1969 flashback: Impressions of Interlibrary Loan in Minnesota

I interviewed dozens of librarians over the last several years for the Minitex oral history project, all available in the Minitex collection in the Minnesota Digital Library. In honor of our 50th Anniversary, I would like to select and share a few of the stories from that collection. This is the first article in an occasional series published in the Minitex Messenger.

Minitex started as a pilot in 1969, and received full funding in 1971. In previous newsletters, we shared articles about the tools and technology used around that time for interlibrary loan. This week I thought it would be interesting to highlight several perspectives on how libraries shared resources in 1969 and in the early part of the 20th century. Interviewees were each asked how resource sharing worked before and around the time that Minitex started as a pilot program. Click on each link to listen to the full interview in the Minnesota Digital Library.

Roger Sween, Library Cooperation Specialist, State Library Services (1984-2000)
On how library resources were shared growing up in a small town

"When I was relatively young, I suppose I was a teenager, one of the programs that was on WCCO radio was a book discussion that took place. I think it was Sunday mornings. And I would listen to it, and very often I was interested in the book that they were talking about. And one time they were talking about a book that [William Makepeace] Thackeray had written, it was a children’s book. You know, juvenile, I suppose. And I asked the librarian at the public library, you know, I’d like to read that book. And [sighs] they didn’t have it at the public library, which was a small...this was in Granite Falls, Minnesota where I grew up. They didn’t have it. And then she thought a little while and she said, “Well, I’m not supposed to do this, since we can borrow books for adults, but I will just borrow it for myself and I will let you use it. It was Thackeray’s The Rose and the Ring, which is a sort of fantasy novel. So that was my first experience that such a thing as interlibrary loan you know, existed, but wasn’t available to most people."

Jerry Baldwin, Director of the Minnesota Department of Transportation Library (1972-2007)
On how interlibrary loan staff knew who owned what

"I remember in the back of the St. Paul Campus Library there was this thing that absolutely fascinated me. It was the National Union Catalog. It was basically huge green volumes, I don’t know how many of them, several hundred, and it was photocopied, printed photocopies of the actual catalog cards from the largest libraries in the country. And that was just amazing to me. And I knew the people who did the interlibrary loans, and I knew that’s what they worked out of, so if anybody needed anything that wasn’t in our library, they file an interlibrary loan and they go...First thing they do is go to the National Union Catalog, and if they didn’t find it there, they were pretty much out of luck. [Chuckles] And then there was the whole...everything was exchanged by surface mail. So if you took and applied for an interlibrary loan, it would be two weeks to a month at least before something came." 

Mike Kathman, former Director of Libraries, College of St. Benedict and St. John's University 
On strict resource sharing protocols

Well, we always had interlibrary loan, but the interlibrary loan protocols were really stiff. I can remember when I was an undergraduate, I needed to look at a particular book for a paper I was writing on Arthur Kittredge. And it...there was at the University of Chicago, but I had to go there to see it with a letter from my librarian, because I wasn’t a graduate student. So it...the interlibrary loan existed, but the code was pretty strict. And people were really...very reluctant to share their resources. I mean, I think that what really happened in the late 1960s and early 1970s was a real awakening in the sense of saying, you know, we cannot get everything we need for our students or our faculty, individually, but together we can. And I think that’s...that was really, I think what happened, and what really made Minitex a success as other types of experiments." 

Bill Asp, Minnesota State Librarian (1975-1996)
On the Minnesota State Library Services interlibrary loan collection

"The State Library in those days had a collection that was also a backup interlibrary loan collection. And this went on into the early 1970s, I think, where we would send requests to St. Paul and they would fill what they could from their collection. And I think they sent them on next to St. Paul Public without sending them back to us. And at that time a lot of the requests in public libraries seemed to be for fiction and seemed to be for how-to kinds of things that another public library would have. Between what the state would buy and the St. Paul and Minneapolis libraries would supply, that was about it, for what was available at that time. And again, it was all done through the mail, and so it wasn’t a very fast service. But it meant the libraries were used to lending to other libraries, which I think also helped Minitex. It made it possible, I think, for Minitex to develop with some newer ideas." 

Helen Stub, last secretary-treasurer of the Twin City Library Club (1959)
On the Twin City Library Club and interlibrary loan in 1908

"But then they also would have reports on library successes, some of the things that happened in the library world. And these people were movers and shakers. They were in on all...it was just...they’re just like bookends to the history, this cultural history of Minneapolis and St. Paul in those years. And one of the things that they did in 1908 was publish a list of current periodicals in all the libraries in Minneapolis and St. Paul. And then they had a little procedure that they could...it was the beginning of interlibrary loan."