Glens Falls in 1971 — ‘New look’ of libraries
Crandall Library was keeping up with technology a half-century ago.
“Libraries nowadays have a new look, according to Miss Hilda Cameron, Crandall’s director,” The Post-Star reported on April 19, 1971. “Not only do they contain books and more books — hard cover, paper back and large type for the visually handicapped, but also magazines, newspapers, microfilm, recordings, framed reproductions and 16 mm films, all for the borrowing.”
Crandall Library was celebrating National Library Week, taking as its main theme “You’ve got a right to read. Don’t blow it.”
The library distributed book marks printed with the following slogans:
“If books are dead, so are we.”
“Life is an open book.”
“What you don’t know won’t hurt you. Maybe.”
An exhibit of “30 Notable Books of 1970,” as selected by an American Library Association panel, was on display.
There actually were 29 books, as one book was selected in dual categories.
The books were:
Novels
“Mr. Sammier’s Planet” by Saul Bellow; “Deliverance” by James Dickey; “Losing Battles” by Eudora Welty; “A Beggar in Jerusalem,” by Elie Wiesel; “City Life” by Donald Barthelone; “Daddy Was a Number Runner” by Louise Meriweather; “In the Highlands Since Time Immemorial,” by Joanna Ostrow; “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez; “Play it as it Lays,” by Joan Didion.
Biographies
“Cocteau,” by Francis Steegmuller; “Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom,” by James Mcgregor Burns; “Zelda,” by Nancy Milford; “Family Portrait,” by Catherine Bowen; “Hope Against Hope,” by Nadezhda Mandel Shtum; “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” by Maya Angelou; “Exiles,” by Michael J. Arion
Science and Social Science
“Crime in America,” by Ramsay Clark; “Crisis in the Classroom,” by Charles Silverman; “Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression,” by Studs Terkel; “In the Service of Their Country: War Resisters in Prison,” by Willard Gaylin; “Sexual Politics,” by Kate Millett; “Soledad Brother: The Private Letters of George Jackson.”
History
“Inside the Third Reich,” by Albert Speer; “My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and its Aftermath,” by Seymour Hersh; “Portrait of India,” by Ved Mehta; “Ordeal of Ambition: Jefferson, Hamilton, Burr,” by Jonathan Daniels
Art and History, dual category selection
“Norman Rockwell,” by Frederick Buechner
Special category
“Words for a Deaf Daughter,” by Paul West
Environment
“Will They Ever Finish Bruckner Boulevard?” by Ada Louise Huxtable
