Paul North Rice

Paul North Rice (February 9, 1888 – April 16, 1967) was an American librarian who served as Chief of the Reference Department of the New York Public Library, Executive Secretary of the Association of Research Libraries and President of the American Library Association.

Early life and education

He was born in 1888 in Lowell, Massachusetts to Charles Francis Rice and Miriam Owen Jacobs. His father was a minister, and his grandfather William Rice had been a minister and a librarian. He graduated from Wesleyan University in 1910, where he was a member of the Eclectic Society and Phi Beta Kappa. He then studied at the New York State Library School in Albany, NY.^[1] In 1935, he received an honorary Master of Arts from Wesleyan.

Career

Rice was a reference assistant in the Ohio State University Library from 1911-1913. He worked as a reference assistant at the New York Public Library from 1914-1917 where he was treasurer of the New York Library Association from 1916-1917. He served from Private to Second Lieutenant the United States Army, from 1917-1919. He was a lecturer in the New York Library School from 1919-1920, before becoming Chief of the NYPL Accessions Division in 1920. He served as Chief of the NYPL Preparation Division from 1920-1927.^[2]

He was president of the Dayton Public Library from 1927-1936, and President of the Ohio Library Association from 1930-31. While in Dayton, he corresponded with W. E. B. Dubois about his magazine, The Crisis.^[3] Rice served as Director of New York University Libraries from 1936-1938.^[4]

He was Director of the Reference Department of the New York Public Library from 1937-1953. During this time he was President of the New York Library Association from 1939-1940, Executive Secretary of the Association of Research Libraries from 1942–46 and President of the American Library Association from 1947-48.^[5]

Rice supported the efforts of UNESCO. In a speech as President of the ALA, Rice spoke of the role of libraries in a Cold War context: "our libraries are one force that assures that the United States can never succumb to fascism or any other kind of totalitarianism, we should do everything we can to influence UNESCO to stimulate such libraries everywhere."^[6]

He was also involved with the Farmington Plan during World War II, working with Waldo Gifford Leland, Archibald MacLeish, Milton E. Lord and Keyes Metcalf.^[7]

Rice also corresponded with accused spy Philip Keeney, expressing disapproval of his actions. He wrote "I have no sympathy with any censorship of books in a college library which stress a different point of view than that of the administration, but neither have I sympathy, and I assume that with this you will concur, with using a college library for propaganda (Sic)."^[8]

After retiring from New York, he served as director of the Wesleyan University Library from 1953-1956.^[9] Following that tenure, he was librarian emeritus, and served as a trustee of the Russell Library in Middletown from 1954-1964.

He was the editor of the 9th edition of the Wesleyan University Alumni Record, 1961.

Family life

Rice married Genevieve Briggs, daughter of Albertus Theodore Briggs and Lenore Allemon Briggs on July 17, 1924. Genevieve was a graduate of DePauw University, and like her husband was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. They had four children; Rachel, Lenore, Horace and Charles. They lived in Pelham, New York, and later on High Street in Middletown, Connecticut, where he died in 1967.^[10]

Genealogy

Paul North Rice was a direct descendant of Edmund Rice, an English immigrant to Massachusetts Bay Colony, as follows:^[11][12]

• Paul North Rice, son of

• Charles Francis Rice (1851–1927), son of

• William Rice (1821–1897), son of

• William Rice (1788–1863), son of
• Nathan Rice (1760–1838), son of
• John Rice (1704–1771), son of

• Ephraim Rice (1665–1732), son of
• Thomas Rice (1625–1681), son of

• Edmund Rice (1594–1663)

References