College and Research Libraries Guest Editorial The Early Editors During its half-century existence, College & Research Libraries has been directed by nine editors. They, and their respective terms of office, have been as follows: A. Frederick Kuhlman 1939-1941 Carl M. White 1941-1948 Maurice F. Tauber 1948-1962 Richard B. Harwell 1962-1963 David Kaser 1963-1969 RichardM. Dougherty 1969-1974 Richard D. Johnson 1974-1980 C. James Schmidt 1980-1984 Charles Martell 1984-date All of them were the kind of exciting, tough-minded people who make things happen. All of them were scholars, with seven of them holding Ph.D. degrees, and among them they directed during their careers ten ARL libraries and half a dozen of the nation's good college libraries. It has been my pleasant fortune to have known all of these men quite well, and I could speak highly of each of them. Since all of my predecessors in the editorship have died within the present decade, however, I will use this opportunity instead to post a few brief comments about only those first four and their unique contributions to this assignment. Frederick Kuhlman, an early doctorate in sociology from Chicago, was easily the most memorable of them all. A resourceful man of iron self-discipline and indomitable will, yet with the heart of a pussycat, he manhandled the incipient research library community of the late Depression years into accord with his own clear vision of its potential. In the face of remarkable unenthusiasm from most of the profession, he established this journal almost single-handedly because in his unique prescience he knew that it would be needed. After nourishing it successfully through its suckling years he passed it on, a lively and viable man-child, to his successor thirty months later. Frederick died in 1986 at age 97, perhaps the last surviving Fellow of the once honorific but now defunct American Library Institute. Carl White was trained at the doctoral level in philosophy at Cornell and was an ideal personality to take over C&RL from Frederick. Urbane, patient, and unflappable, yet a rig- orous, demanding scholar/ administrator withal, his lower-key approach was able to gain the journal much wider-spread reception of its essential utility to academic librarianship than Frederick's had been able to elicit. Under Carl's steady hand, it gained in strength and support, and by the time he gave it over to Maury Tauber seven years later it had become firmly rooted into the psyche of ACRL. Following his varied and illustrious career, Carl died in 1983 at age 80. Maury stayed on in the headship of C&RL longer than any other editor, and it was clear throughout the period that he played decisions close to his vest. To Maury an editorship was the last bastion of absolute autocracy left on the face of the earth, yet he did his work 123 124 College & Research Libraries March 1989 well, and few complaints were voiced. He had a keen sense of scholarship derived from his doctoral training in the GLS at Chicago, and for fourteen years he sought with some suc- cess to enhance the research content of the journal. His long tenure assured a uniform high level of editorial quality to its offerings, and when he forsook the journal in 1962, few aca- demic librarians were able to recall an earlier incumbent. Maury died in 1980 at age 72. Rick Harwell was not cut from the same fabric as his predecessors, but he would have been able to move the journal forward nonetheless. As the product of a different educa- tional tradition with a strong bibliophilic cast, he sought to broaden the interest level of its contents and to improve its literary quality. He took over the journal, however, concurrent with his appointment as librarian of Bowdoin College, and he soon found himself unable to fulfill the time demands of two new jobs at the same time. He left the journal little changed after producing only five issues and died in 1988 at the age of 73. With Rick's resignation, then, the first twenty-three of C&RL' s fifty years came to a close. The journal was still performing the same tripartite function for college and university li- brarians envisioned by its founder, but doing it better: namely, carrying the news of the association and publishing the applied scholarship, as well as contributions to the forum, of academic librarianship.lt had played an inestimable role in the evolution of the profes- sion, as Frederick Kuhlman had somehow known it would. By the time of Rick's departure it was almost as difficult as it is today to visualize our professional selves without being able to read and refer to College & Research Libraries. 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