Librarian Ida Kidder

 

The item below, which is in the "A College Town" exhibition in Gallery 3 of the Benton County Historical Society's Corvallis Museum, fits into the exhibit theme in two ways:  it was made by an Oregon State University professor and it depicts a subject who played a major role in the transformation of the school to a full-fledged university. 

Sculpture maquette study of a proposed memorial statue
of Ida Kidder created by J. Leo Fairbanks in 1924.

 

Painter and sculptor J. Leo Fairbanks taught and served as art department chair at Oregon State University from 1923 to 1946.   In 1926, he used white Buena Vista clay to make this maquette, or scale model, to show the school's Board of Regents what a  proposed memorial to Ida Kidder would look like.  Although the Board approved the idea for a 3/4 life size statue, it was never made.

The subject, Ida Kidder, is depicted seated amid piles a books, an appropriate pose for OSU's head librarian. 

Ida Clarke was born in 1857 in Auburn, New York. She graduated from high school, worked as an elementary teacher (1878-1885), completed a two-year program at New York State College for Teachers (now SUNY-Albany), and became a high school teacher and principal. In 1896, at age 39, she married Lorenzo Kidder and stopped teaching, as was then customary.

After Lorenzo died, she enrolled in the University of Illinois Library School, graduating with a B. L. S. degree in 1906. She worked as a state documents cataloger for the Washington State Library from 1906 to 1907 and then for the Oregon State Library Commission. 

In 1908, she was hired as the first professionally-trained librarian by Oregon State Agricultural College. She moved into accommodations on the second floor of the woman's dorm (Waldo Hall) and took a lively interest in the activities of the students.  Her interest, enthusiasm, and thoughtful advice soon led students to call her “Mother Kidder.” She is on the right in the sole photograph of her in the museum's collection.

Ida A. Kidder (1855-1920)

A formal portrait of her can be viewed at  https://oregondigital.org/catalog/oregondigital:df70c223n.

At the time she was hired, the library was a haphazard collection of about 22,000 items (books, government documents, pamphlets and brochures) with a single reading room that could only hold 108 students and two rooms for materials storage. Kidder set out to increase the collection to provide students and faculty with the research materials they needed.  She succeeded in adding 37,000 items, more than doubling the collection, and developed particular strengths in agriculture, home economics, and the history of horticulture. In addition, she

·instituted a Library Practice course required of all freshmen

·added subscriptions to professional journals

·increased staff from one to nine, enabling an increase in library hours

·began issuing a list of newly acquired books to the faculty

·gave many talks on poetry, literature and ethics to groups on and off campus

Her biggest accomplishment, however, was in advocating for an adequately-sized  library. In 1917 the state appropriated $158.000 for construction of a 57,000 square foot building. The brick building, designed by Portland architect John Bennes after Kidder's specifications, was completed in 1918.  The whole campus helped to move books utilizing a wooden walkway between the new library and the old quarters in the Administration Building (now known as Community Hall). The new library had more space for its collection of books, a much larger reading room, office space, and room for the college museum.  As the Gazette-Times noted in her obituary, “it was largely though her contagious and persistent enthusiasm that the new Library Building was erected.” So, in 1963, following construction of a new and even larger library (the Valley Library), the building was renamed Kidder Hall in her honor.

Oregon Agricultural College Library
(now Kidder Hall at Oregon State University)

In 1918, as the last of the books were being moved into the new library, Ida Kidder suffered a heart attack.  As her health deteriorated, she traveled around campus in an electric vehicle which the engineering students built for her. Alas, the museum does not have a photograph of this remarkable vehicle known as the Wickermobile, but fortunately, one is available on-line at  https://oregondigital.org/catalog/oregondigital:df70cp65w .

She died in her campus room on February 28, 1920 attended by her niece, a student at OAC.

At the request of the students, her body lay in state in the library and classes meeting between 10 and 2 were canceled.  So many floral tributes arrived that an additional table had to be brought in to hold them all.

Though it is often the presidents, deans, and regents who are credited with building the university, librarian Ida Kidder was also instrumental, for a college cannot become a noted institution without a good library.

By Martha Fraundorf, Volunteer for Benton County Historical Society, Philomath, Oregon