They Once Walked the Halls of Central Library: Armine Mackenzie, Librarian/Bibliographer

Armine Duncan Mackenzie was well known not only at Central Library but also throughout the library profession in California. During his relatively short life (he died four days after his 49th birthday), he held several positions throughout the Los Angeles Public Library system before he was hired into the newly created job of Librarian-Bibliographer in 1948. He also wrote prodigiously on the topic of books and librarianship, with a wit that won him many fans, including literary critic and fellow librarian Lawrence Clark Powell. Sadly, his name is all but forgotten today, but I hope to entice you to seek out a bit of his magic.

Armine Mackenzie started as a messenger clerk in 1927, shelving books in the Literature Department at Central Library. In 1928, he transferred as a messenger clerk to the West Hollywood Branch (today called the Will & Ariel Durant Branch Library), where he stayed for the next ten years. During that time, he received his BA and MA in English from UCLA and earned a BS in Library Science & Education from USC. [While at UCLA, he was an editor on the Daily Bruin and the Southern Campus yearbook, and a founding member of the Literary Review.] He returned to the Central Library after earning his library degree and worked as a librarian in the Teachers Department (1939-42), Municipal Reference (1942 as Assistant Dept. Librarian/acting head of the department), Literature (1943), Catalog Dept. (1943), History (1944 as Assistant Dept. Librarian/acting head of the department), then bouncing between Catalog and the Information Desk in the rotunda (1944-1948), and finally, Librarian-Bibliographer in August 1948.

All the while, well at least since 1933, he contributed to and later edited the Los Angeles Public Library staff publication, The Broadcaster. Mackenzie (or A.D.M., as he often signed his essays) described the goings-on at Central Library, the staff's mood during historical events such as World War II, and his supposed failings as a librarian. His essays include "The Case of the Illustrious Predecessor," in which Mackenzie builds the argument for Sherlock Holmes as the first recorded special librarian (as opposed to public librarian), "The Wave of the Future" imagines extreme changes in the Central Library of the future, and "Prefabricated Attitudes," about Television viewing vs library going. He also contributed essays to California Librarian (a magazine published by the California Library Association) and Wilson Library Bulletin.

In 1948, while Armine Mackenzie was working in the Catalog Department at Central Library, Dr. Lowell Martin (Associate Dean of Columbia University's School of Library Services) was hired by the city as a library consultant to help conduct an extensive survey of the Los Angeles Public Library. In that capacity, he required someone to assist him with questions about the Central Library's book collection across all its departments. Otherwise, his book collection questions would have to be routed to different departments depending on the subject matter (e.g., History, Literature, Science). The time saved by having this "Librarian-Bibliographer," as the position came to be known, demonstrated the role's usefulness to the library's administration. 

Findings of the survey were published in the 12-volume Organization, Administration and Management of the Los Angeles Public Library. One recommendation was indeed for the creation of a new bibliographical assistant who would work across all of Central Library's departments. Armine Mackenzie's vast book knowledge, experience working within numerous departments and on the Information Desk (which, similar to the current InfoNow department, had general knowledge of all Central Library departments), not to mention his writing talent, suited the Librarian-Bibliographer requirements perfectly. He started on August 9, 1948, and immediately set about creating the duties of the position. In his first report as Librarian-Bibliographer, Armine Mackenzie laid out the history of the position, his role as he saw it, and the need for such a position. In addition to helping with multi-department research requests and booklists, Mackenzie also assisted with discovering the strengths and weaknesses within the book collection. Once found, he would identify resources for building the collection, providing bibliographies and even potential booksellers to buy from, to the department head or subject specialist.

Mackenzie remained the Librarian-Bibliographer until his death on February 26, 1957. While searching through the Board of Library Commissioners' meeting notes for information on the origins of the bibliographer position, I randomly came across a leave of absence request from Armine Mackenzie, months before his appointment to the position. He was requesting a leave without pay from December 24, 1947, to February 28, 1948, to recover from a severe heart attack. Nothing in his essays that I read alluded to his ill health. He always seemed buoyant and breezy. A Fine Contagion, a collection of some of Armine Mackenzie's essays, was published posthumously in 1958 by the California Library Association. Central Library has three circulating copies available. There are also a slew of his Broadcaster essays, which are available in Special Collections. Thumb through any of the copies prior to February 1957 and you're apt to find the initials A.D.M. on some of the funniest essays. If you do go to Special Collections, please let me know if you come across a booklet from 1951 titled A Public Library Grows that celebrated Central Library's twentieth-fifth anniversary. It was written by Armine Mackenzie and illustrated by LAPL artist Anton "Tony" Schedl, and I'm dying to read it.