Sanford Berman - Not in My Library!: Bermans Bag Columns from <IB>The Unabashed Librarian</IB>, 2000-2013

ADDITIONAL WORKS BY SANFORD BERMAN AND FROM MCFARLAND

Prejudices and Antipathies: A Tract on the LC Subject Heads Concerning People (1993)

Worth Noting: Editorials, Letters, Essays, an Interview, and Bibliography (1988)

SANFORD BERMAN AND JAMES P. DANKY TOGETHER EDITED THE SERIES

Alternative Library Literature: A Biennial Anthology.THE VOLUMES COVERED19841985 (Oryx, 1986)AND FROM MCFARLAND:19861987 (1988); 19881989; 19901991; 19921993; 19941995; 19961997; 19981999; and 20002001 (2002)

Foreword by Maurice J. Freedman

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina, and London

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

e-ISBN: 978-1-4766-1351-2

2013 Sanford Berman. All rights reserved

Foreword 2013 Maurice J. Freedman

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

On the cover: Sanford Berman in his home office, 1999 (photograph by Tony Nelson); quotations from Sandy; hand painted tempera background (iStockphoto/Thinkstock)

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com

To the memory of these inspiring
and supportive friends and colleagues:

Fay Blake

Bill Katz

Noel Peattie

Marvin Scilken

Celeste West

Charles Willett

by Maurice J. Freedman

I rst met Sanford Berman via his letters from Africa that were published in Library Journal in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They were strongly politicalif memory serves me rightand most especially they were critical of Library of Congress cataloging practices.

I personally became involved with him later. In 1972, I was head of technical services at the Hennepin County (Minnesota) Library, which at the time had its headquarters in the third and fourth oors of the Minneapolis Public Library. The HCL head cataloger left for California and I needed to replace her. I called two close friends of mine for recommendations, Art Plotnik and Patricia Glass Schuman. At the time Art was editor of the Wilson Library Bulletin (now defunct) and subsequently editor of American Libraries prior to his retirement. Pat had an editorial position at R.R. Bowker (a vastly changed company now, which also dropped the R.R.); more recently Pat sold Neal-Schuman Publishers (of which she was president and co-founder) to the American Library Association (ALA).

I asked both of them if there was anyone they knew or could recommend to help me ll the vacancy. Surprisingly, they each, quite separately and without any mutual consultation, recommended Sandy. I said that I knew his politics were good from the letters he sent to LJ, but I wondered if he knew anything about cataloging. I pretty clearly remember Pat saying that he was brilliant. I know both gave him a strong recommendation.

In January 1972, computing was mainframe-based and required people with strong systems and programming abilities to make them work. At Hennepin I was fortunate enough to have Jerry Pennington, formerly of the Library of Congress MARC Project, a great programmer as well as librarian, who was the HCL computer maven, and assistant head of technical services. Back then the big annual computer conference was the Joint Computer Conference, which was held in Anaheim, California, that year. I asked Jerry to meet with Sandy in Los Angeles while he was at the conference to see if Sandy was qualied for the cataloging position. When Jerry, a relatively taciturn guy, returned from the conference he told me that Sandy would be ne. I dont remember getting much more from Jerry, but knowing him very well, I knew that that was a strong recommendation.

I subsequently called Sandy to see if hed be interested in the position. I was pretty sure he would be, having been told by Pat or Art that Sandy was unemployed, and that he and his wife, Lorraine, and their two children, Jill and Paul, were living in someones basement in L.A. We chatted a while. He said that he was interested in the job. I told him Id get back to him. I called him back and offered him the job. I asked him how much he wanted. He said $10,000 or $11,000, maybe. I told him that I would hire him but it had to be for $12,000+ dollars. I made that decision because I didnt want him to be paid any less than someone in the public services department in a comparable position. His response was something to the effect of, When do I start?

Fast forward to my meeting him at the airport in the middle of winter on the Minnesota tundra. He and his family were dressed in clothes that were L.A.s best approximation of what winter apparel should be in Minnesota. They all moved into my house until they could nd a place of their own. It worked out very well. My children, Jenna (now Director of Research & Instruction services and Zine Librarian, Barnard College Library) and Susan (a psychiatric social worker at Hunterdon [N.J.] Medical Center), were roughly the age of his children and our families became lifelong friends.

Getting back to library matters, I had sent Sandy the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, and Jean Weihs book, Non-Book Materials: The Organization of Integrated Collections. I asked him if he could begin working on rules for cataloging non-book materials. The Hennepin County Library in the early 1970s was undergoing a revolution in library buildings, collections, and service, which included a major commitment to audiovisual materials. I was surprised when Sandy showed up with a completed set of rules specically applicable to the cataloging and classication of non-book titles. These rules were instituted and applied virtually at once.

There was so much that was done at HCL during the early 1970s. (My tenure was 19691974; Sandy stayed on much longer.)

Robert H. Rohlf, a world-class library buildings consultant, was the director of HCL from 1969 through almost all of my tenure (I started a couple of months before Bob arrived, but he was there many years after I left for the New York Public Library), and a good chunk of Sandys time. To Bobs credit, he encouraged the hundred owers to bloom. In technical services, I was the division manager; Jerry Pennington was the assistant division manager (and also immediately responsible for systems and programming); Sandy was the head cataloger; and, elsewhere, Don Roberts, the great librarian media advocate, innovator, and practitioner, was responsible for the introduction and use of a broad range of media equipment, collections, and services. (Don was the guy who coined the phrase regarding the worship of library buildings: the edice complex.)

Bob Rohlf was supportive of what we did, much of which had never been done before and probably has never been done since. Of particular note, the automated book catalog we produced was a complex effort that was innovative in a variety of ways. Originally, HCL was going to use the series of programs that were being developed at the University of Californias Institute of Library Research (ILR) for the purpose of converting all of the universitys campuses catalogs to the MARC format and then producing from that database a printed book catalog.