Women Pioneers in the Information Sciences: Introduction

This issue of Libraries & the Cultural Record is the first of two special issues in which the stories of a few very influential and accomplished women pioneers in the information sciences will be told. In this issue each article focuses on an individual woman, except for one that relates the story of five women who were professional contemporaries. Most of the women lived in the United States, but women pioneers in France and Spain are recognized as well.

The professional specialties of the women reflect a variety of intellectual and professional areas within the broad field of information sciences. Discussion and debate about exactly how to define the information sciences are long-standing and, apparently, never-ending. Is information science(s) a single discipline or a multiplicity of related disciplines? In the workplace is it a single profession of common practices or a federation of professions of related but distinct practices? We have chosen largely to ignore these controversies in preparing this salute to the women pioneers. Instead we have adopted a broad definition of information sciences that encompasses a wide range of research and practices in librarianship, archives, documentation, information technology, and information science.

The special areas of expertise of the women reflect growth and change in the information sciences over time. Especially in librarianship the roots of practice are at least two millennia deep, and many courageous, imaginative, and strong female leaders made—and continue to make—pioneering contributions to the field’s development. Until well into the twentieth century, however, the field was dominated by men (as was true in other professions), an all too common artifact of women’s limited access to higher education, demeaning assumptions about women’s mental and physical capabilities, and prejudice against women in the workplace.

Opportunities for leadership expanded in the 1930s, 1940s, and beyond. By that time many more women were being accepted in the halls of academe and receiving a good education. During the World War II years women were hired when not enough men were around to do the needed work. What these special issues celebrate, however, is that women were not simply a part of the emerging and developing information profession; they were leaders and pioneers in it.

This first of the two issues includes stories of some early pioneers of the modern information professions, women who achieved recognition and prominence in their fields before 1950, although the careers of some extended well beyond that date. In a later issue we will offer stories about women who came into their own after 1950. All of the women in these two issues have completed their careers; some are fully retired, others are deceased. Their professional contributions and impact can now be thoughtfully assessed. We rejected several proposals for articles about women who are still professionally active even though in some cases formally retired. We hope that five to ten years from now many of the stories of these remarkable women will be related.

The pioneers featured in this issue shared some noteworthy traits that distinguished them from other women—and many men—in the field. Generally speaking, they lived very long lives—their average age at death was over eighty-six (in 1950 the life expectancy of an American was sixty-eight years). Three of the women lived into their nineties, and the youngest to die, Vivian Harsh, was seventy. The documentary evidence related to the personal lives and personalities of this group of pioneers is thin and uneven, but the essays do give us glimpses of determined, strong-minded, and resolute, even disputatious and hard-headed, women. They had strong egos, high energy, intelligence, and driving determination to make a difference and leave a long legacy.

They were not only very smart, they were also self-avowed intellectuals—brainy women who embraced teaching and learning and believed profoundly in the power of education and culture to transform their own lives and the lives of people they served. They believed passionately that libraries or archives were institutions to preserve and disseminate education and culture as well as serve everyday...