Paul North Rice

Paul North Rice
President of the American Library Association
In office 1947–1948
Preceded by	Mary U. Rothrock
Succeeded by	Errett Weir McDiarmid
Personal details
Born	February 9, 1888 Lowell, Massachusetts, US
Died	April 16, 1967 (1967-04-17) (aged 79) Middletown, Connecticut, US
Nationality	American
Spouse(s)	Genevieve Briggs ​ (m. 1924)​
Children	4
Parents	Charles Francis Rice Miriam Owen Jacobs
Alma mater	Wesleyan University New York State Library School
Occupation	Librarian
Military service
Branch/service	United States Army
Rank	Second Lieutenant

Paul North Rice (February 9, 1888 – April 16, 1967) was an American librarian who served as Chief of the Reference Department of the New York Public Library, Executive Secretary of the Association of Research Libraries and President of the American Library Association.

Early life and education[]

He was born in 1888 in Lowell, Massachusetts, the fourth of five children of the Rev. Dr. Charles Francis Rice and Miriam Owen Jacobs. His grandfather, the Rev. Dr. William Rice was the director of the Springfield City Library Association from 1861 to 1897. While he was a child, his father held pastorates in Leominster, Cambridge and Springfield, Massachusetts. For some time, he resided in Newton, Massachusetts. His mother died in 1901, when he was 13 years old.

He graduated from Wesleyan University in 1910, where he was a member of the Eclectic Society and Phi Beta Kappa. While a student, he wrote an English essay on Robert Louis Stevenson.^[1] He was the recipient of the Peirce Prize in Natural Science in 1909. He then studied at the New York State Library School in Albany, graduating in 1912.^[2] He witnessed the aftermath of a fire at the New York State Library in 1911.

Career[]

Early career[]

Rice was a reference assistant in the Ohio State University Library from 1911-1913. During this time, he helped move the a library from Orton Hall into a new building. He was a delegate for Wesleyan at the first annual conference of the Association of Alumni Secretaries at Ohio State University in 1913. He worked as a reference assistant at the New York Public Library from 1914-1917 and served as treasurer of the New York Library Association from 1916-1917. He served in the United States Army during WWI, rising from Private to Second Lieutenant. He was a lecturer in the New York Library School from 1919-1920, before becoming Chief of the NYPL Accessions Division in 1920.^[3] He served as Chief of the NYPL Preparation Division from 1920-1927.^[4] He was treasurer of the New York Library Club in 1922.

Dayton Public Library[]

He was president of the Dayton Public Library from 1927-1936. He was the First Vice President of the New York State Library School Association in 1928. He served as President of the Ohio Library Association from 1930-31 and chairman of its legislative committee from 1931-1935. In 1933, he was the Chairman of the ALA Activities Committee.^[5] In 1935, he received an honorary Master of Arts from Wesleyan University, 25 years after his graduation.^[6] During his tenure in Dayton, he confronted funding challenges as a result of the Great Depression. He was a member of the Ohio Subcommittee in a 1934 Report on the Public Works of Art Project.^[7]

He also corresponded with W. E. B. Dubois regarding his magazine, The Crisis.^[8] He was posthumously elected into the Ohio Library Hall of Fame in 1980.^[9]

New York University Libraries[]

Rice returned to New York to serve as the first Director of the New York University Libraries in 1936.^[2] This included the libraries at University Heights and Washington Square, along with NYU's Medical, Dental, Commerce, Wall Street Division libraries.^[2] At the time, there were 500,000 volumes in the university system.^[10] Rice wrote a history of the Eclectic Society for its centennial in 1937.

Rice played an active role in the 1937 Annual Conference of the American Library Association in New York City. He was chairman of the Library Buildings Round table and the Salaries, Staff and Service Committee, and co-chairman of a round table of College Librarians.^[11] Rice was appointed by New York Governor Herbert H. Lehman to serve as a delegate at the Annual Conference of the American Library Association in Kansas City, Missouri in 1938.

New York Public Library[]

In 1938, Rice returned to the New York Public Library, to serve as the Director of the Reference Department (a position now called the Director of Research Libraries). During this time he served as President of the New York Library Association from 1939-1940, Executive Secretary of the Association of Research Libraries from 1942–46 and President of the American Library Association from 1947-48.^[12] He was also an instructor at the Columbia University School of Library Service, and a fellow of the American Library Institute.

Rice was involved with the Farmington Plan during World War II, working with Waldo Gifford Leland, Archibald MacLeish, Milton E. Lord and Keyes Metcalf.^[13] He was also in charge of securing rare books in the event of an air raid at the New York Public library. He was a board member of the of the Victory Book Campaign.^[14]

During the war, Rice corresponded with novelist Frederic Dannay, creator of the Ellery Queen pseudonym. He also corresponded with an Italian prisoner of war, held in New York, who requested the text of the Geneva Convention.

In 1942, Rice received a letter from Franz Boaz, regarding compensation for Roman Jakobson.^[15]

In 1944, Rice wrote to Robert M. Lester, Secretary of the Carnegie Corporation in regards to a request about a book supposedly published by Joel Augustus Rogers in 1927. Rice's investigation found no indication that the book was published in 1927; it had only been mentioned in Rogers' entry in "Who's Who in Colored America."^[16]

In 1946, Rice was involved in a national committee purchasing books from Germany, many of which would end up at the New York Public Library.^[17] He bought $275,000 worth of dollars worth of books from Europe and Asia in 1946.^[18]

In 1950, he was a signer of a petition to the New York Board of Education to lift the ban on The Nation from public schools.

In 1951, he was granted a Public Librarian's Professional Certificate from the University of the State of New York Education Department.

In 1952, along with Lloyd A. Brown of the Peabody Institute, William A. Jackson of Harvard, and Clifford K. Shipton of the American Antiquarian Society, he was invited to examine the Library Company of Philadelphia and make recommendations on its future.^[19]

Rice also corresponded with accused spy Philip Keeney, expressing disapproval of his actions. He wrote "I have no sympathy with any censorship of books in a college library which stress a different point of view than that of the administration, but neither have I sympathy, and I assume that with this you will concur, with using a college library for propaganda (Sic)."^[20]

He supported the efforts of UNESCO. In a speech as President of the ALA, Rice spoke of the role of libraries in a Cold War context: "our libraries are one force that assures that the United States can never succumb to fascism or any other kind of totalitarianism, we should do everything we can to influence UNESCO to stimulate such libraries everywhere."^[21][22] He was described by The New York Times as a "Foe of Censorship due to his defense of intellectual freedom during the Cold War."^[12]

In New York, he was a director of the Rotary Club,^[23] and a member New-York Historical Society, and the Huguenot Yacht Club in New Rochelle.

Wesleyan University Library[]

After retiring from the New York Public Library, he served as the Caleb T. Winchester Librarian and Director of the Wesleyan University Library from 1953 to 1956, and in the latter year was elected librarian-emeritus.^[24][25] His service in this role was intended to steer the library after the retirement of Fremont Rider, and to help find a replacement.

He was active in the First Methodist Church, Middletown and the Middletown Rotary Club. He served as a trustee of the Russell Library in Middletown from 1954-1964.^[12] He was the editor of the 9th edition of the Wesleyan University Alumni Record, 1961.^[26]

Family life[]

Rice married Genevieve Briggs (1894–1994) on July 17, 1924, in La Porte, Indiana. Her parents were the Reverend Albertus Theodore Briggs and Lenore Alleman Briggs. Genevieve graduated from DePauw University in 1916. She was a member of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She had taught Latin in Kentland, Indiana and at Jefferson High School, in Lafayette, Indiana. She later worked as the Education Director at the City Methodist Church in Gary, Indiana. When she took some graduate course at Columbia University, the minister of the Church, William Grant Seaman and his wife Laura Rice Seaman introduced her to Laura's brother, Paul. She served on the national board of the YMCA and was active in the Methodist Church.

They had four children; Rachel Briggs Rice, Lenore Briggs Rice, Horace Briggs Rice and Charles Briggs Rice.^[12] They lived in Jackson Heights, Queens, on Yale Ave in Dayton, Ohio, Cliff Ave in Pelham, New York, and later on High Street in Middletown, Connecticut. The family summered in Cape Cod and in a cabin near the Sprucewold Lodge in Boothbay Harbor, Maine.

Genealogy[]

Paul North Rice was a direct descendant of Edmund Rice, an English immigrant to Massachusetts Bay Colony, as follows:^[27][28]

• Paul North Rice, son of

• Charles Francis Rice (1851–1927), son of

• William Rice (1821–1897), son of

• William Rice (1788–1863), son of
• Nathan Rice (1760–1838), son of
• John Rice (1704–1771), son of

• Ephraim Rice (1665–1732), son of
• Thomas Rice (1625–1681), son of

• Edmund Rice (1594–1663)

References[]