A Pioneering Librarian

Miriam Snow Mathes, B.A.’26, remembers her college days as though they happened yesterday. Those life-shaping experiences are at the heart of her longstanding commitment to the University at Albany.

For Mrs. Mathes, 94, of Lacey, Washington, a lifelong record of giving back to the University began just after graduation.

“Every graduate in my time pledged $100 payable the first five years of their teaching career. And they did pay it, all but very few,” she said. Mathes met this pledge even though her first job after graduation paid only $1,500 a year.

When young Miriam Snow was a student, the New York State College for Teachers consisted of three buildings in downtown Albany on what is now the University’s Rockefeller College campus. Most students either lived at home or in one of the sorority or fraternity houses. Still others lived in private homes, working for their room and board.

“Oh heavens, there were no dormitories, none whatsoever. That’s why we pledged $100,” she said. The $100 supported the drive to build the first dormitory, which opened in 1935 and was later renamed Pierce Hall.

More recently, Mrs. Mathes has been the financial force behind the Miriam Snow Mathes Historical Children’s Literature Collection in the University Libraries. The collection includes more than 8,500 children’s books and periodicals published in the 19th century and up to 1950. Its purpose is to provide the texts of works that are generally no longer available in children’s library collections today.

Mrs. Mathes became interested in the children’s literature of this period because she remembers how difficult it once was to find one children’s biography she needed for her dissertation in library science at Columbia University years ago. She also donated $25,000 to establish the Elizabeth Cobb Room in the University Library in honor of the late faculty member who started the library science minor at Albany. And Mrs. Mathes founded a $25,000 scholarship in honor of the leadership society Myskania, to which she belonged. She also established the Pritchard Award in the amount of $25,000 for excellent service in the library by a library science student. Myskania no longer exists at Albany, but its members established the Student Association, presided over weekly student assemblies, preserved college traditions and supervised class rivalry.

“You get an idea of the simplicity of our life. Very dignified. The statue of Minerva stood in the middle of the rotunda at the entrance to the main building (now Draper Hall). When I read years later that the students were calling her ‘Minnie,’ I couldn’t believe it,” Mrs. Mathes said.

When Mrs. Mathes attended Albany in the 1920s, there were fewer than 1,000 students as compared with 17,000 today. Tuition was free. As a student, Miriam Snow knew both Abram Brubacher, president of the College for Teachers, and John Sayles, principal of the Milne School. Sayles succeeded Dr. Brubacher as acting president of the college in 1939 and president in 1941.

Every day at noon the governor’s limousine would pick up a faculty friend of Mrs. Mathes who ate lunch with Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. “They spoke only French during lunch,” Mrs. Mathes said.

This same friend is reported to have told Mrs. Roosevelt that the college library, one long room in what is now Draper Hall, was too small. In retelling the story, Mrs. Mathes said, “Mrs. Roosevelt went to Governor Roosevelt and said, ‘Franklin, you must do something about the library. You’ve got to do something.’ ”

Shortly after, the library moved into the much larger old auditorium, which was in what is now the Thomas E. Dewey Graduate Library for Public Affairs and Policy. Miss Elizabeth Cobb was librarian at the time of the move.

Today libraries are as much a part of schools as teachers. That was not always the case. “I became a full-time librarian, with my English major and library science minor,” she said. “I went to Pleasantville, a small town in Westchester County, to prove that a high school library was needed there.” Later on, Sayles asked her to come back to Albany to supervise student teaching at the Milne demonstration school, where a junior high had been started. She went back for two years. In addition to earning her bachelor’s degree in English from the College for Teachers, she later went on to earn two graduate degrees in library science from Columbia University.

Mrs. Mathes was a pioneering librarian, promoting libraries in the schools at a time when this was not a given. She started a program for high school and small college librarians at George Peabody College in Nashville, Tenn. In 1934 she joined the College of Education at Western Washington State College in Bellingham to “launch a career focused on elementary school libraries and children’s literature.” For almost 40 years, she helped lead Western’s program in school librarianship and also served a term as president of the American Association of School Librarians.