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  • A True Politician: Rebecca Browning Rankin, Municipal Reference Librarian of the City of New York, 1920–1952
  • Plummer Alston “Al” Jones Jr.
A True Politician: Rebecca Browning Rankin, Municipal Reference Librarian of the City of New York, 1920–1952. By Barry W. Seaver . Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 2003. v, 218 pp. $45.00 (paper). ISBN 0-7864-1634-3.

Barry W. Seaver's A True Politician chronicles the life of Rebecca Browning Rankin (1887–1965) and the development of municipal reference library service in New York City over a period of thirty-two years, spanning the Progressive Era and the beginnings of the cold war. Seaver uses a variety of primary sources, notably interviews with Rankin's associates at the New York Public Library (NYPL) and the Municipal Reference Library, along with transcripts of interviews conducted in 1964 by Phyllis Dain of Rankin and her friend and NYPL colleague Alice Bunting.

During the early twentieth century municipal reference libraries were established in major cities as part of a movement to reform city government led by Charles McCarthy, chief of the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Library and leader in the National Municipal League. Although the Merchants' Association of New York had requested as early as November 1908 that a municipal reference library be created to assist its members with their interactions with local government, it was not until March 1913 that Comptroller William A. Prendergast contacted Edwin H. Anderson, director of the NYPL, for help in forming a [End Page 273] library collection within the Department of Finance. One year later, in March 1914, the Board of Estimate passed a resolution authorizing the transfer ofwhat was known as the Municipal Reference Library (MRL) to the authority of the NYPL.

In 1918 thirty-one-year-old Rebecca Browning Rankin arrived at the NYPL seeking temporary employment while on a leave of absence from her first professional position as librarian at the Washington State Normal School in Ellensburg, where she had served since 1913. By September 1918, having decided not to return to Ellensburg, Rankin was employed by the NYPL as assistant to Edwin H. Anderson. In December 1918 she was offered a permanent position as second-in-command of the MRL under Dorsey Hyde, Jr. When Hyde left the position Anderson appointed Rankin to assume the MRL directorship. She was thirty-three years old when she officially assumed her duties in February 1920 as the fourth director of the MRL and the first woman to hold the position. She would remain steadfastly at the helm of this vital organization for thirty-two years.

The MRL under Rankin's leadership aided elected officials by providing them with detailed facts about local government as well as the experiences and practices of other cities and by assisting public employees in the daily performance of their jobs. She dedicated herself and her staff to serving the interests of all citizens equally, without regard to political affiliation, by providing information that individuals could not secure for themselves.

In the early 1920s Rankin served as president of the Special Libraries Association (SLA), the New York Special Libraries Association, and the New York Library Association. For SLA specifically Rankin initiated constitutional reforms to bring into closer affiliation the independent, professional organizations located in metropolitan areas along the eastern seaboard and in the process assure SLA's status as a national professional organization.

She worked with six New York City mayors, including John Hylan, Tin Pan Alley's James "Broadway Jimmie" Walker, John O'Brien, Fiorello La Guardia, William O'Dwyer, and Vincent Impelliteri. Her service to La Guardia's administration was in many ways the most productive and fulfilling. Rankin and her staff worked closely with La Guardia to provide pensions for public librarians in New York City, to relieve the suffering of unemployed New Yorkers in the midst of the Great Depression, to conquer juvenile delinquency through reading, and to promote New York City as an international center for higher education, especially with Latin American scholars. Rankin helped to elevate city government from partisan politics to rational administration. After World War II she worked closely with Impelliteri to create the Municipal Archives and Records Center, which...

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