Chapter 14. I Am Asked to Change Jobs with No Increase in Pay and Promoted to Another Job in Less Than Two Years

In early October of 1949, I received a telephone call from Mr. Mumford, who was now director of the Library System requesting that I come to his office for a conference right away. I was surprised and a little apprehensive, wondering what might have created the need for me to be summoned to the director’s office in such a hurry? I felt I was doing well at the Fleet Branch’ I did not know of any complaints about my work there. Never-the-less, I was on pins and needles as I drove downtown to the Main Library on that day. When I entered Mr. Mumford’s office, I found Miss Slater, my supervisor with him! Now, I was really worried. Mr. Mumford invited me to sit in a chair across from his desk. By this time, I did not know what to expect. When Mr. Mumford finally spoke, he said, “Eddie, how would you like to be Branch Librarian at Eastman Branch over on the West Side? Miss Slater has informed me that that position will be open at the end of this month. She and I feel that you are the person to head that branch! You have done such a good job at the Fleet Branch.” He added, “this is a lateral transfer with no pay increase!”

I was speechless for a second or two, however, I soon found myself saying, “I am very happy at Fleet Branch. I like the community and I am so involved there. The people there like me. I have been there only three years. I feel that I have a lot more that I can accomplish there!” Mr. Mumford replied, “Why don’t you take a day or so to think this over and let me know at the end of the week whether you agree to make this change or not.” With that, the conference was over. Miss Slater asked me to join her in her office to discuss the offer further with me. She advised me to accept the new position, saying that if I were to refuse this offer, that Mr. Mumford might not think of me again in the future, when a promotion might be involved.

I left Miss Slater’s office with mixed feelings about the offer to move to the Eastman Branch. My practical self was telling me to accept the offer, after all even though there would be no pay increase, our apartment which was located at 10232 Lorain Avenue would be a mere ten minute walk from the Eastman Branch which was’ located at the corner of 115th Street and Lorain Avenue. I would be saving the cost of gasoline, wear and tear on the car and on myself, etc., etc.

My discussion of the matter with Grace, ended with her saying, as always, “Ed, do whatever you feel is best for you, and what ever decision you make will be fine with me.” When I spoke with father about it, he presented me with a point of view, that I had not considered. He asked, “If you go to the new branch library, will you be getting a different type of experience than you are now getting at the Fleet Branch? Will you have to meet new challenges that will be better for you professionally? Forget the salary!” The answer to his questions were “yes.” I would be getting experience in administering a busier library with a larger circulation and larger and more cosmopolitan reading public. There was no doubt that I would grow professionally. At the end of the week, I accepted the job.

On October 31, 1949, I assumed the position of Branch Librarian at the Eastman Branch. Although it was a lateral transfer from the Fleet Branch, without any increase in salary, I did enjoy being close to home. I was able to walk to work, and even on occasion walked home at noon for lunch, which saved me the expense of transportation and some lunch money, as well as wear and tear on the car and me physically.

Having ones place of work so close to home was helpful in case of family emergencies as well. I can remember one case in particular when I had to rush home from work shortly before lunch time one day, to rescue my son. On this particular day, Grace had returned from the grocery store with son Edward, who was about a year and a half old at the time. Routinely, as she had done many times before, Grace left the loaded grocery handcart at the foot of the apartment stairway, carried Edward upstairs to the apartment and deposited him inside before going down to get the groceries. As always, she had placed the door keys on the three shelf book case inside, near the doorway. Leaving the door open, she hurried down to retrieve the groceries, as she had done countless times before. However, this time, something different happened! Edward decided to shut the door! You guessed it! The I Am Asked to Change Jobs 93 door locked shut. Grace was at wits end, there she was outside with the groceries and no key to get in, and Edward, alone doing his own thing. Grace was worried sick because she had just placed a small ham in the oven because she was expecting me home for lunch. She feared Edward might open the oven and hurt himself.

Luckily, Grace was able to use the telephone in the doctor’s office next door to call me at the Library up the street. I raced down the street to the rescue. That was a day I had left my key at home! Foolishly, I decided not to call the fire department. I opted to go to the back of our building, climb to the top of a garage adjacent to the building via a tall garbage can. With Grace’s help, I pulled the garbage can up to the roof of the garage. By standing on the can, I was able to pull myself up to the window well located outside of one of our bedroom windows. When I got there, the window was locked! I broke the window and got in to find Edward sitting on the floor in the living room, playing with his toys! That was a day when I took a long lunch hour. After all that, I had to take a shower, change my clothes, get a quick lunch before I went back to work, “Oh! Yes!” After work that evening, I had to replace the window I had broken!

I had the pleasure of serving the Eastman Branch Library community until May 14, 1951. During that time, I continued doing the Cleveland Public Library’s radio programs and continued to serve as one of the Library’s Great Books Discussion Leaders. As I had expected, I found the Eastman Branch Library readers a real challenge. They were voracious readers, and used their neighborhood library as families. The building was too small. Evenings found every reading table filled with people who were there for a purpose.

The children’s room was wall-to-wall with children and their parents, seeking help for school assignments. The Adult Room was always bursting at the seams with adults doing serious and recreational reading and young people doing homework. Again, as in my previous assignments, I felt that I was making a contribution to the community and felt the satisfaction of knowing that I was making a difference in the lives of the people I was serving.

Sometime early in the Spring of 1951, Mr. Mumford telephoned again, and invited me. to join him in a meeting at headquarters the next day. When I arrived in his office the next morning, I found that Ms. Loraine Slater, my supervisor, was already there along with a man in his early forties, whom I had not met or seen before. He was tall, slender and friendly in manner.

Mr. Mumford introduced him as Ed Colburn. Mr. Mumford advised that Mr. Colburn had been hired to reorganize the Book Order, the Catalog, and the Book Repair Departments into a new Department to be called The Processing Department, that the three former departments were to become divisions of the new department, all under the supervision of Mr. Colburn, who was to streamline and make more efficient the activities of those three units. I was informed that Mr. Colburn had come to us from Northwestern University Library, where he had been Director of Processing. During all this, I was wondering where did I fit into all of this?

Mr. Mumford explained that the incumbent Heads of the Order and Catalog units were to continue to head their units, however, the Head of the Book Repair Unit had opted to retire, leaving the new position open. I was stunned. He was now asking me to change jobs again! And this time in a part of library work that I had never done before!

I thanked Mr. Mumford for the offer, but said that I had no experience in book repair work and that I had never considered processing as something I would want to do when I was in Library School, that I had opted for public service and reference and research when I was in the Graduate School of Library Science at Western Reserve University. In fact, I had not ever considered myself as a behind the scenes person when it came to doing library work, and book repair and processing of library materials to me would be working behind the scenes! I told Mr. Mumford that I liked people and wanted to serve people directly as a reference and research person, that I wanted to be out where the action is! Furthermore, I was happy in my work at the Eastman Branch Library!

Mr. Mumford’s reply was, “Eddie, you can learn to do this, just as I did in my career.” A good part of his career had been in processing in the New York Public Library and he had spent a year in the early forties organizing the processing Department of the Library of Congress. Both Ms. Slater and Mr. Colburn supported him in his position on the matter. The conference ended with my agreeing to think the offer over for a few days before making up my mind one way or the other.

This was real difficult decision for me to make. It was much more difficult than the earlier decision to move from the Fleet Branch to the Eastman Branch. This move would require not only changing my service specialty, but also would have me working in a field in which I had had no training or experience. In addition, I was being asked to take over the direction and supervision of a division with a larger staff than I had ever supervised, a staff that was being absorbed into a new department, under a new department head, who had been brought in from outside, a staff of thirty-three women and one man who had worked under the supervision of a woman division head, who was retiring after forty years of service!

As was my custom, I talked the matter over first with my Grace. This time, she was intrigued with the idea of my trying a new field of library science. Without hesitation, she advised me to accept the offer. She felt that this experience in the processing area would not only be challenging for me but would also broaden my experience in Library Administration. I still was not sold on the idea because this move would also mean going back downtown to work. I would be giving up the convenience of being able to walk to work from home and return to the daily hassle of having to drive to and from work, with the added cost of gasoline and car maintenance. Above all, I liked being a Branch Librarian. I liked the hustle and bustle of a busy neighborhood library. I liked helping people with their reference and research requests and with their recreational reading needs. I kept saying to myself, “I am a people person, not a behind the scenes person!”

When I discussed the matter with father, he reacted like Grace. He too advised me to accept the offer and for the same reasons that Grace had mentioned, however, he presented me with a new thought or proposition to make to Mr. Mumford in connection with his offer. Father advised that I should accept the position of Chief of the Book Repair Division on the condition that I would not be stuck in that position forever, that I get Mr. Mumford to promise that after a reasonable period of time, I would be returned to some area of public service in the Library System! That made good sense to me so I told father that I would sleep on the idea and make up my mind on the matter in a day or so.

I was still not sure whether I could accept a position in an area that I had had no experience! Then a new idea entered my mind. I decided that in addition to accepting the position on the condition that I be guaranteed that I would not become a permanent fixture in the Book Repair Division, that I ask Mr. Mumford to also agree to allow me to make arrangements with August Alpers, the only local Library Bookbinder in Cleveland to spend my free Saturdays for at least two. months in his bindery so that I could learn the art of bookbinding and book repair. In so doing, I felt that I would be better prepared to supervise the thirty-three women and one man in the Book Repair Division. When I presented my counter-offer to Mr. Mumford, he agreed and I was committed to leaving public service for awhile.

On May 14, 1951, I became a part of the new Processing Department as Chief of the Book Repair Division of the Cleveland Public Library. I had been charged to bring the operation of the division into the twentieth century. No attempt had been made over the years to mechanize or to introduce new methods or modern materials in the repair or preservation of library materials. Torn pages in books were still being mended in the old fashioned way. The book menders were laboriously repairing torn pages using the age old library paste, brush and Japanese tissue, a time consuming method. We stopped using that method and time worn materials, and began using transparent mending tape (not scotch tape), which was now available from Library supply houses. We began using plastic glues, which were also now available from suppliers for tipping in missing pages and for repairing and/or replacing the spines and covers of books worthy of such treatment. We introduced new equipment such as the commercial type Singer Sewing Machine which was being used by Library Binderies for binding thin books, for over-sewing books under a half inch in thickness. This enabled us to do that type of bookbinding in our own shop instead of sending such books to the commercial binderies, thus saving the Library a good portion of its bookbinding budget to cover the increasing costs of having our larger books, periodicals and newspapers bound by the commercial binderies. This equipment and the plastic glues also enabled us to bind those periodicals and serials, which for years had been placed on the bookshelves, secured only by the practice of tying I Am Asked to Change Jobs them together between two pieces of binder’s board with the age old pink tape. This was not only a better way of preserving such materials but also prevented the loss of individual issues of such materials as was common before, when such items were only tied together.

We also changed the system of sending materials to the commercial binderies. For years all items sent in from the branches and divisions of the library earmarked for commercial binding were sent to the binderies after a cursory review by the Head of the Book Repair Division or her assistant, without regard to any type of budget planning. As a result, by May or June of each year the bookbinding monies would run out. This meant that large back logs of books to be bound would build up during the last six or seven months of each year! We introduced a monthly quota system, with a certain amount of money to be spent each month. In this way each unit of the Library knew how many volumes they could send each month. This meant that a controlled amount went to the binderies every month and we were assured that our bookbinding funds would be available to cover our binding needs for every month of the year! This was good for the Library and the bookbinders. Our branches and divisions were assured of having some bookbinding done each month and the bookbinders could depend on a planned flow of work for their shops. It was no longer feast or famine for either. The day when the Library units and the bookbinders would have a feast of bookbinding for the first five or six months of the year, and then starve for such work during the last six or seven months of the year, as had been the case in years past, was finally over.

My tour of duty in the Book Repair Division did bring me new challenges. It not only honed my skills as an administrator and ability to direct and supervise a large staff made up of diverse personalities and abilities but also gave me invaluable experience in the business end of library work. Yes, I learned the art of book repair and binding from August Alpers at the General Bookbinding Company on my free Saturdays at the beginning of my tour as Chief of the Book Repair Division. I learned how to handle and control a good size bookbinding budget efficiently and wisely, making
sure that we not only got the most for the Library’s money but also received a quality product!

I became involved and participated in the binding committees of the American Library Association and The American Binding Institute and became totally involved in the world of bookbinding. To my surprise after I had been in the field about a year or two, the Cleveland Plain Dealer sent a reporter with a photographer to interview me about my work in the field. An article encompassing several pages with pictures appeared in a subsequent Sunday Edition in what was then known as the paper’s rotogravure or magazine section. I was amused to see that the article chose to dub me as “The Book Doctor.” The pictures of my staff and I at work were in beautiful color. You may have guessed by now, I was thoroughly wrapped up in my behind the scenes work and loving it! I had also gained a new skill. I had learned how to write specifications and contracts.

It was at this point in my life and career that my Grace gave me a second son. At 1:00 P.M. on September 30, 1952, while at work at my’ desk, I received a telephone call from Myrtle Malone whose home was two doors away from our home, advising me that she had taken my Grace to St. John Hospital, that the baby was on the way! After informing my staff that I was leaving for the day, I lost no time getting to the hospital. Not long after my arrival, Paul Alan was born. Grace had delivered quickly and well, just as she had done with Edward, our first born. We had now become a family of four! Both sides of the family were elated when I reported that the new addition to our family and Grace had come through the delivery perfectly and well, Father, after voicing his congratulations, said, “You also have now become rich in family.”