Many people my age and older fondly remember Sears's Wish Book, Columbia House's Record/Cassette/CD Club, and other entities that marketed themselves by sending printed catalogs of their products to potential customers. In the days before big box stores and Amazon.com, catalogs enabled everyone to learn about this season's styles and hot new music, regardless of whether our communities could support bricks-and-mortar clothing or record stores. Backed up by the U.S. Postal Service, which delivered orders directly to everyone's doors, catalog companies also enabled us to obtain desired items regardless of whether we had access to transportation. So, for anyone who felt constrained by the limited shopping available in their home towns -- including me! -- companies that reached you with their catalogs freed you.
With such thoughts in mind, it was fascinating to learn about a books-by-mail program that the State Library of Pennsylvania initiated in the early 1970s: the Mail Order Delivery Library Service (MODLS). Oddly enough, I first heard about it through a folder of correspondence in the office files of the Montgomery County - Norristown Public Library. It wouldn't seem that MCNPL, a well-established library system in the Philadelphia suburbs, would be a involved with a program that targeted people living in rural areas. However, Pearl Frankenfield, MCNPL's director, was well-connected with colleagues at the State Library and was motivated by MODLS potential to reach home-bound elders and people with disabilities. Thankfully, she kept tabs on the project through its 3-year lifespan and retained some documentation.
As I describe in my book about the early history of Pennsylvania libraries, our state has long been challenged in providing reading materials to our large and far-flung rural population. In fact, from the late 1890s through the early 1920s, the Pennsylvania Free Library Commission, operating out of the State Library, loaned "traveling libraries" (portable wooden cases of preselected books) to boroughs, townships, and villages with fewer than 1,000 residents, asking only that the communities pay for shipping costs and that responsible people take charge of circulating and returning the items. So, the idea of mailing library books wasn't entirely new to us. Yet traveling libraries faded in importance as Pennsylvania's road system developed and it was believed that bookmobile services would be the answer to reaching isolated residents. As the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s unfolded, however, some counties never developed library systems., Also, in sparsely-populated areas, bookmobile stops proved too costly for the small numbers of people that congregated. Thus, by the 1970s, thousands of Pennsylvania residents did not have reasonable library access and forward-thinking practitioners like Pearl Frankenfield were looking for a different approach.
According to a June 1971 memo sent by Marvin W. Mounce, then Director of the State Library's Bureau of Library Development, previous studies of library service in Pennsylvania had suggested mail-order as a possibility to explore. Thus, in Spring 1970, when BLD staff had noticed an uptick in the professional literature about it, they decided to compile further information and present it at a meeting of District Library Center staff to obtain their feedback. At the time, efforts in Kansas, Michigan, and Washington State seemed to be pathbreakers, while a program operated by the Wyoming County Library System in Avon, New York, appeared to incorporate the most helpful elements of the earlier ones. A follow-up questionnaire to the District Library Centers indicated that the majority favored a centralized (rather than decentralized) project, and that 7 centers would be able to participate if the program began in September 1971. Mounce tapped Theresa Nagle, a BLD employee who had gathered published information and had visited the Michigan project, to begin to organize Pennsylvania's service. Harrisburg was chosen as the headquarters due to its mid-state location and mailing facilities.
Other documents in MCNPL's office files provide further details about the project's planning stages. For example, minutes of a planning meeting that took place in January 1971 indicate that an important question that District Center Librarians and BLD staff discussed was whether their objective should be to stimulate library funding/establishment in areas where there was none, or whether the program should extend scanty library services that already existed. A related question was how the state's service should interact with existing libraries. Should mail order try to drum up interest in district, county, and/or local library use by promoting it within publicity about the mail order program? While the answers aren't crystal-clear from the minutes, it appears that BLD wasn't interested in getting credit, or in mail-order becoming a permanent State Library function.
Unsurprisingly, MODLS was developed as a "demonstration" project -- a temporary, experimental effort that would begin with a few selected counties to determine whether statewide service was feasible. It was funded through a 2-year, $164,000 Library Services and Construction Act grant, with the Lebanon County Library acting as the fiscal agent. This financial support enabled MODLS to rent its 4,400 square-foot space in Harrisburg, about half of which was used for book storage, while the rest housed work areas, catalogs and supplies.
Similar to Wyoming County, New York's books-by-mail service, MODLS compiled, printed, and distributed a catalog that listed, described, and pictured titles that users could request. Alas, MCNPL doesn't have a copy -- I would love to find one! Nevertheless, correspondence in MCNPL's files indicates that its children's librarian, Marian Peck, worked with BLD on developing the children's portion of the catalog, and that two librarians from Lebanon, Curtis Moore and Robert Marks, hammered out the offerings for adults and young adults. According to an undated letter from Therese Nagle to Pearl Frankenfield, likely written in May or June 1971, the first mail order catalog was intended to have 1,600 paperback titles -- about 500 for kids and 1,100 for adults. Nagle was especially interested in Frankenfield's advice on which titles to buy. She asked Frankfield to look over Peck's, Moore's, and Marks's work, recommend alternative titles, and mark whether items should be purchased in duplicates of 20-25, 40-50, or 70 copies, depending on their anticipated popularity.
Fortunately, MCNPL's files also contain reports written in January 1972, March 1972, and October 1973 by William J. Mick, who became MODLS's administrator. From these accounts, one can glean further details about the the catalog, including that it was 64 pages long and 8 1/2 x 11" in size. Tucked inside the centerfold were tear-out postcards that customers used to request books. The catalogs, which cost about 25 cents each to produce, were paid for by the counties participating in the project, while LSCA funded staffs, books, and postage. Fulfilled orders were sent in "jiffy" bags that contained requested titles, return mailing labels, stamps, and even strips of tape so that customers could re-use the bags that the books had arrived in. In Winter 1971, MODLS mailed about 20,000 catalogs to residents in 8 counties: Bedford, Blair, Crawford, Erie, Fulton, Huntingdon, Lebanon, and Potter. Within just 3 days, they placed more than 600 orders!
Mick's reports also offer a clear rendering of how MODLS worked. As of March 1972, there was 1 professional employee (probably Mick himself), 3 full-time clerical employees, and one part-time clerk. They had established a well-organized book warehouse and efficient work procedures, though he worried the operation was running out of space. MODLS been sending books for 3 months by that point, and it was filling 600-700 orders per week. At the time, Lebanon was the heaviest user, racking up more than 4,000 orders and nearly 13,000 books mailed between December 1971 and March 1972. That said, MODLS was apparently willing to honor requests from residents in any location, even from counties that weren't "officially" involved in the project. One clerk focused entirely on handling returned items, which arrived each day in 4-8 large "mail sacks." Mick noted that while many books were past their four-week due date, nearly every book was returned eventually. What's more, patrons often forwarded unsolicited cash payments to make amends for damaged or lost volumes. He stated that "the overwhelming honesty and cooperation, even affection" of MODLS customers was "most gratifying." He acknowledged various obstacles, including the state's foot-dragging on releasing funds, as well as "a leaky roof, a balky boiler, the peccadilloes of certain publishers, and a printer who went out of business as the catalogs were ready to go to press," but, not long after the project got started, staff were typically able to send out materials on the same day that requests were received.
In Summer 1972, MODLS mailed a "supplement" catalog, listing about 300 titles, to residents in the 8 target counties. Then, in Spring 1973, 50,000 copies of a revised catalog, including items from the original and the supplement, were mailed to the same locations and this resulted in a "flood" of new orders. The public's avid use of books-by-mail apparently led Mick and others involved with the program to envision that townships or other political subdivisions might be able to contract with MODLS to provide reading materials to their residents, thereby offering helpful literacy and recreational resources in areas that wouldn't otherwise have them. Importantly, though, MODLS was never intended to substitute for regular library service. Users were limited to the selection listed in the program's catalog; non-book items such as vinyl records and periodicals were not lent. District and county libraries were welcomed to use a designated white space on each catalog to advertise themselves to MODLS customers, and it was hoped that residents would ultimately seek out the research assistance, public programs, meeting space, and other library benefits that books-by-mail could not offer.
According to Mick, an evaluative study conducted by Teh-Wei Hu and others at Penn State showed that MODLS was "by no means cheap," especially in terms of stockpiling duplicate books and mailing out printed catalogs to prospective customers. Overall, the cost to circulate one book through MODLS was 60 to 70 cents, and the program required about $2.00 per resident to implement. In other words, to serve 10,000 residents required $20,000 or more in funding. The service seems to have been more successful in terms of its "hit rate." Due to savvy ordering of sufficient copies to meet patron demand, MODLS was able to provide about 80% of the titles customers requested from the catalog.
While I haven't read Hu's study for myself, and I'd hope to find additional documentation from BLD to learn the full story about the end of the program, materials in MCNPL's files suggest that MODLS's demise occurred because of financial difficulties. In Fall 1973, as LSCA funding was coming to an end, the State Library surveyed libraries the that had been involved with the program to find out whether localities or counties were able to pick up the costs. Unfortunately, of those that responded, most were unable to continue the service. BLD had calculated that $50,000-$100,000 would be needed to continue MODLS, but it had received only about $25,000 in commitments (see memorandum from William J. Mick, MODLS Project Administrator, to Pennsylvania Librarians, November 2, 1973. Copy available in MCNPL office files, folder "Books by Mail"). So, MODLS ended in December 1973.
As I move on to research other Pennsylvania libraries, the handful of documents I found about MODLS during my research trip to Norristown open up more questions than they answer. As I mentioned previously, I'm eager to find a copy of MODLS book catalog, so I can discover which books were thought to appeal to rural Pennsylvania residents. Another question is why the state chose Bedford, Blair, Crawford, Erie, Fulton, Huntingdon, Lebanon, and Potter for the MODLS program. Certainly, the interest of librarians in those counties was part of the reason, but were there other considerations? I'm also curious as to whether books-by-mail continued to be most popular in Lebanon County, or whether usage picked up in other places.
I also wonder if William J. Mick and Theresa Nagle are still living, and whether they remember any revealing or humorous stories that didn't make it into official reports. And, most importantly, what did MODLS customers feel about it? Did the program open up any avenues for them educationally or recreationally that they hadn't thought of before?
Even though MODLS was short-lived, I'm proud that Pennsylvania libraries tried reaching people in a different way. Stories like this make the 1970s a fascinating decade for library history research.
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