I needed to know something, I knew then where to go.

Grassian

You discovered her and then you knew that she was a great source of help, and then you admired that in her, and you wanted to be like her in some way.

Dudley

I suppose so, yes, because she really was my only contact with libraries. But the English Department courses were what was so great. Let's see. Then library school--oh, I know. It was too far for me to drive every day. One thing about [U]SC was that it was very easy to negotiate with them, and they said, okay, I could take two years rather than the year and a summer that it took, so I broke it up and it was more palatable. The required courses as I remember them were cataloging and reference, oh, book selection. Book selection was something. Did you know Betty Rosenberg?

Grassian

Yes.

Dudley

Betty taught that.

Grassian

Oh, she taught at USC before she came to UCLA?

Dudley

No, no, no, no, no. That's not right. I didn't know Betty till I came to UCLA. That's right. Later she did. Later she did.

Grassian

So you didn't like your classes or the faculty at USC--

Dudley

No, and I thought right up till the very end that I might not continue. I didn't think about work or a job or anything. And then a friend I went through school with, Fauna Finger--[Interruption][End of interview]

1.3. Session 3 (August 29, 2009)

Dudley

--was quite dismissive of our Jewishness, our Judaism, because there really wasn't very much that went on in the family, but holidays were observed. My grandfather, my mother's [Leah Feldman Fine] father, was interested. Oh, he performed the services for the dead in Minot [North Dakota], for the Jewish dead. He could do that, although he was not connected with any rabbi. I think the word was Pesach, something like that. So actually there was very, very minor recognition, but we were Jews and that's something we knew.

Grassian

Okay. I'm not sure if the tape was recording, so let me just repeat, this is Esther Grassian recording a third interview with Mimi Dudley at her apartment in Sherman Oaks, on Saturday, August 29th [2009]. We were talking about the role that religion played in Mimi's life and went over a little bit of--this was a kind of follow up from the last interview, where you mentioned that there were about twenty-five families in Minot. They built a temple there. The rabbi came once a year and conducted bar mitzvahs, but there was no Jewish education for girls. So that was in Minot and then throughout your life, in terms of religion you were not fully observant, but celebrated holidays?

Dudley

Yes, yes. And Mother did light candles on Friday night, and we had Seders and traditional food as much as was possible at Pesach, but we had no formal education in Judaism. Our children [Noah and Seth Dudley], of course, we did supply that for our kids.

Grassian

And then they're still interested in Judaism and observe holidays, right?

Dudley

Yes, yes, yes. They are. They're very devout members of congregations. There's an occasional little feud going on with the boys, whose rabbi is going to officiate at our funerals, which we think is pretty funny.

Grassian

Already they're feuding about that.

Dudley

Yes.

Grassian

Oh, well. Well, maybe they can both do it together.

Dudley

They can each have his rabbi.

Grassian

So that's interesting. Then there were a few points that we were going to get back to at some point in time, so I thought I'd mention them now and then we could talk about them maybe in chronological order, if that's okay. So first I made a note about the depression and your family's circumstances during the depression, and you mentioned that you had to move frequently, and there was a lot of worry about finances. Did you want to say anything more about that?

Dudley

Yes. I guess it's coming across as a very gloomy household, and it really wasn't. I think I was a gloomy little girl. I think I worried a lot. I believe that's what it was, in retrospect. Yes, I worried about the moves, and I worried about whether the lights would be on. They were often turned off for lack of payment. My father [Hank Fine] was a real, real hustler, and he worked very, very hard, and he had a lot of family to take care of. There were a lot of us living there. But it was a very caring bunch of people.

Grassian

Everybody took care of each other.

Dudley

Yes, yes, yes.

Grassian

Well, the other thing we'll talk about later was T.V. Moss, but that's a little later chronologically, maybe.

Dudley

Right.

Grassian

So we talked a lot about your half brother Fred [Fine] and the deep, dark secret about your mother's first marriage and who his real father was, and you remembered later what his real father's name was. Do you want to say something?

Dudley

Yes. His father's name was Guilford, G-u-i-l-f-o-r-d, but this is something that didn't really come out in the lifetime of my mother. After my mother's death, Norm [Norman Dudley] and I did some sleuthing. We knew there was a Minneapolis connection, and we learned about it by looking at microfilm. I think we were in Minneapolis at the time, and we learned that he was Fred's father. We never did establish about a marriage. I'm not sure that my mother was married to him. Yes, yes, I think we did finally establish that, yes, he had two marriages. He was a yellow journalist, and Guilford was killed by a mob in the thirties. It's all extremely complicated. I don't think that it's essential. It's interesting. It was interesting.

Grassian

Okay. You mentioned your sister Edelle [Fine]. We didn't talk much about her, though I know you said she died at the age of eleven of strep throat--

Dudley

She was eleven.

Grassian

--and mishandled medications, or the wrong medication, or--

Dudley

Well, she had strep throat and was taken to, I think it was Hollywood Pres[byterian] Hospital, and it was when penicillin was first used. The diagnosis was strep throat, and she was given penicillin, but apparently not in the right amounts.

Grassian

Then we talked quite a bit about your parents moving to Chicago with your sister for a couple of years, you joined them after a year, and why they moved there, etc., and the fact that he was one of the founders of Mercury Records. We also talked about your mother, what you found out about her meeting and marrying her first husband, Howard Guilford, and how she didn't talk about the Wobblies at all, because it was during those years of the deep, dark secret, so she never talked about that. Then you talked about your parents' relationship with each other, and you mentioned that your father went to Indiana and built another pressing plant there near the river. Do you remember the city in Indiana? [Richmond, Indiana]

Dudley

I still don't remember the name of the city. I wish I had had that at my fingertips, because it was a wonderful time, an interesting time. I took our sons to that town when they were four--I guess they were three and four the first time we went, and then we went again when they were five and six--because the kindergarten unit for Noah was farms, and I wanted him to see a real farm. It was a wonderful opportunity to take him. My folks were in a hotel in Indiana, and my father arranged for the children to have many, many trips to the farm. They were there when the cows were brought in, arrived at the creamery just as the milk was delivered and processed. They were exposed to a great deal of farming lore. They learned to drive quite young because of tractors.My father, his plant was--they were on the Kentucky border, and the plant was a wonderful opportunity for employment, I guess. Oh, the plant, did I talk about the plant?

Grassian

Yes.

Dudley

Oh, I've already done all that. All right.

Grassian

Yes, you did, you did, and that was very interesting too.

Dudley

I guess the thing I want to add to that is that when we were driving one day, we stopped at a farmer's--did I mention that?

Grassian

No, I don't remember.

Dudley

And the woman who was showing us around said, "How are things?" And the woman said, "Oh, well, things are so much better now that the Jew has come to town." [laughter] It provided employment. I sort of hoped the boys didn't hear that one.

Grassian

Well, at least it was a positive comment about a Jew.

Dudley

Oh, yes, yes. It was a good thing the Jew had come to town.

Grassian

And then after that we talked about, going chronologically, how you picked UCLA for your undergraduate years, the fact that you wanted to be an English major as soon as you took an English lit class your undergrad years, and you talked about living in Tujunga for a year because of your asthma and getting stronger and how you haven't had an attack in many years, you're over it, and you talked about the descriptive bibliography of children's miniatures you did for your graduate course in English with Hugh Dick, meeting Bob [Robert] Vosper, how you were persuaded to go to library school, and driving from Tujunga to USC [University of Southern California] for library school, because there wasn't one at UCLA. And you didn't especially like library school, because it wasn't interesting to you. You talked about how you admired Ardis Lodge, reference librarian, and wanted to be like her and know what she knew, so that's where we got to last time.So then you did mention in your first interview how you got the job at UCLA, that you didn't realize this, but Bob Vosper was holding a position for you, so you went there and started working as a bibliographic checker. What did a bibliographic checker do then?

Dudley

There were four of us [Mimi Dudley, Charlotte Spence, Dorothy Harmon, Kathy], and we checked book orders primarily to learn if we had the book in any form. The orders came from the faculty and also from us. We didn't have subject responsibility. We were just encouraged to order books, current books of interest or any books. We did look at catalogs. The collection, I don't remember what it was when I came in '49, but between '49 and '54 I know we celebrated the acquisition of the first millionth book, the one-millionth book. Lawrence Clark Powell, did I mention his going to--

Grassian

Yes, and taking the--

Dudley

He was a very active acquisitions librarian.

Grassian

You mentioned that he took the entire LC [Library of Congress] catalog with him in multiple huge volumes.

Dudley

Yes, yes, yes, right, right.

Grassian

That was interesting.

Dudley

So what the bibliographic checkers did was check the collection to avoid duplication, and they initiated orders as well.

Grassian

Okay. I think what happened later in the UCLA Library maybe elsewhere is they separated those two functions of checking to see what we had and ordering, selecting books, because I [Esther Grassian] was a Library Assistant I at one time, doing bibliographic checking, just to see if what was going to be ordered was already owned by the library. So they did separate that function later and it probably was on a much lower level than what you were doing.

Dudley

Yes. What we needed to do was determine whether the material requested, if we had it in any other form, if it had been published in serial form.

Grassian

So it was at a much less complex level. So for how long were you a bibliographic checker?

Dudley

For five years.

Grassian

Five years.

Dudley

Yes, I did that from 1949 to 1954, at which time I wanted to take a maternity leave, but was told that any time I wanted to come back I could come back. I would be welcomed. But maybe I shouldn't take maternity leave. Maybe I should check out, and I did. And sure enough, ten years later when I wanted to come back, it was easy. It was great. But I came back as a reference librarian.

Grassian

So you resigned rather than just--

Dudley

Yes, I didn't go on leave.

Grassian

And it was all oral, all verbal kind of. There was nothing in writing about, you can come back any time?

Dudley

Oh, yes, yes, yes. We weren't a very big staff in those days, yes.

Grassian

So you left for ten years, and you were home with your kids.

Dudley

Yes. Norman and I married in 1952, and we had the children in '54 and '56.

Grassian

And so you retired or you resigned in '54?

Dudley

[19]54.

Grassian

[19]54, and then for ten years you weren't working at the UCLA Library. Did you work anywhere else?

Dudley

No, no, I stayed home. Those were interesting years in my life. I enjoyed them. When I first came back to work--do you want to hear anything about those ten years? Those ten years were devoted to community and to learning things about community that I had never been interested in, but I became very involved.

Grassian

Sure. What were you involved in?

Dudley

Well, I was involved first with early childhood education, because that's where my kids were, and then in the PTA [Parent Teachers Association] and other civic organizations. It's all kind of blurry now, but I learned a lot during that time. But when the boys were, oh, by the time they were in school--I didn't come back to UCLA till they were ten and twelve, I think, but I did return to UCLA to work on a bibliography for Brad Booth in the English Department.

Grassian

So you did that while--

Dudley

I did that part time.

Grassian

--while the kids were in school, public school.

Dudley

Yes, yes.

Grassian

What kind of bibliography was that?

Dudley

Well, [Michael] Sadleir is one of UCLA's prime collections. It's a collection of nineteenth century fiction, and it now has its own room. It's the Brad Booth Room in Special Collections, and we had a notable and fine collection of nineteenth century fiction. Sadleir did a bibliography of it, and it's widely used. Brad Booth was the chair of the English Department, and he hoped in his retirement to work on the collection. But in the meantime, nothing had been done with it at all, and I looked at all of the books in the collection and did a preliminary subject index to the Sadleir books and, oh, once every couple of months or so Brad and I would look at them together, and my handwriting was infinitesimal. I did this on three-by-five cards, and it was wonderful. I thoroughly enjoyed doing it, did about, oh, maybe three, four hours a day, something like that. And ultimately Brad died, and Hugh Dick was interested too, but my interest in it sort of faded with Brad's death. By that time the boys were older, and I wanted to go back to the library.

Grassian

Okay. So getting more into the Sadleir collection, who was Michael Sadleir?

Dudley

Michael Sadleir was a bibliographer and a bookman, and he collected--I want to fill this in.

Grassian

So Sadleir was a collector. Did you want to say anything more about him?

Dudley

Well, Brad Booth writes a very touching report on his going to Sadleir's collection in London. He was invited to see the collection, and he came up a flight of stairs, and in a large room was a collection of books in mint condition--that was the primary requirement, that they needed to be in mint condition--of nineteenth century fiction. And Booth wrote, wired--I don't know how they communicated--as quickly as he could to Bob Vosper, and Vosper busied himself raising funds for the collection. Sadleir ultimately did two collections. One ended at Yale [University], and one--Bob Vosper did get the money for the Sadleir collection, and it was our great pride.And working with the books was a great privilege. I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed it. The cards are still in the boxes, the original boxes, in Special Collections. However, there is a plan afoot which I am supposed to learn more about and I will, as soon as I have time, to publish in some form the cards. The handwriting, as I say, is infinitesimal. I think there is some problem about that, but UCLA will in some way be making that available to the public, and that will be fun.

Grassian

Going back to acquiring the collection, so Sadleir had died then?

Dudley

No, no. Sadleir was selling these collections.

Grassian

Oh, he was just selling them. He didn't want them anymore, or he wanted them at a university or something.

Dudley

Yes, he wanted them to be preserved.

Grassian

Okay, he wanted them to be preserved. So Vosper raised the funds to buy the collection. Was there any opposition to it?

Dudley

Well, raising the money is always a problem. It's always a problem. But they did. Of course--I'm trying to remember what Lawrence Clark Powell's connection with it was. Of course, ultimately I'm sure Bob Vosper needed to go to him for the funds. I don't remember any special fundraising festivities, but I know getting the money together was a great triumph.

Grassian

So what portion of it went to Yale, as opposed to--

Dudley

Well, it was two collections, two separate collections.

Grassian

Oh, a duplicate?

Dudley

I don't know. No, I think not. I think maybe it was--I don't know the distinction.

Grassian

Okay. But there's a Sadleir collection of some sort at Yale and a Sadleir collection at UCLA.

Dudley

Yes, yes, yes, right, right.

Grassian

And it's a prized collection.

Dudley

Yes.

Grassian

So you said you spent three or four hours a day on it. Were you paid? Were you hired for that?

Dudley

Oh, yes, yes.

Grassian

Oh, you were hired.

Dudley

The English Department did hire me to do that. Right.

Grassian

Oh, the English Department hired you, not the library.

Dudley

No, Brad Booth was chair of the English Department, and he had plans to do other things with the collection when he retired, but it just didn't work out for him.

Grassian

What kind of plans, if you know?

Dudley

Let me think. Well, he had published on Sadleir and, oh, [Anthony] Trollope. He had published on Trollope, and I think he had done something on Robert Louis Stevenson that was pending publication. He was a very active man with a very active mind, but he died very suddenly. He was young when he died.

Grassian

Okay. You mentioned that you wrote on slips. There weren't any computers in those days, of course, and you didn't touch-type, so you were writing or printing on the cards. Can you tell me how you--just go through the process of how you did it?

Dudley

Oh, well, I started--the books were arranged alphabetically--

Grassian

By?

Dudley

By author, which is just the casual employee could arrange them. And they were in the corner office of the--they were stored in the corner office of the Powell Library Building, the office that overlooks--it was on the first floor, and the windows overlook Sunset Boulevard, the curve on Sunset Boulevard. It had been the office of the first--oh, goodness, I'm not going to be able to remember his name, our first provost at the time [Ernest Carroll Moore], I think. He talked about standing at the window looking out, waiting for [University of California] Berkeley to come after him, to close UCLA, that UCLA was very competitive, or Berkeley was very competitive. It was University of California's southern branch, so that was the corner office. But it was used to store this collection. Powell, Lawrence Clare Powell, had used it as his office.That building was at one time--it housed everything. It housed what became the Biomedical Library. It was in one room in the basement. It housed the Music Library. All the branch libraries were there, so that's where the collection was housed. I got a little off there.

Grassian

That's where it was. Right, right. No, that's good.

Dudley

So I saw them in pristine condition. I saw them pretty much as Brad Booth saw them the first time.

Grassian

Were they in boxes, or on shelves?

Dudley

No, they were shelved.

Grassian

They were put on shelves--

Dudley

--in the original bindings. Later on we had to have some of them boxed and bound. So I started with A and read it. I think it was Ainsworth. I believe it was Ainsworth, and made notes and assigned subject headings to it, and I tried to keep the subject headings to five. I didn't want any more than five subject headings per title.

Grassian

Did you create your own control vocabulary, or did you use LC subject headings or?

Dudley

Really, for fiction there isn't any such thing. I know L.A. Public [Library] had its own.

Grassian

Did they use Sears Fiction [Sears List of Subject Headings]?

Dudley

I don't remember.

Grassian

I seem to vaguely remember that. But anyway, so you created your own control vocabulary.

Dudley

That's right, that's right, and with cross references.

Grassian

And by the way, were these called Yellowbacks?

Dudley

Oh, some of them. There is a collection, a separate collection in that room of Yellowbacks.

Grassian

Oh, so they weren't all Yellowbacks.

Dudley

No, no, no, no, no. They were first editions of--Yellowbacks were often not first editions. They were reprints. But he collected first editions in mint condition, so he doesn't necessarily have all of any given author. He would collect it only if it were in mint condition, but in many cases, that was everything of an individual writer.

Grassian

So it would have to be a first edition, except for the Yellowbacks, and in mint condition for him to collect it. But he must have had some kind of list or known who the nineteenth century authors were.

Dudley

He was himself a publisher and very active in the book business. So what is your question?

Grassian

Well, I'm wondering if he worked from a list of authors, or he just knew who all of these nineteenth--if he were a publisher, he probably had a idea of who all these authors were.

Dudley

I'm not remembering that, but I'll think about that. So that's what I did for a few years. I read them. Oh, and the other thing that I did was I read book reviews of all of them. So I read reviews in--UCLA had at that time a wonderful collection of nineteenth century journals and newspapers, so I tried to get--I looked in sources for reviews and quoted them in the bibliography.

Grassian

On each index card that you would--

Dudley

On each card, yes, yes, right.

Grassian

So you read each book. You'd have a card, one card for each book?

Dudley

Yes.

Grassian

And then you would do subject index to the fiction, and then you would also list any book reviews that you found that you then read.

Dudley

Right. I'd quote reviews, yes.

Grassian

You quoted from the reviews.

Dudley

Yes, I'd quote reviews.

Grassian

And authority checking. Did you check for names in the UCLA catalog and elsewhere?

Dudley

Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I did. Yes, I did. Right. Right. And it was fascinating and captivating and I loved it. I loved working on it. And, of course, Brad Booth was very excited about it, that it was taking shape, and he did write about it in "Nineteenth-Century Fiction," the journal, and had great aspirations for when he retired, what we could do with it. So that was--

Grassian

So you did that three or four hours a day every day?

Dudley

Yes. You know, I'm backing up on that. I'm not sure that I did that every day. I did it--I'm sure if the boys had a meeting or something, I probably went to it. I didn't have any particular schedule, but I know it was mornings until the boys were out of school.

Grassian

While the kids were in school. You mentioned before when you were taking that graduate course with Hugh Dick how much you loved descriptive cataloging.

Dudley

Yes, yes, yes.

Grassian

Did you do descriptive as well as subject for this?

Dudley

Oh, yes, yes, I did, on three or four categories, maybe five categories, I don't know. I did describe the book.

Grassian

So you did the descriptive and the subject index for each book.

Dudley

Yes, yes.

Grassian

Okay, so it wasn't just a subject index. So each card had--

Dudley

The card had the size of the book and the publication information.

Grassian

Number of pages and paper and everything that you do for descriptive. So you expanded from just doing descriptive to doing both?

Dudley

Yes, yes, yes. It was a subject index to the collection.

Grassian

Did you finish it?

Dudley

Well, I went all the way through it, but it was my intention to revise it and to go through it again. I had really meant to do a cursory job and go fill in on it, but I never got to that. I went through it the one time. Yes, and some of the books, of course, I didn't read.Oh, another thing I forgot about was that I hired, through the English Department, readers. But it had to be people who, of course, were connected with the university, and it had to be copies that were in the collection. It could not be the Sadleir books themselves. So I would speak to whomever we hired and ask pertinent questions about the novel. I did say this was all novels, didn't I? This was all novels.

Grassian

You said they were all fiction, yes.

Dudley

So the English Department did pay for other readers, and they were people that I could trust and talk with.

Grassian

So you didn't read every single book.

Dudley

No, I didn't, no.

Grassian

About what percentage? Or wait a minute. I forgot to ask how many books--let me stop for one second.[Interruption]

Dudley

--if I have anything around here that's going to describe it more, because I really want to. I don't have anything in my files either.

Grassian

Well, you can think about it, and we can go back to it next time.

Dudley

Okay, we really need to, because I have much more to say about the Sadleir collection.

Grassian

Yes, we'll certainly go back to it next time. But do you remember about how many books were in the collection?

Dudley

I can't remember.

Grassian

Thousands? Or hundreds?

Dudley

Oh, I don't know, Esther.

Grassian

Okay. Well, you can think about it and maybe come back to it.

Dudley

Oh, yes, yes. It's exciting.

Grassian

About what percent would you say that you read yourself? About 50 percent, 75?

Dudley

Oh, no, more than that probably. Probably 75, 80 [percent].

Grassian

And then you relied on these readers to read the ones that we owned.

Dudley

Yes. I can't even remember how many, just not very many. But I think I was getting to the point with it where I wasn't sure that I'd be able to do all the things with it that I wanted to do. But again, it had to be in the collection, in our own collection. But we had a pretty good collection of nineteenth century fiction in the stacks.

Grassian

Right. So what would you say were some interesting or exciting discoveries you made as a result of cataloging this collection?

Dudley

I don't think of it as cataloging. I think of it as--

Grassian

Or creating a subject index.

Dudley

What was fun about it?

Grassian

Something, anything interesting or exciting, particular--

Dudley

It was a very exciting, very exciting to learn what we had and who else and where else it existed. That was great fun too. I remember using British Museum Catalog a lot and Bibliotheque Nationale [of France]. So many of these were not available anyplace else.

Grassian

So you were checking to see who else had copies, not even at all--

Dudley

Well, very often I would look in to see if any of them had reviews, if British Museum had anything on the book, what kind of information I could get. And the reviewers, the people who were reviewing them, of great interest, of course. Well, the "Athaeneum" is what I used the most. We had a wonderful collection of the reviewing sources of the nineteenth century. I think all the major reviewing sources we had. We subscribed to, of course, and had been subscribing to, but we had back files of them. So I guess there had been an early emphasis on the major journals.

Grassian

So generally, you found reviews on most of these books, right?

Dudley

Yes.

Grassian

They were well known enough to have been reviewed?

Dudley

No, not necessarily. Oh, no. Some of them are extremely minor novels and novelists.

Grassian

Was it more the Yellowbacks that were more minor?

Dudley

No, no, no.

Grassian

Tell me about the Yellowbacks.

Dudley

Well, I think I'm going to wait and talk about all of that together, okay, all right.

Grassian

Okay, next time. Okay, that's fine. So you did that for how long?

Dudley

Well, let's see. Oh, I don't know. My guess would be maybe three, four years.

Grassian

Three or four years. Then you became a reference librarian in the college library at UCLA and you were there for many years till you retired in 1981. How did that happen?

Dudley

Yes. Well, I think it was when the boys were in junior high and while I was working on the Sadleir that I was more and more attracted to the library and to get back to it. I wanted a half-time position. I still wanted to be available for the kids. Norah Jones was--I had known Norah for a long time. We had been in library school together, and she had an opening for a reference librarian, and it was my goal to do half time. Once I became involved with it, I had a hard time only doing half time, so I think just gradually it became full time for me.

Grassian

But you started out half time.

Dudley

Yes.

Grassian

So you said you started wanting to go back to working in the library. Was it because you were doing all this checking and you just kind of--

Dudley

Brad died, and I think that was what--there really wasn't anyone who was in the English Department who knew about it or was that enthusiastic. Hugh Dick would have continued with it, but I really wanted to get back to the library.

Grassian

So you wanted to move sort of from this solitary, pretty solitary task of working on the Sadleir collection, and then you moved to public service.

Dudley

Yes, yes, yes.

Grassian

Yes, that's quite different.

Dudley

Right, right.

Grassian

You never did that before, though. I mean, you had been a bibliographic checker.

Dudley

That's right, that's right.

Grassian

So that was your first public service work. Did someone train you, or how did you--

Dudley

No.

Grassian

You didn't have training.

Dudley

I think that I had taken the--of course, I used a lot of reference materials in working on the bibliography. No, there wasn't specific training for reference. Well, of course, I knew the major bibliographies, and I still think that's what reference is about. I think so. It wasn't difficult at all. It was wonderful. I loved being at the desk.

Grassian

What year did you start working in college library, the undergraduate library? It started in 1965, college library, didn't it?

Dudley

Well, yes. Did it? I don't remember.

Grassian

Sometime around then.

Dudley

Let's see. Norm moved to URL [University Research Library]. The URL collection moved in--

Grassian

About '65.

Dudley

Let's see. Did you say '65?

Grassian

I think around '65.

Dudley

Yes, I think '65 is right.

Grassian

Oh, so he was working in--the college library existed, and he moved there--

Dudley

He was responsible for--I remember when University Research Library opened. We went to the grand opening, and Bob Vosper was at the door greeting people, and he said to the boys, "We never could have made this move without your father." And Norm was fresh out of library school, and that was just Bob Vosper's graciousness. But Norm had arranged for the actual moving of the collection.

Grassian

So but Norman worked in College Library before you did, right, for a year or something? I thought I remembered you saying that.

Dudley

Well, he worked in reference, when College Library's reference service for a year was in the basement level, and that's when he worked there.

Grassian

And he worked there and then he moved up to the--

Dudley

Yes. Very, very quickly he--I have some letters on his quick move. He went into acquisitions and then became collection development librarian.

Grassian

So when you started working in College Library, Norman was already at what is now YRL [Young Research Library], or--

Dudley

I don't know.

Grassian

But in any case, both of you were not working in College Library at the same time.

Dudley

No, no.

Grassian

Okay. So it was in the sixties sometime, and maybe you'll remember later or next time about what year it was that you started working in College Library. So thinking about the sixties and the seventies, there was a lot of political unrest at UCLA and elsewhere at that time. There were demonstrations. There were police on campus. There was even a time when the police chased somebody into the Research Library, broke his arm.

Dudley

Oh, yes, oh, yes.

Grassian

What do you remember about that?

Dudley

Well, what I remember is libraries--it was a time of great unrest, as you said, and libraries had been savaged, and people had burned drawers of the catalog. I'm sure this is all in--

Grassian

At UCLA?

Dudley

No, not at UCLA, but other libraries. So people were on guard. People were very concerned about libraries, and one of the administrators was always there at a reference desk, at all of our reference desks, because that would be--oh, and there had also been--what did they call the nude races or runs through libraries?

Grassian

Flashers?

Dudley

That's right, flashers, and that was a really good place, because you had really long, long corridors to run down. So there were administrators assigned to be on hand in case there was police stuff, and at one point the police said to lock the front doors of the College Library. We did, and this was a campus sweep of students protesting the [Vietnam] war, and they made a great sweep over the quad, and they went right past the door of the library. But they did then go on to the Research Library, and two kids came in and the police followed, and Bob Vosper went out and told the police that they couldn't come in here, that this was safe, and he protected the kids. So that was a moment of glory for us. But the College Library, they just swept past us--

Grassian

Went right past during that time.

Dudley

--and went down the steps.

Grassian

And this was during the protest period about the Vietnam War mostly.

Dudley

Vietnam War, right, right.

Grassian

Do you remember anything else about that time period?

Dudley

No, I remember great concern, because kids around the country had been destroying libraries, destroying them in terms of the catalog. It was contagious and, of course, our goal was to save the library.

Grassian

And it was only the card catalog.

Dudley

Yes, yes. They didn't get at collections, as I remember it, of libraries. Do you remember any of that? Was that--particularly, of course, [University of California] Berkeley was particularly active, that campus. Oh, they were swept from one end of the campus by the police, and that's why they didn't stop to break into Royce Hall or the library. It was a campus sweep.

Grassian

Campus sweep, yes. So--

Dudley

Oh, other things too of spilling ink in catalog drawers. There was a lot of focus on libraries throughout the country.

Grassian

Trying to destroy--

Dudley

University.

Grassian

And so people wanted to protect them. And there was nothing online, of course. Everything was card catalog--

Dudley

And books.

Grassian

Although there was the shelf list in the back office that the public generally didn't know about, so theoretically, a card catalog could be reconstructed from the shelf list, but nobody knew that except for people who worked in libraries. Okay. So now about College Library. Who were the heads of College Library when you worked there, and what were they like? That was from approximately in the sixties sometime, which you'll think about later, what date, till you retired in 1981.

Dudley

Well, Norah Jones was the founder of the College Library. Norah had been herself a cataloger. What else did Norah do? She had not worked in reference. She was head of the Reserve Book Room, and when she was a student at UCLA for her undergraduate work, she had a job in the Reserve Book Room, and when she got out of library school, there was an opening for Reserve, and she liked it very, very much. She liked working with the students, and she liked organizing, and it was a really good job for her. Then when it was a national movement, really, to establish undergraduate libraries, and when UCLA decided to do that, the Reserve Book Room was an integral part of an undergraduate library, and she was appointed the College Library librarian. She did a really good job of it, and she was a really excellent organizer.At that time there were--well, a few years later--there were a lot of exchange services. A librarian from England wanted to come to us, and Norah went to England and served as a librarian there, and a librarian came to UCLA from England, but not as the head of the library. The second person to serve in that position was Jim Davis, and he served as the head librarian in Norah's absence. When she returned, she was given another position. She became head of technical services at the University Research Library, and Jim Davis carried on as head librarian at College [Library]. There was strong feeling about Jim. He was uncomfortable, a man who got the position by default, and he was rather difficult and ultimately he needed to--I don't remember how many years, maybe just a couple of years--he was transferred to--what did they do with Jim? Oh, at first they thought he might be a bibliographer. Then, oh, I know, Special Collections, Special Collections took him.The next one was Hiram Davis, and Hiram was from the South, and he was the first black librarian we had, the first head librarian. He learned a lot on that job. He didn't have a smooth time of it either, and I think he was there for a couple of years too. I don't believe it was any more than that. Then he got a job at one of the state colleges, and he was replaced by another Davis. No, no, he was replaced when a young man from one of the state colleges [Tom Fry] became head librarian, and he was more interested in--it seemed to me his interests were not collection development and not reference. I don't remember what his interests were [laughs], but he too left College Library, and then I don't know, because I left while he was still librarian.

Grassian

Was that Tom Fry you're talking about?

Dudley

Tom Fry, that's it, that's it. Yes. I'd forgotten his name.

Grassian

So Norah was the first head of College Library, and she established it and everything. I remember that she also established, I believe, some satellite libraries in the dorms. Do you remember that?

Dudley

Oh, right, right, she did. She did. She was an inventive woman, and she had good ideas and always made room for new ideas. The dorms--people would come to--by that time we had dorms, and people wanted to be able to study in their dorms, so she established little collections in dorms. That went on for a few years. People enjoyed that. Oh, and Norah kept very close ties with the offices, and she knew what was going on on campus. She maintained very good relationships for the College Library.

Grassian

Outside of the library.

Dudley

Outside of the College Library and with the other libraries on campus. The libraries were expanded. At one time, we had nineteen libraries on campus, a lot of special libraries, and at this time it seems to be decreasing practically daily. I don't know how many are left now, but that was the move at the time.

Grassian

We're going to talk a little bit more about these different people who headed College Library in a little more depth, but first I wondered if you could talk about your College Library colleagues, the other librarians and who they were and what they were like.

Dudley

Oh, that's nice to be thinking about that. We at the time were hired as reference librarians, but that meant half time on the desk and then we had other responsibilities as well, responsibilities for the collection, adding to the collection, reading reviews about reference books and determining what we needed and what was appropriate for us. The policy was our circulation was two weeks, and University Research Library was for graduates and faculty primarily, although we could use it. Their circulation period I don't remember. It was a month or six weeks, and faculty, of course, took books out and could have them until they were requested, so there was no time limit. But College, we were very strict about it and remain so. I think that's owing to Norah, Norah's strength, that no faculty member and nobody else can check books out of the College Library for a longer period of time. Is it two weeks now?

Grassian

Two weeks, still two weeks.

Dudley

Yes, it's still two weeks. So the other obligations of the librarians--it was collection development, and there was reserve. Of course, reserve, someone needed to--I guess maybe it was working with the reserve collection. I don't think we had a separate librarian for reserve at the time. I don't remember.

Grassian

I don't think so.

Dudley

No, I think it was an obligation of somebody in reference.

Grassian

Well, I started in '69, so as of '69 I don't remember anyone in charge of reserves, a librarian, although you said Norah had been to begin with.

Dudley

Yes, yes. So what else did we do? New bookshelf, it was adding--well, somebody was in charge of the reference collection, and that meant paying particular attention to new reference materials, old ones that we needed, and someone in charge of the new bookshelf. That's to be sure we had what was currently available, was hot off the press. Our new bookshelf was always just excellent, excellent. Hmm, what else did we do? I'll have to think about it.

Grassian

Okay. So going back to the heads of College Library. At one point, a consultant was called in to deal with problems in College Library. Who was involved? What do you remember about that?

Dudley

Jim Davis was. He was selected by Norah, who had a very motherly attitude toward him, and she hired him. She hired him and tutored him, but when Norah was there to tell him what to do, everything was fine. But he was autocratic and difficult. He was difficult to get along with. So there was just problem after problem, and so outside people were brought in to try to guide and direct and get us back on the track, but it just really seemed impossible. So ultimately what happened instead was that Jim was transferred to another department. And he had advocates, and it became quite a political, political mess.

Grassian

How did you feel at the time about the problems and the resolution?

Dudley

Well, I think I was pretty hopeless about his being able to succeed in it. I think it was a matter of his temperament. I don't think he could rise to it. It was handed to him by his mentor, and it just didn't work. It just couldn't work, and that was the ultimate decision of the team that was brought in. Oh, the assistant university librarian for public services was his immediate superior. That was Everett Moore, and Everett [unclear] administrator. He was a fine, fine man, but I think he could not handle it, so that's what happened there.

Grassian

And Page Ackerman I think was involved.

Dudley

Well, Page Ackerman was the librarian by that time.

Grassian

She was the university librarian.

Dudley

She was the university librarian, and she was the one who called in a team to--

Grassian

Team of consultants, okay.

Dudley

Who really worked hard. It was a very good team, and they worked individually with him, as Page had. It wasn't for lack of desire. It was just what the conclusion had to be, I think.

Grassian

Okay. Maybe we can talk a little bit about Hiram Davis next, and then I don't know if you would want to stop there and continue next time. What about Hiram?

Dudley

All right. Well, Hiram was a very personable guy and had personal relationships with staff [laughs] and that led to problems in itself. He really didn't have the background for a university librarian. He didn't have the education for it or, well, knowledge. He didn't know anything about administration. He was a nice guy, but he just didn't have the background necessary for it, so it did not work out. It was a series of real failures, I think, on the part of administration to hire these people. For one thing, College Library had a particular mission, and it was different from University Research Library. It was to help university students use the library. That was not the mission of the University Research Library. Theirs was to work with faculty and graduate students.But at College Library, our patrons were undergraduates who didn't know how to find books, who came in scared and mystified, and it was our goal to help these kids. That became our focus. I think we were unfocused for a while when Norah left.

Grassian

You said he had relationships with staff. Was that with students as well? Was there some controversy or problems that you remember?

Dudley

I think he certainly had some personnel problems, no question about that, but I think it was--oh, well, I think anything else is kind of gossip mongering.

Grassian

Okay. He appointed you, I think, to a little bit higher position for a while. You were head of public service for College Library?

Dudley

Who?

Grassian

You.

Dudley

Who--

Grassian

Hiram.

Dudley

Hiram? Oh, well, Hiram needed assistance.

Grassian

Needed someone who knew what they were doing.

Dudley

Right, right.

Grassian

Because he didn't know.

Dudley

Yes. Yes. Well, didn't that happen under Jim? I don't remember. I don't know.

Grassian

I don't remember that under Jim, but sort of more your recollection.

Dudley

Yes, I did. Of course, I always had a passion for the College Library and I still do.

Grassian

And a passion for its mission?

Dudley

Yes, yes.

Grassian

The mission of College Library.

Dudley

Now, actually, I don't think I was doing anything in--I'm murky about it--in education. Oh, sure I was. I was doing it even under Jim. Oh, yes, yes, I was. I was.

Grassian

Beginning around the time that I started, I believe, was around the time the workbook was--

Dudley

Was that the end of the seventies?

Grassian

It was the end of the sixties.

Dudley

End of the sixties.

Grassian

As I recall. But did you--

Dudley

Oh, well, yes, I would like to get into that. That was with Jim.

Grassian

Yes, we're going to definitely get into that.

Dudley

Yes, yes, I remember. Yes, that's right.

Grassian

Right, yes.

Dudley

Well, I don't think that Hiram was involved in library instruction. I don't believe he was at all.

Grassian

So did you want to talk about the workbook now? It's been about an hour. Or do you want to wait for next time? Because that's a big topic.

Dudley

Let's wait for next time and start fresh then.

Grassian

Yes, yes. Okay, so we can stop for now then.

Dudley

Okay, great.[End of interview]

1.4. Session 4 (September 8, 2009)

Grassian

This is Esther Grassian interviewing Mimi Dudley, the fourth interview. Today is Tuesday, September 8 [2009], and we are again at Mimi's apartment in Sherman Oaks, and it is about 10:25 in the morning. Last time you talked about the [Michael] Sadleir collection [of nineteenth century fiction], your involvement in it, and I know that you have some more you want to say about that, so we'll do that in a minute. We also talked about your life and your career up to the point of when you started developing the Library Skills Workbook. So we can start with the Sadleir collection or anything else that you'd like to follow up on first.

Dudley

Yes. Well, I think what brought me back to work was the Sadleir collection. Brad Booth was the chairman of the English Department, and he had intended to--when he retired, he wanted to work with the Sadleir collection. He had been instrumental in acquiring it for UCLA. He describes in "Nineteenth Century Fiction," the periodical, his first sight of the collection. Sadleir was a book collector and a publisher and a bibliographer, and he worked for Constable [and Company, Ltd.]. I think he was president of Constable at one time, and his two-volume "XIX Century Fiction: A Bibliographical Record Based on His Own Collection," is a renowned masterpiece of bibliography. He was also a novelist. He wrote "Fanny by Gaslight." He collected some over eight thousand, almost nine thousand volumes of first editions and rare mint-condition books from major and minor nineteenth century writers.It was the condition of the books that drew Brad Booth's eye. He describes going up a flight of stairs and walking into the room of these dazzling, dazzling collections. There were three collections. There was a collection of yellow books [Yellowbacks] and a collection of the novels. His prime requisite was that they be in mint condition and in original wrappers, and that's how I saw them when I was hired by Brad Booth to go in and do a bibliography of the collection. It was extremely exciting. These books--I was handling these books for the first time since he had acquired them, so that was a very exciting project to be working on.My bibliography was--I tried to restrict myself to five subject headings per novel, and most of them I didn't really need that many. But I went into the Sadleir Room--it was a round table in that room--and read them, and after a while we also hired students, well, they were doctoral students in the English Department, who would read, not in the Sadleir Room, but read the library's copies. We had many, many editions of these novels, but it was a library copy that the people would read. Then we would discuss them, and I could draw them out and assign subject headings to them. I think it was three years that I did that, three very exciting years. Then Brad Booth died and while Hugh Dick was perfectly willing to go on with the project, because it had grown a great deal, I by that time was ready to go back to being a librarian.

Grassian

Okay. So I meant to ask you, did you ever get your master's in English?

Dudley

No, not in English, no.

Grassian

Library, you want to library school and got an M.L.S. [Masters of Library Science degree]. But you had been a grad student in English, but then you switched.

Dudley

Yes. As soon as I learned about bibliography, I moved over to librarianship, yes.

Grassian

Okay. Anything else that you'd want to say about it?

Dudley

Let's see. It's hard for me to break away from the Sadleir collection once I get started on it. When the dedication ceremonies of the Sadleir collection took place at the library, in 1953 that was, I mentioned that part of the collection was Yellowbacks, and UCLA published a Yellowback of two lectures that were given in honor of the dedication, one by Frederick [B.] Adams [Jr.], who was the director of the Pierpont Morgan Library, and the other was W.W. Robinson [actually David Anton Randall according to the UCLA catalog record], who was the president of the Friends of the UCLA Library. And this book itself is so handsome.

Grassian

And what is it called?

Dudley

It's called "Revelations of Two Celebrated Book-Snatchers, or, What Victoria Read [listed in UCLA Library Catalog as "The Sadleir Collection: addresses"]."

Grassian

And you're holding--it has an illustration on the front of it looks like a woman tied up in like a coffin, open coffin standing and someone tying her in there, two pirates, looks like two pirates.

Dudley

Yes, yes. The yellow books were sensational and they were very often cheap reprints of Victorian novels. They were sold in railroad stations in England. A lot of people who had not been readers during this period learned to read, and the books were sold in railway stations. And, of course, those yellow books in Sadleir's collection are, again, mint condition.

Grassian

Mint condition, and they had covers on them?

Dudley

Oh, very, very lurid covers.

Grassian

Like this one, yes. That's funny. Now, I'm just curious. Were the books themselves illustrated inside, or was it all text?

Dudley

Oh, some, some. Oh, yes, some. They were first editions and, of course, the most illustrious artists of the time were illustrators.

Grassian

Of these Yellowbacks?

Dudley

No, no, not of the Yellowbacks but of the rest of the collection.

Grassian

Because at first I was--

Dudley

Yes, there is quite a bit written about the illustrations of the Yellowbacks. Actually, Suzanne [M.] Tatian and Claire Bellanti and I did a paper, "Nineteenth Century Fiction: A Celebration of the Sadleir Collection" that is a description, that's a physical description of the Yellowback, well, of the entire collection.

Grassian

So would you say--I'm not sure about this, because I haven't read or looked at any Yellowbacks--would you say that in a way, they might have been sort of the equivalent of Classics Illustrated? But they had more text, and they were text of novels rather than just--

Dudley

The Yellowbacks are you talking about?

Grassian

Yes.

Dudley

There's a third--I've mentioned that the collection is in three parts. There was the mint and first editions of the most important novels of the period, and the Yellowbacks, and the third section was series, like the Classics [Illustrated] series.

Grassian

Like Classics Illustrated? Because I was just thinking of Classics Illustrated as being geared to maybe people who wouldn't ordinarily read the classics, and they were mostly illustration and so on. So in that sense--

Dudley

Yes, I think that's true.

Grassian

Interesting. Okay. Anything else that you want to add about it?

Dudley

No, I think that covers my great career as a bibliographer, and really it was a very, very happy time.

Grassian

You loved it.

Dudley

Yes, I did.

Grassian

But when Brad Booth died, then it kind of like faded--although the collection is still there.

Dudley

The collection is still there, and the box--[Interruption]

Grassian

We're talking about finishing up about the Sadleir collection, and you just talked about how much you enjoyed it, and you did it for three years, and then after Brad Booth died, then you were--but did you finish? I forgot to ask.

Dudley

Yes, yes, yes.

Grassian

You finished it, okay.

Dudley

But it was just once over lightly. It definitely--we should have gone on with it for another good long time, because while I did look at current reviews--we had a very good collection of journals of the period--there is much more to be done. It should be done in greater depth; it's a long, long project.

Grassian

In terms of the reviews, it's identifying reviews and doing excerpts from them? But also--

Dudley

Yes, and assigning subject headings and looking that over. It was just a once over lightly that I did, and it would be great to go into it in more depth for somebody. Somebody should go into it.

Grassian

So somebody could do that as a further research project, to review and extend what you did.

Dudley

Right, right.

Grassian

And I believe that a library school intern has created a database which is ready for data entry of what you did, which is still available on the cards in Special Collections, so we'll be talking about that with them to see what can be done.

Dudley

Yes, well, that would be wonderful. My handwriting is miniscule, and I'm sure they're not easy to read, but I think they photograph all right.

Grassian

Okay. Oh, and I must have asked you about how many volumes you kept?

Dudley

There are eight thousand, over eight thousand.

Grassian

And you did all eight thousand?

Dudley

Yes, yes. Well, no. Yes, I did all the novels.

Grassian

All the novels, and that was eight thousand?

Dudley

Yes, the collection was eight thousand.

Grassian

Whew. Three years. Okay. So are you ready to talk about the library?

Dudley

Yes, yes.

Grassian

So the last time, we talked about who the heads of College Library were when you were working there, and you started working--you went back to College Library about what year, do you remember?

Dudley

I went back after the Sadleir [unclear].

Grassian

After the Sadleir, after you were off because of raising your kids till they were in school.

Dudley

I don't really have that date. I'll have to think about it.

Grassian

Approximately.

Dudley

Well, the boys were--oh, it was probably the end of the sixties.

Grassian

Okay, because I [Esther Grassian] started in '69, and you were already working in College Library, so it was before that. Whatever. So we talked about your work in College Library a bit. First of all, when you worked in College Library, and again, I didn't ask this, I know that you were a reference librarian, as many of us were, that's what we were called. What did you do besides being a reference librarian? You had off-desk responsibilities at the time. Before the Library Skills Workbook.

Dudley

Yes. Well, it was to contact faculty and to offer library orientation. That was what I was doing. And there was a program, a new program on campus, an undergraduate program for basic orientation to the library. Until that time they had--but we've always done library tours. They were always available, and librarians would offer it to the departments they thought would be interested, and that meant faculty contact and lectures. Lectures was what we did. A program started called--at the time it was called Rainbow, a Rainbow Program. It had four parts. It was Chicano students is what we call them now; no, it's what we called it then. Chicano, black, Asian, and I lose the fourth. I know there were four distinct--

Grassian

American Indian.

Dudley

Oh, yes, that's right, American Indian. So a T.A., a teaching assistant in the Chicano Program, came and he opened reference books and plucked facts and gave the facts to his students, and it was a hunt for the students of the huge reference collection that UCLA had. Well, of course, to find that fact was difficult. The intentions were wonderful, but the fifty or so students would come in and would look frenziedly and feverishly for a fact, and this was not supposed to be with any guidance. The theory was that they would be leafing through reference books and learn a great deal.So I decided that it would be good to write questions, to first talk about a particular reference book, about dictionaries in general and give them that information and introduce them to a few dictionaries and then a fact that they could look up. And that was fine. However, that isn't of very great interest when a class of thirty students had that question, so one kid would go do it and that would be it and pass it around. And they really didn't learn much about the reference works themselves. So I proposed giving them thirty--well, this man who came to me with it was really anxious to do a library program. So I wrote thirty questions about each tool. The one I think about a lot is something so simple that we all need, or needed at the time daily, was a Thomas Guide, so I could do thirty by giving each one a different street, and in order to answer the question, they would have to pick up the Thomas Guide and look it up, and they'd have to handle the Thomas Guide, they'd have to know where the Thomas Guides were. It required them to come to the library, which in itself was a feat.That was of interest to the faculty, to the English Department. English Department was the one who first was interested in it. However, when it came to thousands and thousands of students, it became more and more complicated and more and more questions needed to be written. So they were compiled in a book. However, writing the questions themselves--oh, I know what we did. We created shelving in--we had a room to collate the books, so people were hired and taught how to do that. So we would have a box of thirty books which would be distributed to one class, and each of the students in that class had different questions to answer. But it became a very big problem to collate them, so every library that did it needed to learn how to do that and how to write them.So libraries were very enthusiastic about it, the idea, and the book was adapted by many, many libraries through the country, and I went to libraries and taught people how to do it, so each library could do it for themselves and empathize the things that they wanted. Do you think that's a pretty good description of what I was doing, Esther? I know that photographing each page was complicated, and we did it at the Xerox machines in the libraries, and it would be days and days and days of standing at the--I'm sure you helped with that.

Grassian

I don't remember helping with that. Possible, but I'm thinking back. So that's a great overview of it, and just going back to the very beginning, those four ethnic groups. I remember that there were librarians assigned or volunteered to work with each of them. The one that you worked with was the Chicano group.

Dudley

Oh, that's what I started with. Yes, that's right, right.

Grassian

That's what you started with, and so the first workbook was called something like the Chicano Library Skills Workbook [Chicano Library Program]. But it didn't start out as a book. Do you remember how it started out?

Dudley

It was cards. It was on cards, and then the cards were filmed for pages of the books.

Grassian

But before it was a book, remember the envelopes? They were boxes of envelopes with--

Dudley

Boxes and boxes. Yes, I would take--on weekends when we went out of town, we would take boxes with us, and people we were visiting or who were visiting us had to collate. Oh, Esther, I'd forgotten about that. Yes, yes, yes.

Grassian

Yes. Remember the envelopes?

Dudley

Huge boxes of envelopes, yes, yes.

Grassian

Right. And as I recall the boxes, well, there were a number of different questions, and it was in a particular sequence, search-strategy sequence, and each question had like a set of maybe twenty or thirty envelopes with a different question in each one related to that same topic. Is that right? Do you remember that?

Dudley

I think you're right. It's fuzzy.

Grassian

You had forgotten that.

Dudley

Yes, I had. And we really wore the library staff out doing it and correcting them and returning them. And, oh, the man who started it was just so intrigued and so delighted with it, from the Chicano Department we called it at the time. Then it was required for all four sections. They weren't really departments. It was four--

Grassian

And so now I remember that there was a woman who was a T.A. also for the Chicano group.

Dudley

Yes, Elena [Frausto].

Grassian

Elena Frausto? I think it was Elena Frausto.

Dudley

Hey, good for you. Oh, you looked this all up.

Grassian

Oh, no, I just remembered it. I don't know why. So it progressed into the workbook. Now, I remember there was something about writing answers as opposed to having multiple choice answers. Did you remember that?

Dudley

Yes, yes. We do have examples of it, don't we?

Grassian

Yes, I remember that.

Dudley

We would introduce them to the tool, the encyclopedia, and give a description of it, and then give them five questions. There were five questions and they were, let us say, numbered one to five. I don't know if it's alphabetical. And the student, in order to answer the question, needs to go to that tool, though they could guess what tool it is, but if they made any errors at all, they were to come and talk with us and then we would be sure that they reviewed that, whatever the book was.

Grassian

Now, when you say you told them about, say, dictionaries or encyclopedias, you mean in writing. It wasn't like an in-person group thing?

Dudley

No, no, no.

Grassian

It was like a little description in writing--

Dudley

Yes, of what this tool is, what it does and then the use of it.

Grassian

Right. And then there were the questions, and when you say five, there were five answer choices? That was the multiple choice.

Dudley

That's right.

Grassian

Before the multiple choice version, the first way that you had people do it, I think, I sort of recall, was they had to write their answer in. Do you remember how that worked?

Dudley

Well, I think that it was very, very slow to correct all of those. There were, I don't know, was it thousands by that time? And as I said, we wore everybody on the staff out. It could be illegible. So, yes, then we did do multiple choice, but it was really not a matter of them--they had to go look at the tool. Although it sounds like they could fake it, they could fake it, but they couldn't fake it all the way through a book, so if they made one mistake, they were required by their instructors, their professors, whatever, to come to discuss it with us.

Grassian

So each person would have a workbook, and the categories of questions would be like dictionaries, encyclopedias, and each of the questions for each of the workbooks would be different so that they wouldn't copy from each other.

Dudley

Right, right.

Grassian

So they had to go and look at the object or whatever it is, and so that's what we would call hands on and active learning today, because it was. They were actively learning, trying out, looking and doing things on their own, even before there were computers. There were no computers then. So this was in the seventies through '81 when you retired, right?

Dudley

Yes.

Grassian

Yes, so about ten years or so, maybe more, and that's what they were doing. As I recall, you mentioned wearing out the reference staff, so what do you recall about how the workbook, how all that photocopying was paid for, and people were hired to help with it; do you remember that?

Dudley

Yes, yes. Of course the University Research Library, students would go to University Research Library looking at their tools too, and that was something of an overload for University Research Library. Some of the questions originally involved them going to the branches. At that time we had nineteen branches. We had a Geology [Library] and a Geography [Library] and a Chemistry [Library] and, well, we had an English Reading Room. So it's something that the entire library system became involved with, to some people's distress, because we all have our own ideas about it. At the time, chief librarians around the country were very interested in it, and I went to speak to many, many, many universities about it.The great fear of it was that it would do away with reference and there wouldn't be reference librarians, and as things turned out, not only owing to people learning--but getting people into the library has always been a problem. Whether we're getting them into the library now is always something that's discussed. And once we get them in, what are they doing there? Are they learning about library resources? The question with the development of computers is just a totally different question. But I remember one of the plaints always was, "Well, eventually it will be closing the reference desk." And reference librarians have really become something more than that now, something beyond that. But teaching library skills became a part of, I think, every library school's curriculum.

Grassian

Well, we wish it would. It's sort of a part of every academic library, but whether it's a part of every library school's curriculum, that's still a goal, I think, that we're trying to achieve.

Dudley

Well, public libraries play a much stronger role than they used to in helping people learn how to avail themselves of library resources.

Grassian

Right, right. So what you're describing was this sort of a tension between reference and instruction. Instruction was a new role for librarians, and some reference librarians--

Dudley

Were resentful.

Grassian

--were resentful. Do you want to talk about that a little bit?

Dudley

I guess what I remember about it in our case was that other libraries, small libraries, would be bombarded with questions, and they didn't have the staff for it. There was just a greater awareness of libraries on campus. I think maybe in one edition we sent students to branch libraries and asked them some very minor question, not anything that would necessarily involve the library or the librarian. But it would develop in students the knowledge that there are special libraries and there are many, many libraries on campus, so that was its goal. But it certainly changed the role of the librarians.

Grassian

So the workbook was self-supporting. There was a cost to it, but it was self-supporting, wasn't it? Did you want to talk about that? Because in terms of people being bombarded with questions, do you remember how that was dealt with in terms of hiring extra people, library school students?

Dudley

I don't really remember, no. I don't know. But I know we needed a lot of help. We opened a room in the library, in the Powell Library building, for the collating and for correction. Students would bring books in for correction, and if they did not get all of them right, then they were required to speak with a librarian, so that took librarians' time too.

Grassian

And they got a grade, didn't they?

Dudley

Well, no. It's the department that sent them to do it. Our grade was A, but if they didn't get that A from us, if they didn't do it, then it was an F, and that was--I think it was one-third of the grade given to them by the department if it was an English class.

Grassian

Wow.

Dudley

I don't remember. It was powerful. They didn't mean to fool around. They really wanted students to do this.

Grassian

And the way they--they'd do the workbook, they'd come, they would have it corrected, and if there was something wrong, they would speak with the librarian. Did they get a chance to redo that question?

Dudley

Yes, oh, yes. Our goal was for them to be sure that each student knew what a dictionary was and where to find them.

Grassian

And to succeed. And to be successful.

Dudley

Yes, and to bring them into the library, yes, yes.

Grassian

Okay. And then if they corrected it, would they then get an A?

Dudley

Yes, oh, yes, yes, yes.

Grassian

Okay, so then they would get an A and then they would take that proof back.

Dudley

In the library portion of the class they were taking. It was largely the English Department, but there were other departments too who required it. Oh, yes, yes. We did special workbooks for departments, for faculty members in particular departments. We did, I remember, a political science one dealing with general reference materials, but also with specific dictionaries and encyclopedias in the subject field. Yes, that took off too, right.

Grassian

And each workbook started with a tour of the physical libraries, right?

Dudley

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Grassian

So how did that work?

Dudley

Well, it was [laughs], it was really nice. In the Powell Library, it took the student up the stairs and I think one or two things on the stairway pointed out to them, and it's in first person, and it says, "And you turn to your left and you'll see the reference desk and the reference librarians. You'll smile at them as you go to the atlases." And many, many students came in reading it and would smile at the reference librarians and then go on to the topic at hand.

Grassian

So they did the tour and then there were many other questions and many other categories, right? So there were a total of, as I recall, maybe twenty categories--

Dudley

That's right.

Grassian

--including--what do you remember? Besides dictionaries and encyclopedias, and you mentioned the Thomas Guide, which is like a street atlas--

Dudley

It's a street guide.

Grassian

And then do you remember a couple of other categories?

Dudley

Well, "New York Times," Atlas. What I asked librarians when I traveled with it was, which tools did they use the most? And we all agreed throughout the country, throughout every place else I was too. There are certain tools that we all agree are the most used.

Grassian

The basic tools, basic reference, and those were the ones that you focused on in helping people learn.

Dudley

Yes, yes, yes. And for many--oh, and, of course, the arrangements of the books within the library. That's difficult for students.

Grassian

Finding books on the shelf.

Dudley

Right. It doesn't go into great detail about what Library of Congress is or what Dewey [Decimal System] is or whatever particular or special library it was, but it does acquaint them with the concept.

Grassian

Okay. So there were first the logistical problems to conquer of how you were going to actually do it. It started out with envelopes in boxes on a reference counter. I remember those envelopes.

Dudley

Yes. Did you need to take some home with you over the weekend? I did a lot of that.

Grassian

It wasn't just me. I think you had your friends too outside the library who were helping you.

Dudley

Yes. Yes, yes.

Grassian

Then it progressed to a workbook which people wrote their answers in, as I recall--

Dudley

I think that's right.

Grassian

--and then the next iteration was a workbook with multiple choice questions and answers that could be corrected more easily and quickly. And then the whole logistics of collating. How did you identify the questions and answers? Because you must have had a huge number of them.

Grassian

Yes. There was a key, a code. I don't remember what we did.

Grassian

Well, developing the questions and answers must have taken a lot of time too.

Dudley

Yes, it did. It did. And, of course, it had to be reviewed each year, because you'd get new editions of the reference work. Also, things would come up, well, with I remember adding something and taking something away that wasn't used that much anymore.

Grassian

So it had to be revised.

Dudley

And, of course, in each subject field when we were doing them for a particular department, they needed to be reviewed every year, so it was a lot of added information that the librarians needed to cope with. And, yes, Esther, I've really forgotten how the staff wasn't necessarily delighted at each of these libraries. But my total remembrance is that it became a popular program. The faculty liked it.

Grassian

And it didn't take class time. Students did this outside of class as a homework assignment.

Dudley

At first I think we went into the class, oh, for ten minutes or something, to talk about what it was and how they were to do it and where they were to purchase the workbook. I don't know if that continued or not. I don't know whether a librarian went into every classroom. I don't know.

Grassian

I don't think so. I don't remember that.

Dudley

No. An entrance requirement at UCLA was something called Subject A, and I think half of the students who entered the college, the university--

Grassian

Had to take Subject A.

Dudley

--had to take Subject A, and it was a requirement for Subject A. It became a requirement for--individual faculty members would require it.

Grassian

In addition. So it was like a required textbook. They would just go to the bookstore, student store and buy a copy, and that would cover the cost of the person who was hired to correct it and whatever library school students were hired to assist at the reference desk answering--do you remember anything about that?

Dudley

No. No, I don't remember. Were they hired to do that?

Grassian

Yes. As I recall, but maybe you don't recall that. And that was partly due to the reference versus instruction issues among some of the librarians, feeling, I believe, that this was not their real work.

Dudley

Yes, yes. Right, right.

Dudley

It was interfering with their real work, which was reference. So it went on for about ten years. Oh, and do you remember how you came up with the idea of doing multiple choice questions as opposed to having people write it in?

Dudley

Oh, I think writing it in was--to decipher the writing was time consuming--

Grassian

That was tough.

Dudley

--and it just seemed if we could work out a system where, yes, indeed, they would have to have picked up that book and not be guesswork.

Grassian

Right. You said that you met with people from all over the country, but there were people from other countries too who were interested in the workbook model, and you talked with them. They came to visit, or your corresponded?

Dudley

People came to UCLA. People got financing to come and study it for a few days. I'm remembering people from the Scandinavian countries and England, oh, South America too. Then libraries would ask you to come talk about it, because not all libraries were anxious to take on this different burden, this new burden. [laughs]

Grassian

And partly would you say that was because at the time, instruction was not really a part of the role of a reference librarian or reference staff, reference desk? It was a new thing, I mean, although libraries did orientations.

Dudley

Yes. Librarians had--in many departments, I think, a librarian was asked to come into the department, into the classroom and give a lecture. I remember that from early on. But it was a brief lecture and it couldn't really go into much depth, and the idea was to get the students into the library. I remember thinking that if every student at the university so much as walked through the door it would be a good thing, and I think that's still true. I think it's probably true even more now, because students can use computers wherever they are.

Grassian

So can you talk about library administrators' attitudes about the workbook program, how that changed over time? It was like a ten-year period.

Dudley

Yes. When that came up at a lot of meetings, some really latched onto it and really, really liked it, and others felt as the librarians did, that this was not--but you know, this was true, the beginning of reference work as well. Libraries were meant to supply books, not to answer questions at the desk. I think that in every phase of librarianship that's true. I'm trying to think of what effect it--well, there was dissention. There certainly was dissention about it, but a lot of libraries in the country welcomed it. There was a period of time, I'm sure, when it affected reference work.

Grassian

It was a model that really worked well for a large university, because you were talking about how librarians were invited into classes to talk to classes, but it was brief and while it might have been somewhat useful, students were generally not handling the reference tools. The librarian was holding something up and talking about it, and I remember doing that myself.[Interruption]

Grassian

Okay. So we were just talking about how the model of a workbook was really better suited, or maybe well suited to a large university with many students and a limited librarian staff, because you had said librarians went into classrooms, were invited to, and they would talk about tools, but there were only a limited number of librarians and many, many, many thousands of students. So this was a way to reach more students without adding huge numbers of librarian staff, right?

Dudley

Yes, although I do remember adaptations made for very small schools. I remember somebody got an NEA [National Education Association]--yes, NEA hired me to go to small schools.

Grassian

National Education Association? Okay, and so there were small colleges that also did workbook adaptations.

Dudley

Yes, yes, and it was useful to them for the very same reasons. They didn't have much staff, and they too wanted all of the students--the library wanted all of the students on campus to know where the library was and what tools it had and to know something about the collection.

Grassian

And at the time, the physical library was where all the tools were. There weren't any computers, so people had to come into the library.

Dudley

That's right, that's right.

Grassian

And in a way, just even walking in the door alleviates some of that library anxiety, library phobia, fear, and the smiling smile at the reference librarian who will smile back at you, of course, was interesting. I didn't remember that. That's great. So you retired in 1981. The workbook had been going for about eleven, twelve years, something like that, ten years. Do you have anything you wanted to say about that, at the time, reasons for--

Dudley

Well, I think that when I retired, I don't think they were using the workbook at all. They stopped using the workbook. Am I right about that, that they stopped?

Grassian

No, not exactly.

Dudley

No, they did continue with it.

Grassian

A little, shortly after. And your name always appeared on the workbook as author, correct?

Dudley

Right, right, right.

Grassian

And then I think there was a little controversy about removing your name from the workbook?

Dudley

Oh, yes. [laughs] Well, again, that was Jim Dudley; no, what was his name, Jim?

Grassian

Tom Fry? Or Jim Davis?

Dudley

Jim Davis. Jim Davis did not want my name on the workbook. He wanted it to appear as something that the College Library developed, and, of course, that's not true. It's something I developed. So, yes, there was that. And then are you saying there was something later too?

Grassian

I thought also the same issue came up later, before you retired, that was similar.

Dudley

I don't--

Grassian

Don't recall that?

Dudley

No, no.

Grassian

Okay. So in looking back at the workbook program, thinking back on it, would you have done anything differently, either related to the program or dealing with colleagues or administrators about it at UCLA or elsewhere?

Dudley

Well, I look back on it perhaps falsely as a very successful program there and throughout the, well, certainly many, many, many libraries in the United States. And, yes, about that time, people were thinking about usages on the computer, weren't they?

Grassian

Yes.

Dudley

Yes, yes, I think that's true. So I'm really forgetting things that were obviously big problems at the time.

Grassian

Well, about '81, when you retired was about the time that computers were really entering the public arena of libraries, at least in reference and then later for the public. But when you said usage, you meant usage of the workbook on a computer, or usage of computers in libraries?

Dudley

No, no, a workbook on computer was what people were talking about.

Grassian

Right, and there have been tutorials developed that are very similar to a workbook, which is not in paper, but it's online, so, yes, that has happened. Were you aware of other types of instruction going on in other libraries, not the workbook model but other models?

Dudley

Oh, well, yes, because of work in ALA [American Library Association]. Well, the very fact that we had a section in the American Library Association, that we established a section called--it was called bibliographic instruction.

Grassian

And that is the next thing I wanted to talk about, so this is perfect. So did you want to talk about it now, or do you want to wait for the next time to talk about organizations?

Dudley

Well, I should probably think this through, but what I'm remembering about ALA is--oh, well, that's right. Library instruction wasn't any more popular with ALA than it was with some reference librarians. So it was a big job to establish at ALA. ALA did not want to have sections of every crackpot thing that went on in libraries. But by that time, there were quite a few libraries throughout the country that did a model of our workbook, and we did have to knock on doors a lot to be able to get a section. At the same time, public libraries were--well, yes, adaptations had been made for public libraries.

Grassian

Of the workbook?

Dudley

Of the workbook, yes, yes, yes.

Grassian

Well, maybe I'm wrong, but I thought that you had started locally, with local, then regional, then state and national, and the national in terms of professional organizations and involvement with instruction. So starting with the California Clearinghouse on Library Instruction--

Dudley

That's right, right, right.

Grassian

Did you want to talk about that a little bit, if you remember?

Dudley

Yes. I think maybe it was the California state librarians who--it was a clearinghouse. It was for us all to get together and talk about library instruction. Yes, that's right. So California Library Association was certainly the first one to have, before ALA. I don't remember very much about it. I know it was very useful and it got librarians together to discuss mutual problems limited to instruction.

Grassian

And you remember what your role was in getting that going?

Dudley

No, no, I don't. Do you--

Grassian

Well, you had a big role in it.

Dudley

Tell me. Review it.

Grassian

Well, I think that you got to talking to other librarians in instruction. I think I remember Sue Galloway as one person. Does that ring a bell?

Dudley

Yes, yes, in San Diego. Yes, yes. Well, again, that was because Sue did an adaptation for, was it UC San Diego [University of California, San Diego]? I think that was where she was at the time. And other librarians who had done adaptations, that's right--

Grassian

Of the workbook.

Dudley

--so that's how it started, yes. And it was very useful to us, because, of course, it wasn't just the UC system. It was the Cal State [California State University] system, and then there was always this interest on our part in drawing public libraries in. Well, because in the undergraduate library, students, freshmen came to us not knowing anything about libraries, and that led us, of course, to high school libraries, and it wasn't that the high school librarians weren't offering it, it was a problem of numbers, how many students could they handle and where they needed to take students to public libraries and to college libraries. So, yes, it did draw in libraries of all persuasions, yes.

Grassian

So the California Clearinghouse on Library Instruction wasn't just for academic libraries, it was for librarians from all kinds of libraries.

Dudley

Right, right, that's what we intended it to be.

Grassian

And as I recall, people were sharing materials that they created for their users. In addition to the workbook there were many other kinds of things, pathfinder's guides. There was a big collection and everyone was very excited about it, because there were no computers then and no way to share that kind of either information or materials otherwise.

Dudley

Yes, yes. It's so good that you remember that. Does it still meet?

Grassian

It does. It has a new name. Actually, there's the Northern [California] Clearinghouse [on Library Instruction, North], and the Southern [California Clearinghouse on Library Instruction, South] one became a chapter of the ACRL [ALA Association of College and Research Libraries] California Chapter, became a committee or section of the ACRL California Chapter, and it's now called SCIL, Southern California Instruction Librarians. But it is academic librarians now, rather than being open to everyone. But it does still meet.

Dudley

That's real nice.

Grassian

Yes, that's still going on. And the northern one still exists as its own separate organization. So that was like a local, regional, and even state group, because as you mentioned, it started out as part of CLA, California Library Association. Then nationally you mentioned the bibliographic instruction section [of ACRL], and there's also LIRT, Library Instruction Round Table. Do you want to talk about both of those and how you were involved in establishing them? You mentioned knocking on doors.

Dudley

Yes, yes. The bibliographic instruction section later became the instruction section, and actually it was ill-named. It had been functioning for several years before the name was changed. Maybe we should finish that next time and let me think more about it.

Grassian

Want to do that next time? Okay, sure. So we can stop now.

Dudley

Wow, the California Clearinghouse. I had forgotten that.[End of interview]

1.5. Session 5 (November 8, 2009)

Grassian

Today is November 8, [2009] Sunday, and this is Esther Grassian interviewing Mimi Dudley in her apartment in Sherman Oaks. Today we're going to go back and, Mimi, can you talk a little bit about the University of Arizona and the workbook, and then we'll go on to talk about professional organizations.

Dudley

Yes. Shelley Phipps came to UCLA, as many librarians did, to look at the workbook and think about it and talk about it. I had been to the University of Arizona, I believe it was at an ALA [American Library Association] meeting, oh, sometime later. David Laird, who was the librarian at University of Arizona, was a speaker, and so was the [UC] Berkeley librarian. It was David who said--but the other librarian concurred--that if this workbook is indeed successful, there will be no need of reference librarians. [laughter] That was a very bold prediction that David made.We were to talk, however, about the ALA. Is that what we should get on to?

Grassian

Okay, but I wanted to just say a couple more words or questions about the University of Arizona. First of all, the point about reference to me kind of illustrates the whole tension between instruction and reference and how there was that kind of tension back then. Do you recall that?

Dudley

Yes. Oh, I do. Many librarians felt that instruction was not necessary, that people came to the reference desk and asked for help, and that formal--actually, all that there was was a library lecture. A librarian would be invited, perhaps, to an English A class, and would give a one-hour lecture on library resources. As for the students--oh, they would also take them on tours. But that was what library instruction was, and to try to introduce them to the library at a practical basis, to have them go into the stacks to find books, to be introduced to some basic reference books. There just wasn't a way of doing that, and that's really why we started to do this.

Grassian

And reference librarians, some at the time, were seeing reference, as I recall, as distinct from instruction and as our real work. Do you remember something like that?

Dudley

Yes, yes. There was resentment, and I think that many reference librarians--well, for one thing, it was great traffic in the reading rooms and getting access to the tools was something that was a problem. We had to purchase more almanacs, more of the daily things you wanted students to get to know about. So it affected the budget in a sense too. There was a lot of concern, a lot of worry about library instruction.

Grassian

So about the University of Arizona, they ended up with a required workbook program, is that right?

Dudley

Yes, yes. They did, as did many libraries. I once had a list of the libraries who were using it, making adaptations for their own libraries of the basic workbook. Many librarians came to be at UCLA for a couple of days, librarians from the United States, from England. It was a very big movement in the Scandinavian countries. Finland did a workbook, as did Denmark. It seems to me later they asked me to come and speak at five universities in the area, in the Netherlands. It was adapted for use in England, at many, many universities in England. Oh, also some in Latin American countries. I've lost--I don't remember. A list at one time existed of libraries that asked permission. It was copyrighted by UCLA. Therefore, many people asked for permission. Many, of course, didn't bother with that.

Grassian

And you gave permission.

Dudley

Oh, yes, yes. We had standard letters of permission, yes.

Grassian

I remember someone coming from China and saying, "You know, if you give permission, it's just going to be copied all over China." And you said, "Oh, that's okay." I remember that. [laughter]

Dudley

How great, how great.

Grassian

So the workbook was widely used in many places, or adapted, and in addition to working on the workbook and responding to people asking about adaptations and permissions to use it and so on, you were also very active in professional organizations, both regarding what we now call information literacy instruction, and you participated in organizations locally, regionally, statewide, nationally, and established them, most notably three library instruction organizations. If you recall, the California Clearinghouse on Library Instruction, the ACRL Bibliographic Instruction Section, now called just the instruction section, and the American Library Association's Library Instruction Round Table or LIRT. Can you talk about these groups, why each one was established and your role? Maybe first the Clearinghouse in California, then BIS and LIRT.

Dudley

Yes. In California, the first libraries to take an interest in formal library instruction other than classroom lectures, they were other UC libraries. We formed an organization, and we met, oh, I don't know, maybe two or three times a year, to exchange ideas about library instruction, to learn about each other, to learn what we were doing and what we could borrow from each other. It was a very cooperative group of people, all eager to spread the word. Not all campuses participated, but those who did benefited from it.At first it was a very informal kind of thing, and then we became part of the California Library Association. It started out just very independent of anything else. It was just librarians who wanted to do something about getting students into the library and making them comfortable and helping them learn something about the values of the library. So that flourished, and I haven't been to a meeting for maybe twenty years or so, but I understand it's still a help to librarians.

Grassian

I wanted to just mention--do you recall when it started in CLA, it started as, I believe, a subcommittee of a reference group, and the subcommittee became so large that it dwarfed the reference group. Is that right?

Dudley

[laughs] Yes, yes, I think that's true, and I think there was concern on the part of some librarians in reference, who felt that it infringed. Now that you mention it, I am remembering there was some resentment. I think there was resentment in reference sections when, oh, when the desks were overwhelmed with students. So, yes, it was contentious. It was contentious.The one I remember is ALA, was trying to find a niche in ALA and going from--I did learn a lot about the mechanism of ALA. I learned where our niche was in ALA, where we belonged, and it was very difficult. I went--not I alone, there were others interested in this. Evan Farber I remember from Earlham [College], Sheila Laidlaw from--oh, and somebody also from Penn State [Pennsylvania State University]. So we pounded on doors, and we were persistent, and finally it was voted on, and I think it took several years to get into the doors of RTSD [Reference and Technical Services Division]. No, that's Norm's [Norman Dudley] group. No, I think it was. It was reference and--

Grassian

Was it ACRL [Association of College and Research Libraries]?

Dudley

Well, eventually it was ACRL, but it was a Reference and Technical Services Division that we thought about, and then ultimately we did find our place in reference where we belonged.

Grassian

ACRL?

Dudley

Yes, ACRL. The first meeting, I don't remember how we got word out, but there were a lot of reference librarians who were not at UCLA but in other libraries across the country, interested in establishing a forum for instruction. The first meeting, attendance was overwhelming. I remember the packed room. I guess I and others had worked on a Constitution, and we presented it, and it was adapted overwhelmingly, and we were accepted. A lot of politics, a lot of meeting people, and a lot of ALA stuff went on to establish it. It was not easy.

Grassian

The Bibliographic Instruction Section [of ACRL].

Dudley

Yes, it was called BIS, Bibliographic Instruction Section. And, of course, that was not an awfully good description of what we did. At the same time--but that was really university libraries we were talking about. However, that's really not what our intention was. Our intention was to teach library users to make the most effective use of library resources, all libraries, and many public librarians, many school librarians were interested. School librarians had their own sources for meeting and disbursing information, but public librarians did not have much, so the Library Instruction Round Table was formed, and again there were people who--it took us a little bit to sort that out. But a different organization was formed, and everybody was really so happy to have found a home.

Grassian

So you said it took a long time to form these groups. Did you have to go to ALA presidents? I mean, how far did you have to go up the chain to get--

Dudley

Well, I needed to--I keep saying I. There were, oh, two, three, four of us who were pounding on doors. Ultimately, yes, we did need to go before the board, but it was each section that we--we attended meetings and learned what their--we learned a lot, what their functions were and where we would fit best.

Grassian

Okay. So there were several people involved in establishing these organizations, and you mentioned a couple of them. Why was it so hard to get people to go for it?

Dudley

I think it was mostly because I think reference felt threatened by it. I believe that's what was the case, and establishing anything new has its problems. I'm thinking that faculty was not at all hard to--we had great faculty support, I think. It became sort of almost a matter of routine at colleges. It was libraries, it had college and university libraries. It may have been infringing on--well, at UCLA I think it could have been some infringing for some of the reference librarians and the University Research Library. And there were specialized libraries. We did do workbooks for special libraries too, and perhaps when people came in looking for specific material, it added to the workload of reference librarians, no question about that. And it was a different kind of demand too.

Grassian

So regarding these organizations, did you serve in any elected or appointed positions in them? I don't remember.

Dudley

Yes, yes. I was on the boards of--I think I was Library Instruction Round Table and BIS. Yes, I definitely was, yes. BIS, not RTSD, but yes, and I did do that for a number of years and very involved in the committee work. Then I traveled a lot to libraries who wanted specifically to do the workbook.

Grassian

And I remember very well you mentoring people like me when I was a new librarian, introducing me and others to these organizations and committees and so on, so you did that a lot, didn't you?

Dudley

Oh, I'm glad to hear that. Yes, I think probably that was important. It was certainly important to me too.

Grassian

And currently, you may not know this, the ACRL instruction section has over forty-three hundred members, and LIRT has over sixteen hundred members. [Dudley laughs] They both have many committees, they offer programs, they publish materials. What are your thoughts on their current and future states? Do you think there will always be a need for them?

Dudley

Yes, I think that the solutions are different, but, oh, goodness yes. It's complicated. This research business is a complicated one, and gaining information, of course, it has changed with computers. Library usage has certainly changed. But I think more than ever, people need help in finding the information that they need, but the field is certainly very, very different, as library schools are very different. The emphasis is so different.

Grassian

So you mentioned that bibliographic instruction wasn't the best description of what we did. There's a lot of controversy over the meaning of various phrases that people have used over the years to describe what we do, library instruction, bibliographic instruction, information literacy, information competency. What are your thoughts on the use of these phrases or on these phrases?

Dudley

Well, I think helping people use--it's the most effective egress to library information. I think that's what we're aiming for, how to make the most effective use of library resources, of information resources, by whatever means.

Grassian

Whatever you call it, that's what we're doing. That's what the aim of it is.

Dudley

Yes, yes.

Grassian

And we've been doing it for a long time now.

Dudley

Yes, yes.

Grassian

Okay. So just on another point, a long time ago you wrote a piece in "Research Strategies." It may have been the first issue, in "Research Strategies," the first peer-review journal devoted to what we now call information literacy instruction. The journal is now defunct, but it was the first one. And your view then was that librarians don't need to justify the need for library instruction, just as faculty don't need to justify the need to teach Shakespeare. What are your thoughts on that now?

Dudley

Goodness, I haven't thought about that for a very, very long time.

Grassian

Yes, it has been a long time.

Dudley

Well, no, I don't even remember how they were called upon to justify--what was going on?

Grassian

Well, for funding and to spend time on instruction.

Dudley

It just seems the natural role for librarians.

Grassian

It does to many of us.

Dudley

Yes, yes, and is that still a matter of contention?

Grassian

Well, in some ways. Again, for funding and spending time on instruction, especially if it takes a lot of time to do some of the things that we can now do using technology. But staff time is considered a commodity, along with direct funding, so how you spend your time and what you're doing, and some people are concerned about what they call ROI, return on investment, which is a business kind of term. So if you have any thoughts on that--

Dudley

Well, my mind reverts to the prophecy that there wouldn't be any need for reference librarians. Isn't that really what reference librarians do? I don't know what the statistics are on the use of reference sources. I'm sure librarians are still called upon to go to a class and make a presentation, but I would think that that's really why there is a reference desk and why they're staffed.

Grassian

And reference has changed a lot from providing facts to teaching people how to learn for themselves, so that part of it--

Dudley

Yes, how to get access, right, right, right. Yes, well, I think it always should have been. I think that the reference librarian always was in that position. I think some librarians didn't use it in that way, but I do think that is the goal, and I think it's the goal when reference desks were first established. And that too was a matter of--reading library literature, I remember that that was contested. What librarians originally did was order and arrange books, and as for getting at the content of books, that developed.

Grassian

Okay. So, now, for all of your wonderful work in library instruction, information literacy instruction, and your efforts, particularly in establishing the ACRL then-called Bibliographic Instruction Section, that section established an award in your honor, the Miriam Dudley Instruction Librarian Award. What are your thoughts on that?

Dudley

It still thrills me and excites me. I was present at some of the awards, and I feel very honored and delighted that that's something that is valued in my profession.

Grassian

It's considered very prestigious and a great honor. So do you recall any other honors or awards that you received?

Dudley

Well, I think probably what was a particular delight and pleasure was being invited to libraries to speak to staff, faculty, and librarians about the need for library instruction. Let's see. I did something that I dimly remember at Oxford and something at Cambridge. That was wonderful and exciting. I guess spreading the word and helping libraries to--many libraries really had to fight for this. I was sent by--I'll need to ponder over this--maybe it was NEA, was sent by them to a small college to help the librarian, actually, to help the librarian fight the fight with the faculty and to establish a program there. But many, many times I think it was more inspirational, to help librarians fight on for instruction.

Grassian

Did you want to say anything more about that, or shall we go on?

Dudley

I want to remember the name of the foundation that sent me, but I'll that over. Okay.

Grassian

So just overall, when you think back over your career and the time since you retired, in what ways do you see that libraries and librarianship have changed?

Dudley

Well, of course, the huge change has been in the availability of information. It's made the job of the librarian totally different, a totally different job. That, of course, is the profound change. I don't really know what's going on in training of librarians. I think that reference has certainly changed, and I really don't know. I haven't kept up with that. I cannot speak to that.

Grassian

Okay. What advice would you give someone who's just starting a career as a librarian?

Dudley

Well, a broad smile comes to my face when you say that. I do have a couple of young friends who are just starting, who are in library school, and I glory for them. I can't think of a better way to serve society, a more pleasurable way. Librarians lead good lives. They're doing something important and significant. Well, that and motherhood and apple pie.

Grassian

Well, yes.

Dudley

It's all good. It's all good.

Grassian

Looking at your smiling face, I know how much you love being a librarian and you are a librarian still.

Dudley

Yes, yes. I still do identify myself as a librarian.

Grassian

And you still encourage people to enter this career.

Dudley

Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I can't think how many years it's been since my retirement. I guess I retired in 1980. Is that true? Maybe about thirty years.

Grassian

I think it was '81.

Dudley

[19]81, almost thirty years.

Grassian

Wow. It's a long time.

Dudley

It is a long time.

Grassian

So is there anything else that you haven't mentioned that you would like to add?

Dudley

Well, we hadn't talked about the fact that when Norman and I were married, he worked for Mercury Records. He was the West Coast representative for Mercury Records, and he really, really liked the life that I led. He liked my friends. He liked the whole library picture, and at one point in our lives we were able to work out a savings that would permit him to go to library school. We intended--our intention was to live at a different scale. We certainly did the two years he was in library school. But then he went to UCLA and he liked it as much as he thought he would. [laughs] He worked for one year in reference and then he went into--

Grassian

Administration?

Dudley

--administration, yes. But that one year was sheer gravy, and he worked as a collection development officer for about twenty years too, at UCLA. So those were really wonderful years for both of us. I think that's the other thing I want to say, about satisfaction of being a librarian.

Grassian

Okay. Is there anything else you'd like to say about library instruction or information literacy instruction?

Dudley

Haven't I said it all? Is there anything left to be said?

Grassian

Maybe not.

Dudley

If there is, fill me in.

Grassian

I don't know, but I just thought I'd give you the opportunity.

Dudley

Well, I have very, very good strong memories and basic belief in the value of the work I have done and others around me are doing.

Grassian

That's wonderful. Well, thank you, and I think this concludes our interviews.

Dudley

Well, how very nice, and I've thoroughly enjoyed it.

Grassian

Great.[End of interview]