College and Research Libraries


W I L L I A M H. CARLSON 

Ida Angeline Kidder: 
Pioneer Western Land-Grant Librarian 

The subject of this paper was appointed librarian of Oregon State 
Agricultural College in 1908, a position in which she served for twelve 
years. Her work in the early organizing of the library, as a teacher 
of library use, in guiding young readers in their search for inspiration 
and stimulation, and as a hospital librarian during World War I, are 
described. 

I N 1908 the library of Oregon State 
Agricultural College was languishing, 
as indeed it had throughout most of its 
uncertain and checkered existence. 
There came in that summer to direct it, 
as its first professional librarian, Ida 
Angeline Kidder, nee Clark. From then 
on things would b e different, very dif-
ferent. 

Mrs. Kidder was, at the time of her 
appointment, fifty-three years old and 
only two years out of the University of 
Illinois library school. In the twelve 
years it would b e permitted to her 
to serve, she was to upgrade and im-
prove the library markedly in every 
aspect, placing it on firm and enduring 
foundations. F a r transcending these no-
table achievements, she was to enter into 
the lives, interests, and affections of the 
Oregon State students to an extent un-
paralleled in American library history. 

Mrs. Kidder's first professional position 
was with the Washington State library in 
Olympia. After a few months there she 
became, for two years, a Library Orga-
nizer for the Oregon State library in 
Salem. I t was from this position that the 

Mr. Carlson is Director Emeritus of Li-
braries at Oregon State University, Cor-
vallis. This paper was read to the Library 
History Round Table at the San Francisco 
Conference of ALA. 

new President W . J. Kerr of Oregon 
State Agricultural College brought her 
to organize and develop the college li-
brary then containing 4,284 somewhat 
neglected and poorly organized volumes 
housed in a single room of the admini-
stration building. 

Immediately there was a new spirit 
and a new vigor in the little one-room 
library. Mrs. Kidder fully realized that 
she had much to learn about agri-
cultural college libraries. W h a t she 
lacked in knowledge, she made up for 
in ambition. It was her purpose to make 
the library "one of the best agricultural 
libraries of the country." So off went a 
letter to Claribel Barnett, librarian of 
the U.S. Department of Agriculture ask-
ing for help. She opened her heart, she 
said, "very freely to her . . . I told her 
that I knew very little but that I had a 
great ambition to learn . . . I threw my-
self on her mercy to teach me. . . ." On 
July 21, 1908, back came a six-page 
single-spaced letter which is a key docu-
ment in the history of the Oregon State 
University library. On August 25, 1908, 
there followed a two-page letter. These 
letters and ensuing correspondence, re-
flecting the complete dedication of both 
of these two outstanding librarians, were 
the beginning of a lifelong friendship. 

Immediately, too, there began a series 

/ 217 



218 / College b- Research Libraries • March 1968 

of notes, letters, verbal requests, and 
recommendations to the President's of-
fice for more help, more books, more 
money, more space. While the results 
of these requests were not startling in 
terms of today's multimillioned libraries, 
they were, for that time and that emerg-
ing college, in comparative terms, re-
markably successful. 

During her twelve years, Mrs. Kidder 
increased the library some eight-fold in 
volume content. She brought the staff 
from the one single position she ac-
cepted to nine. She achieved, as what she 
considered her crowning glory, a new 
and well planned library building 
of some 57,000 square feet. Notable as 
these things were, all part and parcel of 
her philosophy and ambition, they were 
not the most significant aspect of her 
librarianship. Capable librarians else-
where in comparable situations have 
achieved as much. 

T h e uniquely outstanding things Ida 
Kidder brought to the little college, 
eventually to become a university, were 
of the spirit. While she was a doer in 
concrete, physical terms, and the re-
sults of her doing were and still are 
available for all to see and use and profit 
by, she considered it important to be as 
well as to do. It was through her out-
going living of this philosophy that she 
gained the love and respect of the stu-
dents, and of the faculty too, to an ex-
tent rarely if ever equalled in American 
librarianship. Hers, however, was no 
lofty, impractical idealism. It was 
grounded in the realities of time and 
circumstance as her substantial measur-
able achievements, in developing books, 
staff, and building, clearly showed. It 
was, in one sense, from her spirit and 
her enthusiasm, and her energy in giving 
both free play, that these material things 
flowed. 

O R G A N I Z E R A N D T E A C H E R 

With sure instinct Mrs. Kidder turned 
first, in developing the library, to or-

ganization. W i t h the help of a profes-
sional cataloger brought in for summer 
assistance in her first year, she under-
took to start the books already on hand 
toward their first professional classifica-
tion and cataloging. She also placed the 
acquisitions and business aspects of op-
erating the library on sound foundations. 

As early as her second year, Mrs. 
Kidder was offering a "library practice" 
course required of all freshmen, then 
some two hundred. It was only because 
she had felt that she needed to know the 
college and the library better that she 
had waited a year to introduce this in-
struction. Within another year, she was 
also offering lectures on the library in 
the winter short courses for farmers. 
These resulted, for a period of years, in 
voluntary contributions of about $100 
annually to the library. I n those days, 
and for this impoverished library, this 
was important money. Later she lec-
tured on the library in courses for the 
advanced training of secretaries. She also 
found time somehow to make trips out 
into the state to talk to farm groups. 
Letters and commentary from her stu-
dents, as well as from farmers, make it 
clear that her talks were truly inspiring. 
It was through them that she began to 
enter so completely into the affections 
of the students and the college communi-
ty. Her lectures, said one colleague, 
were as apt to be concerned with life 
and literature as with the use of the 
library. 

A N I N S P I R E R O F Y O U N G P E O P L E 

Mrs. Kidder was keenly interested in 
building inspiring ideals among the stu-
dents. She was continually concerned 
that the Oregon State students, many of 
whom came from farm homes with 
limited cultural advantages, should be 
exposed to literature and particularly to 
poetry. She shared with her students the 
inspiring literature she enjoyed herself. 
She felt, and frequently said to her 
superiors, that the college, in its empha-



Ida Angeline Kidder / 219 

sis on technical education, was neglect-
ing cultural and humanitarian instruc-
tion. 

Her faculty colleagues have recorded 
that in her short talks on practical ethics 
to students, she generated a wonderful 
influence for good. She regarded the op-
portunity to meet students as the great-
est privilege granted to a librarian whose 
aim is service. In exercising this priv-
ilege she had readings for groups of stu-
dents in her rooms at Waldo Hall. She 
also studied with them individually her 
favorite Emerson, the Bible, Shake-
speare, and other authors. She felt that 
students of the Bible should read it, not 
read about it. 

Great as was Mrs. Kidder's apprecia-
tion of literature and poetry, her ap-
preciation of people was even greater. 
She managed always to single out the 
best and finest characteristics of stu-
dents. She helped them to bring these 
things out in themselves. She was par-
ticularly helpful to foreign students. One 
young Hindu student, asked later if 
he had known Mrs. Kidder said, "She 
was wonderful. She opened the world 
to me. She showed me all the world 
akin." 

T h e chief characteristics which brought 
Mrs. Kidder so quickly into the affec-
tions of the college were her apprecia-
tion of the fine things of life, her inter-
est in people, and her energy and good 
will. In her later years when failing 
health required her to use an electric 
cart ( a great novelty in those days) in 
her trips around the campus she scat-
tered cherry greetings along the way. 
There was, someone said, a kind of 
"Schumann-Heink-ness" about her. 

I t just came naturally, apparently, for 
the students to begin to call her "Moth-
er" Kidder, a designation with which she 
was greatly pleased. As early as 1912 
she was being referred to in no other 
way. She was continuing good copy in 
the student yearbooks, the Orange, later 
to become the Beaver, and the student 

newspaper, the Barometer. T h e Orange 
of 1918 had a picture of her in her elec-
tric cart surrounded by young women. 
It was entitled "Mother and her Rook-
esses." In that year a Co-ed Edition of 
the Barometer was dedicated to her. In 
the Beaver of 1919 the Women's section 
was dedicated as follows: " W e dedicate 
our section to the most universally loved 
woman on the campus, 'Mother' Kidder. 
An inspiring teacher and the best of 
friends." 

Perhaps her crowning student recog-
nition within her lifetime came in 1918 
when Homer Maris, writer of the new 
Alma Mater song which has endured 
ever since, dedicated it "to 'Mother' 
Kidder in recognition of her enobling 
influence and great love felt for her on 
the part of all who have met under the 
old 'Trysting T r e e . ' " 

P R A C T I C A L A N D F I R M A D M I N I S T R A T I O N 

Not all was sentiment and idealism 
with Mrs. Kidder. While she was en-
dearing herself so completely to the 
students, she was also developing and 
operating the library with a firm hand. 
Her relations with the faculty were 
friendly and congenial, but it was her 
rules that prevailed and well they knew 
it. 

T o one offending professor she wrote: 
" L a s t year you exceeded your fund and, 
therefore, took away from the amount 
for general books which the library very 
much needs. Such a thing must not oc-
cur again because I will not endure it. 
It is an injustice I will not stand." In 
protesting this matter to the business 
manager she urged, "Please stiffen up 
on this case and make him pay for this 
book. He understands perfectly that he is 
not expected to order books without any 
authority." This letter was signed "with 
indignation and resolution." 

Mrs. Kidder was in no way provincial 
in her all-out efforts to bring her library 
into the forefront of agricultural college 
libraries. To further improve herself, she 



220 / College b- Research Libraries • March 1968 

made a trip in 1911 to visit libraries in 
the Midwest. She went to Illinois, Pur-
due, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa State, 
and John Crerar "in order to get into 
close touch with the work as it is carried 
out in other institutions." Her progres-
siveness was reflected in opening the li-
brary for evening service when the staff 
consisted only of herself and student 
help, in establishing Sunday open hours 
when this was practically unheard of, 
and in issuing to the faculty a monthly 
list of new books in the library when this 
was far from a common procedure. 

Along with her outstanding Oregon 
colleagues, Mary Frances Isom of the 
Portland Library Association and Cor-
nelia Marvin, State librarian, Mrs. Kid-
der was definitely a feminist as far as 
the library profession was concerned. 
Writing to her good friend, Miss M. E . 
Ahearn, editor of Public Libraries, she 
said, ". . . so far as I have come in con-
tact with library workers of the country, 
the women have seemed to me much 
more alive, broadminded, and progres-
sive. I have certainly received my inspi-
ration from them rather than the men, 
with two or three exceptions." 

Along with the routine operation of 
the library and maintaining contacts with 
students, the college administration was 
kept constantly aware of the increasingly 
acute housing problems of the library 
and the need for a new building. In the 
autumn of 1909 evening library hours 
were instituted for the first time for the 
faculty. By December these hours were 
extended to students, with attendant 
publicity about relieving pressures and 
congestion. 

In the autumn of 1912 the Barometer 
complained that a chair in the library 
reading room deserted only momentarily 
would be found "filled by a life-size stu-
dent of the green cap crowd. L e t us 
offer a bunch of prayers for a library 
building in which this nuisance may b e 
remedied." At that time Mrs. Kidder as-
sured the students that "every effort is 

being made to render conditions as tol-
erable as possible until we can have 
larger library quarters." 

Pressures and needs such as this cul-
minated in a request of the Board of 
Regents to the 1917 Legislature for an 
appropriation of $158,000 for a library 
building. Everything must have been 
in readiness because with late spring ap-
proval of the requested funds, the con-
struction contract was let in June. By 
World W a r I Armistice time in Novem-
ber of 1918 the building was ready for 
occupancy but understandably without 
its steel stacks. 

W A R W O R K E R 

As the new library home was under 
construction, the young male students 
were going off to the armed services, and 
the girls, including some library staff 
members, were going, or wanting to go, 
into Red Cross or other war work. So 
off went Mrs. Kidder too, by then uni-
versally known as "Mother," to Camp 
Lewis, near Tacoma, Washington, to 
serve as hospital librarian for the sum-
mer of 1918. This was to b e one of the 
greatest experiences of her life. 

Reporting back to her staff from Camp 
Lewis, she said that her first experience, 
"was to go before a fine, dignified old 
Army Colonel to be examined as to 
whether I was old enough and ugly 
enough to b e innocuous. I qualified 
splendidly." 

It was quickly evident at Camp Lewis 
that the same instincts and attitudes 
which had endeared her to the college 
students would bring her into the affec-
tions of the young soldier patients. She 
wrote back, "In most cases they [the 
soldiers] needed a Mother as much as a 
Doctor . . . they would brighten up and 
take a new heart of courage at the ap-
pearance of a lame gray haired woman 
who came to them with a motherly spirit 
in her heart." 

I t was entirely in character that Mrs. 
Kidder should so quickly become a 



Ida Angeline Kidder / 221 

friend of the young patients and that 
she should soon b e known to them, too, 
as "Mother." Some of them arranged a 
wager among themselves that she was 
so well known that a letter addressed to 
her only "Mother Kidder, Oregon" would 
reach her. On her departure they sent 
her a letter so addressed. W h e n she 
reached Corvallis it was there waiting 
for her. 

Mrs. Kidder was so enthused about 
her work with the soldiers that in writ-
ing to her assistant librarian, Lucy 
Lewis, at midsummer, and mindful, too, 
of duties and obligations at home and 
the new building under construction, she 
said, "I wish there were a hundred of 
me and each one h a d the strength of a 
lion and the days were one hundred 
days long." 

Mrs. Kidder's remarkable effectiveness 
in helping the soldiers and in entering 
into their affections is epitomized by a 
letter she received from a soldier in 
France: 

D e a r Mother, [began this young soldier] 
T h a t is h o w I must address you because I 
could not honor the one who sent me that 
most interesting letter of M a r c h 2 4 t h b y 
any other n a m e . . . don't you again dare 
to call yourself " o l d . " T h a t applies only to 
people who have c e a s e d to b e interesting, 
who have outlived t h e i r usefulness and are 
social liabilities, not to such dynamos of 
kindness, sympathy, and understanding as 
you. Mother, you will never get old for 
the companionship of your incorruptible 
boys and girls and t h e immortals who live 
on your bookshelves have endowed you 
with a personality t h a t defies the march of 
time. 

September of 1918 found Mrs. Kidder 
back in Corvallis. F r o m there she wel-
comed with alacrity numerous invita-
tions to talk about her Camp Lewis ex-
periences. There were not, however, one 
hundred of her, and the days were not 
one hundred days long, so early No-
vember and the eagerly awaited time for 
the moving of the library to its new 

home found her flat on her back with 
a heart attack. Writing to a colleague 
when she was recovering, she said, " I 
had to endure the cruel discipline of 
letting someone else superintend the 
move." 

She comforted herself in that the plans 
were well laid, that her staff was compe-
tent, and that the move had gone 
smoothly. It was November 6, 1918, with 
momentous events shaping up on the 
war fronts, when the last book truck 
made the trip to the new building. 

Commenting to the Barometer on the 
volunteer faculty assistance through 
which the library was moved, Mrs. Kid-
der said, "One of the beautiful things 
to cherish in our memory and tradition 
is the fact that our faculty helped to 
move our Library, and that the new 
home was built in this tremendous time 
in the world's history." 

T H E E N D A P P R O A C H E S 

After World W a r I, with her beloved 
library safely housed in an attractive 
and commodious new home about which 
she easily could and did go into rhapso-
dies, Mrs. Kidder became more and 
more of a legend in her own time. Even 
though now in failing health, she never 
lost her interest in or warm con-
tacts with the students. Her electric cart 
which helped her to get about the cam-
pus and community as she b e c a m e in-
creasingly lame only added to her fame 
as someone different. Her active and 
wide-ranging mind continued as sharp 
and stimulating as ever. Her concern 
about broadening the cultural back-
grounds of technically educated students 
in no way diminished. 

Letters from former students came to 
Mrs. Kidder frequently in her later years. 
They wrote to ask her to help select 
books for their children, to congratulate 
her on the new building, to let her know 
of their doings, and sometimes just to 
wish her well. Always these letters were 
in warm and intimate terms. One man 



222 / College b- Research Libraries • March 1968 

working in the Bureau of Markets in 
the U.S. Department of Agriculture, ask-
ing for advice in selecting books for his 
three-year-old daughter said, "I know 
of no one who is as well qualified to give 
it as you." 

In an interview with the Barometer in 
June 1919, Mrs. Kidder complimented 
the students on their good manners in 
the Library. 

Nobody, fshe said] has to teach or admonish 
them. T h e y know I love the Library and 
love them so much that I would be very 
hurt if the quiet of the Library should be 
disturbed . . . kind consideration for me 
then is one of the things that restrains the 
impulse to talk in the Library. 

It was fitting that one of the very last 
letters Mrs. Kidder was to receive should 
come from Claribel Barnett of the U.S. 
Department of Agriculture library, as 
had also one of the first, that basic and 
influential letter of July 21, 1908, to the 
ambitious and eager novice seeking help. 
Advice was no longer needed by the 
exceptionally successful librarian Miss 
Barnett had helped so much. Her letter 
of January 29, 1920, told instead, and 
with obvious pleasure, of what a young 
Oregon State graduate who had been 
using the U S D A library had said about 
the librarian who had helped to set him 
in good paths. 

He spoke so beautifully of you. I am sure 
it would have done your heart good to 
hear him. Everyone who comes from Ore-
gon speaks the same way. You have certain-
ly endeared yourself to all who have been 
there. 

With her health more and more pre-
carious, Mrs. Kidder wrote President 
Kerr in mid-January of 1920 telling him 
of her continuing illness with heart 
trouble and asking him for a leave of 
absence without pay. She received a 
friendly and solicitous response sympa-
thizing with her illness and granting her 
request, but telling her that her leave 
would, of course, be on full pay. He 

would, the President said, come to see 
her in a day or two. H e expressed hope 
that her recovery was merely a matter 
of time. 

Time was, however, for Ida Angeline 
Kidder, running out. Within a week of 
this exchange of letters with the Presi-
dent, which she must have found both 
comforting and reassuring, she was 
dead. In recording her passing the Port-
land Oregonian spoke of her as the 
"grand old lady of the College Library 
known familiarly and lovingly to three 
generations of College Students." 

T H E T I M E O F P A R T I N G 

T h e reaction of students, past and 
present, was as intensive as it was un-
usual. T h e Barometer of March 2, 1920, 
said this: 

T h e life and influence of Mrs. Kidder has 
been an inspiration to all who knew her. 
She held a greater place than probably any 
other person and this endearment gave her 
the name of 'Mother' Kidder. Her greatest 
thought after building up the Library was 
inspiring ideals among students. O n e of 
the groups t h a t knew h e r indeed as Mother 
was the Cosmopolitan Club composed of 
students from all over the world. 

"Mother" Kidder's final hours among 
her students and on the campus, placing 
an exclamation point to the universal 
esteem and affection in which she was 
held, were unique in all American li-
brary history. At the request of the stu-
dents her body lay in state on March 2, 
1920, the day of her funeral, in the li-
brary building of her planning. Classes 
were cancelled from 10 to 2 and honor 
guards were at the casket. The funeral 
services were held on the steps of the 
library. A student body resolution of ap-
preciation was read at the services. Flor-
al tributes were so numerous that they 
could not all b e accommodated at or near 
the casket. 

"Mother" Kidder left her library and 
the campus not in a hearse but on the 
shoulders of young friends among the 



Ida Angeline Kidder / 223 

students, who carried her to the railroad 
station, approximately a mile distant. She 
was followed by a faculty honor guard 
and the college b a n d playing Chopin's 
Funeral March. Her body went by train 
to a crematorium in Portland. Even there 
her students, mostly alumni, were with 
her. There was music but no services. 

T h e library world too honored Mrs. 
Kidder in her passing. T h e Agricultural 
Libraries Section of the American Li-
brary Association passed a memorial 
resolution praising her contributions to 
agricultural librarianship. Her friend 
and colleague Cornelia Marvin succinct-
ly said this about her in Public Libraries 
of April 1920: " H e r influence on the 
students of Oregon Agricultural College 

was greater than that of any other mem-
ber of the faculty." 

T h e small western college in which 
Mrs. Kidder chose to invest her brief 
but dedicated career was remote from 
the bibliographical centers and cultural 
capitals of the world. It was, therefore, 
its doubly great good fortune that there 
should come out of the East this warm 
and dynamic personality and able li-
brarian to set its struggling library in 
good paths, to develop it extensively, to 
inspire the students, and to give of her-
self to all with whom she came into 
contact. She did much with little. By 
her doings and her "being" she added 
an enduring luster not only to her library 
but to the entire profession of librarian-
ship. • •