reviews.indd


Book Reviews 

Beck, Clare. The New Woman as Librarian: 
The Career of Adelaide Hasse. Lanham, 
Md.: Scarecrow, 2006. 348p. alk. 
paper, $45 (ISBN 0810851067). LC 
2006-1892. 

Beck, professor emeritus at Eastern 
Michigan University and government 
documents librarian, has compiled a 
comprehensive and gripping biography 
of Adelaide Hasse. Hasse was a well-
known librarian and vocal activist of her 
day. Unlike many of her male contempo-
raries, Hasse did not produce memoirs of 
her life. There are neither library build-
ings nor awards named for her. Hasse 
has simply vanished from the pages of 
history. Only recently have her life and 
achievements been acknowledged by 
modern government documents librar-
ians, including Beck; by American Librar-
ies, which recognized Hasse as one of its 
top 100 twentieth-century library leaders; 
and by the GPO, where she served as the 
first librarian in the Offi  ce of Superinten-
dent of Documents and where she had an 
immediate and long-lasting impact. 

Hasse lived from 1868 to 1953, an 
important time period in the creation of 
libraries in this country. She was born in 
Milwaukee to a hard-working and indus-
trious, fi rst-generation German-American 
family. Her father was a physician who 
decided to educate Hasse at home, which 
was often the accepted practice with 
female children. Hasse never obtained 
any advanced college training or library 
degrees but overcame this handicap to 
become an important library leader. One 
of her most signifi cant accomplishments 
was the original taxonomy for the Super-
intendent of Documents Classification 
System, which is still used in expanded 
form today. Hasse initially designed this 
system to organize and make accessible 
government documents by agency so 
these materials could be eff ectively and 
efficiently used by government officials 

and policymakers, as well as 
average citizens. 

Like a great artist, Hasse’s 
reputation grew after her 
death. Many of her creations 
are still in use today, and oth-
ers have been discovered in 
library archives and vaults. Her achieve-
ments, rather than artworks, are the many 
classifications, bibliographies, indexes, 
and reports that she prepared. From this 
legacy of documentation, including con-
temporaries’ memoirs, internal workplace 
memoranda, FBI files, and various other 
sources, Beck skillfully pieced together a 
cohesive picture of Hasse’s life. 

Hasse was involved with many impor-
tant libraries and library organizations. 
This valuable work furnishes first-hand 
histories of major library systems and 
their organizational cultures and of 
prominent library publications and or-
ganizations, including the Los Angeles 
Public Library, U.S. Government Printing 
Office, New York Public Library, Library 
Journal, Special Libraries Association, 
and the American Library Association. 
Hasse’s circle of colleagues and mentors 
included influential librarians, such as 
Tessa Kelso, John Shaw Billings, Charles 
McCarthy, and John Cotton Dana. Hasse 
was also acquainted with many United 
States presidents and their fi rst ladies, 
philanthropists, and other noteworthy 
figures in society. 

Hasse possessed personal qualities that 
would be highly valued in today’s job mar-
ket. She became an indispensable expert 
in numerous aspects of library operations, 
including management, training, budget-
ing, and marketing. She continually devel-
oped new skills, kept abreast of current 
trends, dealt effectively with change, and 
maintained a global perspective. Hasse 
also knew how to showcase her skills and 
promote herself through publication and 
professional networking. 

198 



Book Reviews 199 

Despite her record of achievements, 
Hasse’s professional life was fi lled with 
obstacles and controversies, and this 
book covers them in detail. Hasse’s abil-
ity to stand out made her a target for 
men who felt threatened by her visibility 
as a new kind of single, ambitious, and 
independent woman, deemed by Beck 
the “New Woman.” (Beck states that the 
phrase “New Woman” was first used in 
Hasse’s day in an interview with famous 
songwriter Jessie Bartlett Davis.) 

Hasse and other women library profes-
sionals of this era endured hostile work-
place environments, sexual harassment, 
the glass ceiling, and other forms of dis-
crimination throughout their careers. This 
biography shows how an enthusiastic, 
hardworking, and energetic individual 
could be kept from reaching her potential, 
was treated unfairly, and suff ered damage 
to her reputation because she did not con-
form to a woman’s role as subordinate. 

Hasse’s sexual harasser was none 
other than library icon Melvil Dewey. 
Chapter nine, entitled “The Crisis,” is 
especially poignant, because it details 
her turbulent downfall and removal after 
twenty-one years as Chief of New York 
Public Library’s Economics Division. It 
is also ironic that Hasse, unlike her male 
counterparts, did not have a pension on 
which to rely in later years, despite the 
fact that she had worked approximately 
sixty years. 

Each of the twelve chapters, as well 
as the prologue and the epilogue, ends 
with an extensive notes section. The text 
is also complemented by a preface, a list 
of abbreviations, acknowledgments, and 
a comprehensive index. Beck compares 
and contrasts her findings with Dee 
Garrison’s Apostles of Culture: The Public 
Librarian and American Society, 1876–1920 
(Wisconsin, 2003), which examined the 
impact of historical events on current li-
brarianship and society’s view of libraries. 
It should also be noted that Beck penned 
an earlier essay about Adelaide Hasse 
for Suzanne Hildenbrand’s Reclaiming the 
American Library Past: Writing the Women 

In (Ablex, 1996). Beck is to be praised for 
this impressive and long overdue biog-
raphy of Adelaide Hasse.—Caroline Geck, 
Kean University. 

Briet, Suzanne. What Is Documentation? 
English Translation of the Classic French 
Text. Trans. and ed. Ronald E. Day 
and Laurent Martinet with Hermina 
G.B. Anghelescu. Lanham, Md.: Scare-
crow, 2006. 84p. alk. paper, $25 (ISBN 
0810851092). LC 2005-23628. 

In 1951 Suzanne Briet published Qu’est-ce 
que la documentation?, a forty-eight page 
pamphlet consisting of three essays that 
defi ned the field of documentation and 
placed it within the scholarly context of 
the era. The translators of this English 
edition argue Briet’s work continues to be 
relevant because it offers compelling al-
ternatives to the positivistic att itudes that 
the translators believe pervade today’s 
information science. 

Briet was born in 1894 and qualified 
as a librarian in 1924. At the time she 
published these essays, she was chief of 
the reference service at the Bibliotheque 
Nationale in Paris. She had already been 
heavily involved in the development of 
the documentation profession, including 
being one of the founders and leaders 
of the Union Francaise des Organismes 
de Documentation. However, only three 
years aft er publishing Qu’est-ce que la docu-
mentation?, Briet took early retirement and 
until her 1989 death pursued numerous 
nonlibrary interests, including writing po-
etical, historical, and biographical works. 
Michael Buckland contributes a bibliog-
raphy of Briet’s writings and a brief but 
interesting biography. As Buckland points 
out, Briet’s three essays are manifestos, the 
fi rst defining the boundaries of the field, 
the second distinguishing documentation 
from traditional librarianship, and the 
third examining societal needs for vigor-
ous, proactive documentation services. 

Briet defines a document as “any con-
crete or symbolic indexical sign, preserved 
or recorded toward the ends of represent-
ing, of reconstituting, or of proving a