At the Pleasure of the Board: Women Librarians and the Los Angeles Public Library, 1880-1905

This article explores the positive and negative aspects of the feminization of librarianship between 1880 and 1905, focusing on the early history of the Los Angeles (California) Public Library. It examines the careers of three of the institution's premiere women librarians: Mary Foy, Tessa Kelso, and Mary Jones. Its goal is to propose a more complex understanding of how early women professionals managed their careers within the institutional and political environment in which they worked and to see what patterns emerge pertaining to the employment history of the first generation of women librarians