Helen E. Haines

Who was Helen E. Haines?

Helen E. Haines was instrumental in the development of the library science profession, though she herself never worked as a librarian or earned a professional degree. Born in the late Victorian period and educated privately, she worked in publishing after being turned down for a library job. As a protégée of Charles Cutter, she became the managing editor of Library Journal in 1896. She also served as an officer of the American Library Association. In 1906, however, her health broke down, and she eventually had to leave both positions and relocate to southern California. For her service to librarianship, Andrew Carnegie awarded her an annual pension.

Haines recovered her health and established herself as a library educator, writer, and activist in two key areas: support for popular fiction and for intellectual freedom. In 1935, she published Living with Books: The Art of Book Selection, which became a definitive library school text. One contemporary review, while praising Haines' "shrewd and discriminating observation, … acute and illuminating criticism," nevertheless complained that "there is a fearful lot of junk in some of her suggested lists of books". Perhaps the review was objecting to Haines' eclectic tastes; in a 1924 article, for instance, she advocated for "a rounded and representative collection, for readers of varied tastes, sophisticated as well as simple". In her annotated bibliography of Haines' work, Mary Robinson Sive notes that likewise, Haines' 1942 work What's in a Novel "did not receive unqualified critical acclaim because of its disregard of purely literary criteria".