Oral Histories: Mary Laura Campbell (Librarian)

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon.

Mary Laura Campbell, a long time Fullerton Librarian, was interviewed in 1972 for the CSUF Oral History Program by Shirley E. Stephenson. Here are some excerpts from that interview, along with some historic photos.

I was born in South Dakota in 1896 and my people brought me out here at the age of eight months…

I went through the local schools here…which included the old red brick schoolhouse at the corner of what is Wilshire and Lemon now and through the high school which was then located at West Commonwealth where Amerige Park is now. 

I was there about a year, when that high school burned down. 

Finally, they got one started on East Chapman and I continued there. I was going to junior college and living across the street from what was to be the location of the Carnegie Library–this was on north Pomona. My father bought property between Wilshire and Whiting and he built some houses there.

In 1907, when Andrew Carnegie made the gift of ten thousand dollars for the library building, this corner opposite our home was chosen for the site. They built this library which looked something like a mission. It was stucco and had a tile roof and the shape was a little bit like some of the missions. It was dedicated in 1907, and I was in and out of the library from then on. I was very crazy about books and made really good use of it…

My going into library work was by what I think you might call osmosis because I lived so close and I was there so much. I was going to junior college when this chance came to go into the library. I needed a job and they would give you six months training in those days. So I worked there and I liked it very much. I worked for free for six months and then I believe I got twenty dollars a month, which gives you some idea of salaries in those times. Miss Minnie Maxwell, the first librarian was the librarian then. She was a former schoolteacher and a very, very fine person…

There was a room for children in this new building but not a very big room…I think there were about a thousand books perhaps. The children were reading the stories about Betty Wales. Betty Wales, Freshman and so on through the Bachelor of Arts and Betty Wales in Europe. The LIttle Colonel stories by Annie Fellows Johnson were also popular. The boys were reading adventure stories, of course, and the Boy Mechanic Volume 1, Volume 2, and the American Boy…

Over the years I took special courses in the Los Angeles Library School…I had the Management of Children’s Room, Supervision of Children’s Rooms, and Cataloguing.

Was this still in the Carnegie Library?

We were still in the Carnegie Library building but we soon outgrew this library and they decided to build a little separate building for the children. It was next door, just west of the Carnegie building, on the same property and it was quite an attractive little building…

The people decided that a new library was needed so that it was all under one roof. For two years we had to be downtown in an old garage building at the corner of Chapman and Harbor, which was then called Spadra. After two years there in that barnlike building, the new building the corner of Wilshire and Pomona were ready and we moved in there. I think it was about 1941…Our librarian at that time was Miss Carrie Sheppard and when Book Week came around, which came in November, she liked to have it celebrated in a big way…

One thing the Children’s Department did was to bring authors or illustrators of famous books to the library. We had such people as Leo Politi, the famous illustrator…He not only talked to us, but he painted a picture right then and there and we had it framed and hung in the library. It was a picture of Mexican children, and a little burro…Besides Mr. Politi, we had Clancy Holling and Mr. and Mrs. Conrad Buff, Margaret Leighton, and Maud Lovelace…We also had the marionettes each time. There was a company in Fullerton, the Thompson marionettes…so that was the closing event of the week…

During these years I think I was making the nucleus for a collection of historical books about children’s literature…I remember we had the facsimile, The New England Primer, and some Kate Greenways and some Chatterboxes and things like that. That was the beginning of the Mary Laura Campbell Book Collection which Mrs. Johnson really pushed and carried on. It’s to credit and it now has about one hundred books I think. She has even traveled in Europe and purchased books which have gone into that collection. I’m very proud of it and very thankful to to her for this…

Then we had an ostrich egg. Fullerton had an ostrich farm here in the early days, not far from here. It’s where Acacia School is located. The Athertons bought ostriches here and kept them for several years to exhibit and I suppose hoping to get the benefit of the feathers. Well, somehow the library got one of these eggs and it’s well preserved now. Mrs. Sim, who takes groups of children through the library and teachers them library lessons says she couldn’t get along without the ostrich egg.

We also made arrangements with the school for the library to service the elementary schools…they remodeled two old buses and they were used to go from school to school. That was the beginning of the bookmobile.

What schools did you service?

Maple School was one. Ford School. Raymond School. I think they were the first and then Valencia Park was a little later.

I retired in 1959…The children’s room is now carried on by Mrs. Carolyn Johnson. She’s called Supervisor of Children’s Work and is now planning a new department in the big new library on West Commonwealth.