Idaho Librarian
Vol. 57, No. 3/4

Anna-Lise Smith

The Idaho Library Association’s bibliography of books and pamphlets about the state of Idaho has led a varied life since its founding in 1950.[1] Through it all, however, the bibliography has served as one of the most consistent, regular, and thorough guides in existence to literature about Idaho. Before the Idaho Authors’ Committee took up the task of creating an Idaho bibliography, the only bibliographies about Idaho were a small number of individual subject-specific projects, hard to access and far from comprehensive. These projects, found in a series of searches in WorldCat, were generally the work of one person and focused on specific aspects of Idaho history, culture, or geology—such as the 1940 Checklist of Idaho Imprints,1839-1890, and inventories of county archives done in the 1930s and 1940s by the Idaho Historical Records Survey Project or W. W. Staley’s 1940 Abridged Bibliography of the Mineral Industry of the State of Idaho. The bibliographies left behind by these early indexers can usually be found in only one or two libraries around the nation.

The Idaho Bibliography of the Idaho Library Association (ILA) began life as a joint project between what would later become the Idaho Authors’ Committee (IAC) of the Idaho State Library Association and Idaho State College’s English Department.[2] Headed alternately by Maralyn Morton, a professor of English at Idaho State College, now Idaho State University, and Marion Orr, head librarian at the Idaho Falls Public Library, the IAC worked to compile data about Idaho authors and their works, as well as references to books and pamphlets about Idaho topics.

Even before its official founding in 1950, the IAC was hard at work on what Maralyn Morton described as Orr’s “Idahoana”—a collection of bio-bibliographic information about Idaho and Idaho authors that Orr had been collecting since the early 1930s.[3] The Committee’s mission had two parts. The first was a compilation of “Idaho writers, past and present,” and the second was a compilation of “writings about Idaho by non-Idahoan, past and present.”[4] In 1955, the IAC took on a third task: producing a checklist of Idaho state publications.

Between 1948 and 1952, the IAC bibliographers amassed “approximately 7,500 references” and hundreds of pages of biographical material.[5] The bibliographers even collected 135 photographs to supplement their bio-bibliographies. The bibliography was available, 25 stapled, mimeographed pages at a time, upon request only.[6] An Idaho Library Association-sponsored Idaho bibliography was not published, in the Idaho Librarian or anywhere else, until 1953. According to search results in WorldCat, several small runs of several bibliographic compilations and supplements were published in the mid- to late-1950s. (The earliest, printed in 1953, was published by Idaho State University.)

In July of 1955, Maralyn Morton reported in her “A Progress Report on the Compilation of Bio-Bibliographic Material and on Work Done by the Idaho Authors’ Committee” that a portion of the bibliography appeared in the 24^th Biennial Report of the Idaho State Historical Department and that some of the IAC's biographical data would appear in Pacific Northwest Authors, a Pacific Northwest Library Association publication.[7] At this point in its history, the bibliography was one growing document that was being continuously added to. The bibliography did not take its current form of an annual bibliography until the late 1980s.

In the later half of the 1950s, however, reports and checklists from the bibliographic project members inexplicably stopped appearing in the Idaho Librarian and did not resume until a partial checklist of Idaho documents appeared in January of 1964. There were no explanations, and it is hard to speculate why the interruption occurred. Comments by Maralyn Morton in her article “Toward an Idaho Bibliography” lead one to think that the bibliography was simply too time-consuming for the small committee of people who already had very full schedules.[8] Apart from its semi-regular checklists of Idaho documents, the Idaho Library Association Bibliography Committee was not regularly mentioned in the Idaho Librarian until July 1973, when Peter Ahlstrom named it in his “President’s Forward” as one of three new ad hoc committees.[9]

The mid-1970s proved to be an active time for the newly reorganized Bibliography Committee. According to Gary Bettis, the Reference Division of PNLA, as part of its own bibliography project, started to take notice of other bibliographic projects in the Pacific Northwest.[10] At that time, the ILA’s Bibliography Committee submitted an “Index to Local Materials Concerning Idaho,” a bibliography of newspapers, periodicals, and other bibliographies, to be included in a regional bibliography edited by PNLA.[11] During the early 1970s, PNLA published a number of monographs prepared by Idaho bibliographers (namely several editions of Who’s Who Among Pacific Northwest Authors). According to Adrien Taylor, a reference librarian at Boise State University, however, these PNLA-sponsored compilations have not been gathered or published since the early 1970s.[12] In addition to its work with PNLA’s bibliographic project, the Bibliography Committee also took on a number of smaller projects, including an index of Idaho maps and an updated index for the Idaho Librarian.[13]

The current version of the Idaho Bibliography made its first appearance in the Idaho Librarian in October of 1980. Instead of earlier versions that were split between Idaho authors and non-Idaho authors, this bibliography was one list of books and pamphlets about Idahoans, places in Idaho, events in its history, and so on, regardless of the author’s geography. Also, instead of one document that was constantly revised and added to, this version of the bibliography was like a yearly supplement, which listed books and pamphlets published during the previous year. The Committee regularly scoured the collections of the University of Idaho, Idaho State University, the Idaho State Historical Society, the Idaho State Library,[14] and, later, Boise State University’s library.[15] The Bibliography Committee also continued its work on the checklist of Idaho documents until 1983, when Boise State University Library’s Government Documents Department took over that responsibility.[16]

The Idaho Bibliography project moved to BSU, too, in 1994 when Gloria Ostrander-Dykstra took over chairmanship of the Committee. After moving back and forth between Idaho State University and the University of Idaho for nearly 20 years, the Bibliography has found a more-or-less permanent home at BSU. (Previous issues—1996 to the present—of the Bibliography are available on the Boise State Library’s web site at http://library.boisestate.edu/acquisitions/idahobibliography/index.htm.)

The Idaho Bibliography made its most recent move in 2001, when the Idaho Librarian became an online-only periodical. Today, the Idaho Bibliography is published semi-annually in the Idaho Librarian, under the direction of Nancy Rosenheim, Head of Acquisitions of Albertsons Library at Boise State University and Chair of the ILA Bibliography Committee. The Bibliography Committee no longer contributes to PNLA’s bibliographic committee, which became inactive in the mid-1990s and was finally disbanded in 2003.[17]

As recently as October of 2005, a number of important discussions at the ILA Conference in Pocatello, Idaho, have taken place regarding the future of the Idaho Bibliography. Beginning in July of 2005, Gina Persichini, Networking Consultant at the Idaho State Library, conducted a survey about collaborative activities among Idaho librarians.[18] Persichini found that three other groups are working on ongoing projects that touch on Idaho bibliography—the ILA Book Awards Committee, the University of Idaho, and Jim Jatkevicius's and the Boise Public Library’s FARRIT (Finding All Resources Related to Idaho Topics) project.[19] In her “Report on Collective Activities,” presented at the ILA Executive Board Meeting on October 5, 2005, Persichini suggested that “a partnership [between the groups] could combine the strengths of all the organizations and demonstrate the value of collaboration. More importantly, Idahoans would have greater access to the information.”[20]

As a result of Persichini’s survey and suggestions, the ILA Executive Board created “an ad hoc committee to examine the ILA Bibliography Committee and to consider the relationship among the Bibliography Committee, the ILA Book Award Committee, and the Idaho Librarian.”[21] Philip Homan, a cataloger and reference librarian at the Eli M. Oboler Library at Idaho State University, will chair this committee.[22] Goals and plans are still preliminary, and any changes that might come from the committee’s decisions are far from certain. The committee may write an interesting new chapter in Idaho bibliography, however, and add to the timeline of events concerning the Idaho Bibliography.

Whatever the future may bring, the Idaho Bibliography remains one of the best sources of information about books and pamphlets about Idaho. Because many of these items are published by small, local presses and have small print runs, they are, consequently, hard to locate through other means. Without the Idaho Bibliography to list and index these materials, valuable information about Idaho history, culture, art, literature, geology, zoology, and more may be missed by researchers.

Author’s Note

The author of this article would like to thank Phil Homan for his help and suggestions while she researched the history of the Idaho Library Association’s Idaho Bibliography.