A Life in the Library
Born in London, Ontario in 1887, Lillian Helena Smith graduated from the University of Toronto in 1910 and went on to train as a children’s librarian at the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (Lillian Smith, 1983).
X - Picture Books
Z - Little Children’s Books
A - Fairy Tales
B - Legends
C - Myths
D - Epic Heroes
E - Exploration
F - Famous People
G - History
H - Geography and Description
K - Natural History
L - Science
N - Practical Science
O - Things to Do
P - Art
Q - Music
R - Plays (drama)
S - Poetry
T - The Bible
W - Standard Fiction
|This system worked well with the collections of her day and was adopted by several other libraries. It was not until the 1960s that its usefulness was questioned. Since children would eventually have to learn the Dewey classification scheme in order to use high school libraries, there was prolonged discussion about which system to use. When the Toronto Board of Education decided to use the Dewey system, most of the public libraries outside of Toronto followed that move. During the 1970s, the Toronto Public Library began using the Dewey classification system for nonfiction, although the Smith classification was retained for picture books. Its use was eventually eliminated altogether in 1999 (Miller, 2003).
She was also actively involved in guiding the development of librarianship as a profession. She served on the Executive Board of the American Library Association from 1932 to 1936, and chaired the Children’s Services Division of the ALA in the 1920s and 1940s. In Canada, she was instrumental in establishing the Canadian Association of Children’s Librarians (Lillian Helena Smith, 1983).
In the year after her retirement, the American Library Association published her book The Unreluctant Years which had a profound influence on children's librarians. Smith gave a broad overview of the entire field of children's literature and wrote about the profound importance of books to children. The Unreluctant Years received glowing reviews and was widely used in library school courses and in-service training. In addition to being widely distributed throughout the English speaking world, The Unreluctant Years has been translated into Japanese and Italian (Miller, 2003).
In 1962, Smith became the first Canadian to receive the Clarence Day Award for “outstanding work in encouraging the love of books and reading.” The award citation, in part, read: “The Unreluctant Years...is a guidepost for librarians. It is used in library schools as widely separated as Australia and Louisiana. The relationship of children’s books to universal literature, standards of judging books for children, the belief that only the best is good enough and that children are unreluctant readers if they have the best to read, are all expressed in this distinguished volume” (Lillian H. Smith, 1962).
Through her long career, Smith exerted a profound influence on the development of children's librarianship. Her reputation was international and many librarians from Great Britain, Europe, and Asia came to work under her direction at Boys' and Girls' House. Her work was recognized in 1949 when Edgar Osborne, county librarian of Derbyshire, England, gave his collection of early children's books to the Toronto Public Library because of its high standards of children's work. In 1962, the Lillian H. Smith Collection of notable children's books from 1910 to the present was founded as a tribute to her (Miller, 2003).
Lillian Helena Smith died in 1983 at the age of 95.
Batchelder, M. (1982). June 1982 Horn Book [Letter to the editor]. Horn Book, 58, 585.
Heras, T. (1999). Lillian’s legacy. Horn Book, 75 (5), 630-633.
Johnston, M.E. (1982). Lillian H. Smith. Horn Book, 58 (3), 325-332.
Lillian H. Smith Honoured. (1962). Ontario Library Review, 46, 164.
Lillian Helena Smith 1887-1983. (1983). School Library Journal, 29, 13.
Miller, Marilyn L. (Ed.). Pioneers and leaders in library services to youth: A biographical dictionary. Westport, Conn.: Libraries Unlimited, 2003.