ALA Conference in Portland, Oregon   July 4-7, 1905

In the summer of 1905, the American Library Association held its Annual Conference in Portland, Oregon.  This marked only the third time the ALA had crossed the Mississippi River to hold a Conference.  The ALA’s decision to hold its Conference in the Northwest drew attention to the developing region.  In attendance were 92 men and 267 women for a total of 359 attendees (Library Journal, Volume 30, no. 9, C224).  The conference included attendees from all regions of the United States; the Conference records reported the distribution as:

Northern Atlantic States                         95 members

Southern Atlantic States                        18 members

South Central                                         2 members

North Central                                         95 members

Western States                                     13 members

Pacific States                                         131 members

British Columbia                                     3 members

Hawaiian Islands                                   2 members

Ernest Cushing Richardson, head librarian at Princeton University and ALA president addressed the geographically diverse attendees in his speech entitled “Address of the President: The National Library Problem Today.”  He began his speech by discussing the significance of holding the conference in Portland.  He described the Northwest region’s character and development he said, “breathing that spirit of adventure and patriotic endeavor which is peculiarly associated with the Northwest, and so it has become a sort of symbol of unconquerable national growth” (Library Journal, Volume 30, no. 9, C3).  Much of the conference focused on the West and the library work that was just beginning in the region.  Charles Wesley Smith, a librarian at the Seattle Public Library, addressed the conference with a speech entitled “Library Conditions in the Northwest.”  In it, he told of the region’s efforts to create a stronger public library system and his hope that the ALA Conference would help in this effort.  He concluded, “The Northwest to-day greets the A.L.A….because we believe that you have come here to help us understand what the public library is, how to make one, and what kind of people is required to make one at its best” (Library Journal, Volume 30, no. 9, C14).

The Conference, which included trips to Yellowstone National Park and Alaska, inspired both librarians from the East and West.  In Cultural Crusaders: Women Librarians in the American West, 1900-1917, Joanne E. Passet writes, “The West made a deep impression on many attendees, who returned home convinced that it represented an opportunity for them to promote public happiness and democracy in a region where great wealth had not yet chilled the heart and governments were relatively pure” (Passet, 15).  The conference highlighted the West’s young library movement, which was idealistic and untouched by bureaucracy. 

Sources:

Library Journal. Volume 30, no. 9.