| Creator | Leonard, Ruth S. (Ruth Shaw), 1906-2008 |
| Title | Ruth Shaw Leonard papers |
| Dates | 1920-1995 |
| Identification | MS 16 |
| Quantity | 4.0 linear feet (8 manuscript containers) |
| Collection Abstract | The Ruth Shaw Leonard papers consist of correspondence, reports, minutes, student papers, course material, photographs and slides, awards, speeches, and printed material which document Leonard's long career as a librarian and an educator of library science. The papers also reflect years of great movement in the education of librarians and in particular, special librarians. |
| Historical Abstract | Ruth Shaw Leonard, librarian and leader in the library profession and in library science education, was born in Boston, Massachusetts on August 24, 1906. Leonard received a bachelor of science in library science from Simmons College in 1928 and later received a master of science from Columbia University School of Library Service in 1944. She had a long career in education; first as an instructor and then later as an associate professor of library science at Simmons College. In 1938, Leonard developed the first course at Simmons College in the organization and administration of special libraries, an area of interest in which she would later be recognized as an authority. She was an active and influential member of the Special Libraries Association and was inducted into their hall of fame in 1971. Leonard died on November 29, 2008 at the Epoch General Health Care Center in Weston, Massachusetts. |
| Language | Material in English. |
| Location | Collection may be stored offsite. Please contact Archives staff for more information. |
Collection is open; some restrictions apply.
Copyright for materials resides with the creators of the items in question, unless otherwise designated.
Please contact the College Archivist with requests to publish any material from the collection.
[Identification of item: description and date], Ruth Shaw Leonard papers, MS 16, Simmons College Archives, Boston, MA, USA.
The papers were transferred by Ruth Shaw Leonard to the College Archives in several groups between 1979 and 1992.
Accession number: 78.070, 79.010, 80.027, 84.020, 84.034, 85.037, 88.038, 90.038, 92.109, and 95.059
Processed by Claude Saba, May 1985
Supervised by Megan Sniffin-Marinoff, May 1985
Processing update by Megan Sniffin-Marinoff, August 1990
Processing update by Angela Reddin, January 1996
This collection guide was encoded as part of the LEADS project by Jennifer Quan, August 2013
Ruth Shaw Leonard, librarian and leader in the library profession and in library science education, was born in Boston, Massachusetts on August 24, 1906, the eldest of the four children of Fred B. and Mary Francis (Shaw) Leonard. Leonard graduated from Brockton High School in 1924 and received her S. B. in library science from Simmons College in 1928.(1) While attending Simmons, she worked as Assistant Circulation Librarian for the Brockton Public Library, 1926-1928.
Upon graduation, Leonard began her career in education as a teaching assistant for the Simmons College School of Library Science, a position she held from 1928 to 1930. During the summer of 1929, she worked as a cataloger for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 1930, she withdrew from her teaching assistantship at Simmons to accept the position of research director at the Bentley School of Accounting and Finance (now Bentley University), Waltham, Massachusetts, a position she held until 1937. While research director, Leonard worked with Harry Clark Bentley to compile a bibliography of books on bookkeeping by American authors. The result, Bibliography of Works on Accounting by American Authors by Leonard and Bentley, was published in 1934-1935.(2)
In the summer of 1937, she worked again as a cataloger for MIT before joining the faculty of Simmons College School of Library Science as an instructor that fall. In 1938, Leonard developed the first course at Simmons College in the organization and administration of special libraries. In the early years of this course, students were expected to have an undergraduate major in the field in which they intended to specialize. The course was organized so that each student chose the type of organization in which she would like to specialize, with assignments directed toward the administration, organization, and service of that particular institution.(3) As an instructor, Leonard was also responsible for teaching a two semester course in classification. Her responsibilities extended to teaching the first and advanced levels of cataloging and classification when she was made assistant professor in 1941.
During the war years, Leonard was involved with civil defense. From 1942 to 1943, she was chair of the Organization of Civil Defense Library Services, Massachusetts Commission on Public Safety. As a member of the Civilian Defense Committee of the Boston Chapter of the Special Libraries Association, she compiled several bibliographies including those on aerial photography in the detection of camouflage and blackouts.(4)
In 1944, Leonard received her M.S. degree from the Columbia University School of Library Service.(5) In that same year, she served as a consultant to the School of Nursing, Deaconess Hospital (now Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center), Boston, in the organization of its library. This experience was the starting point of Leonard's lifelong interest in nursing school libraries. In the following year she organized a library and was consultant for the Massachusetts Federation of Taxpayers Association, Inc., Boston. In the summer of 1945 she directed a workshop, "Libraries for Schools of Nursing," at Simmons College. Nine years later, she again directed a summer workshop on "Libraries for Schools of Nursing," this time at the University of Rhode Island. In 1961, Leonard was an instructor at the New England Hospital Assembly. In 1969, she was a consultant for the School of Nursing Librarians of Greater Boston. The following year she was a consultant to the Peter Bent Brigham School of Nursing Library Committee, Boston. She reviewed and contributed to the appendices of the draft document "Standards for Library Services in Health Care Institutions" for the American Library Association Hospital Library Standards Committee. Her activities with health science libraries continued after her retirement; in 1973 she conducted two one-day workshops for the New England Regional Medical Library Service on "Management of the Small Health Science Library: Planning, Operation and Control."
Leonard was appointed associate professor at Simmons College in 1948 and maintained this position until her retirement in 1971. During these years she taught a number of courses in addition to those mentioned previously, such as: "Technical Process for Special Libraries"; "Introduction to Librarianship"; "Technical Services"; "Research and Bibliographical Methods in Subject Fields"; "The Library as a Social Institution"; "Special Library Field Experience"; "Seminar in Current Issues in Librarianship"; and other seminars and independent study projects.(6) In a 1978 interview with Margaret Dempsey, Leonard remarked that teaching her course in special libraries was the most rewarding part of her career.(7)
In her thirty-four years as a faculty member, Leonard served the College and the School in a number of capacities. She was chair of several committees, including those for Orientation, Open House, Educational Policy, and the Subcommittee to Study the Honor Code. She was a charter member of the Faculty Council. When the School of Library Science became a graduate school, she served on a number of School committees, among these as chair of the Committee on Rank and Tenure and member of the Graduate Student Committee.(8)
Upon her retirement, in consideration of her emeritus status, Mary Ramon Kinney, associate professor of library science and chair of the Committee on Rank and Tenure for 1970, had these reflections on Leonard's years at Simmons: "No one on the faculty has been more dedicated to a teaching career. As one of the first teachers of special librarianship she is recognized nationally as an authority in the field. Graduates of the School who are now librarians throughout the world highly respect her and are proud to have had her as their teacher. Current students interested in cataloging and special librarianship careers are eager to get into her classes. Her unusual capacity for analysis and synthesis of materials in the classroom is well known."(9)
Outside her teaching career at Simmons, Leonard was extremely active in professional organizations including the Special Libraries Association (SLA), the Boston Group of Catalogers and Classifiers, New England Technical Services Librarians and the American Library Association. She was most active and influential in the SLA. She wrote the Standards for Special Libraries in 1964 for which she received the SLA's Professional Award in 1965. In 1971 Leonard was inducted into the SLA's Hall of Fame.
After her retirement in 1971, Leonard was much honored and often sought after as a consultant. In 1971, she received the Simmons College School of Library Science Alumni Achievement Award and in 1973 she became the first recipient of the Simmons College Florence Sargent Award, a distinction awarded at the discretion of the president of Simmons College to a retired woman faculty member. In 1994, Leonard received an honorary doctorate from the Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science.
Leonard remained active as a volunteer in a number of libraries, especially as the work related to her new interest: archives. She began her archival training in the summer of 1968, when she was a student at the 7th Annual Institute of Archival Administration and Related Fields of Regional, State and Local History, sponsored by the University of Denver, Department of History and the School of Librarianship. From 1972 to 1984 Leonard was the archivist for the Simmons College Alumnae Association. From 1972 to 1975, she volunteered one morning per week at the Advent School in Boston reorganizing their catalog, developing a subject heading system, and reclassifying some sections of the school's library. From 1972 to 1976, Leonard helped reorganize the library and archives of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, and later continued as a consultant on the operation of the library of the diocese, volunteering one day a week during the academic year. From 1972 to 1992, Leonard volunteered as the archivist for the Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross and was also a member of their Archives Committee. Starting in 1972 Leonard spent at least part of each summer at the Adelynrood Conference Center as a volunteer in the library and as a member of their library committee. Leonard also volunteered one day a week at the Simmons College Archives, working on such projects as indexes to the minutes of the Alumnae Association and the President's Annual Reports.
Leonard died on November 29, 2008 at the Epoch General Health Care Center in Weston, Massachusetts.(10)
The Ruth Shaw Leonard papers includes correspondence, reports, minutes, student papers, course material, photographs, slides, awards, speeches, and printed material. Leonard's bibliographic work with Harry C. Bentley, president of the Bentley School of Accounting (now Bentley University), on American authors of books on accounting is well documented. Included is correspondence with bibliographer Charles Evans about William Mitchell (1763-1854), first American author of a work on bookkeeping. Two of Leonard's lifelong interests, nursing and health services libraries and special libraries, are also well documented, particularly her contribution in the area of professional standards for the Special Libraries Association. The papers of Leonard's career span and reflect years of great movement in the education of librarians and special librarians. Changes at the Simmons College School of Library Science in the curriculum and administration of what started as an undergraduate program for women and became a graduate coeducational program are reflected in Leonard's correspondence with students, alumni, and colleagues as well as in her course materials.
These and related materials may be found under the following headings in online catalogs.
Collection is arranged into 9 series:
Original photographs moved to the photograph collection.
Arranged by subject.
Materials include correspondence, announcements, recommendations, and press releases related to Leonard's childhood, professional duties, honors and awards. Box 8 contains oversized materials.
Some folders contain correspondence on salary and loan matters and have restricted access.
Consult the College Archivist for further information.
Box 1
This folder is restricted
This folder is restricted.
Box 8
Arranged chronologically.
The correspondence and reports relate primarily to Leonard's academic and professional activities. Included are invitations to author a work, congratulations on academic and professional achievement, and requests to chair meetings and committees. The bulk of the correspondence is from her former foreign and U.S. students writing for advice or recommendations, and from colleagues. The correspondence records changing attitudes towards librarians, librarianship, and specifically, special librarianship during the years of Leonard's tenure in the field.
Some materials related to the Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science and to people still working in the field are restricted.
Consult the College Archivist for further information.
Box 1
Box 1
Box 2
Arranged by course.
This series includes correspondence, course descriptions, syllabi, reading lists, assignments, and other general course materials created by Leonard. The bulk of the correspondence concerns special libraries. Also included in this series are a few samples of student papers from the 1960s.
Box 2
Box 3
Box 4
Box 2
Box 3
Box 3
Box 3
Box 4
Box 4
Box 4
Box 4
Box 4
Original arrangement.
This series consists of records related to Leonard's work as chair of the Special Libraries Association Professional Standards Committee Project. The project records consist of correspondence in the form of memoranda and reports. Included in the working papers is a questionnaire, with replies, concerning the use of standards.
Box 5
Arranged by program.
Records in this series contain correspondence, outlines of workshop programs, evaluations, and lists of participants. The first folder contains information on the Institute on American Public Librarianship, a program for foreign libraries to learn about practices in public libraries in the United States.
Box 5
Arranged by colleague.
Correspondence and tributes to colleagues Leonard held in high esteem. Records document Leonard's concern with public recognition for her colleagues' work.
Box 5
Arranged chronologically.
This series includes notes of speeches, handwritten and typed, given to students, alumni, and colleagues.
Box 6
Box 6
Arranged by publication.
This series includes Leonard's notes and correspondence with Harry C. Bentley on The Bibliography of Works on Accounting by American Authors; correspondence and a manuscript of a monograph, "The Library Profession"; Leonard's master's thesis in its draft and its original form; and various reprints on copyright and other library subjects
Box 6
End of Bentley correspondence subseries.
Box 6
Box 7
End of Masters Thesis subseries.
Photographs and slides of Simmons College student life, circa 1924-1928, and portraits of Leonard and her foreign and United States students and colleagues at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science-Simmons College and elsewhere.
Photographs are described separately. More information is available in the Simmons College Archives.