{{short description|Director of the Los Angeles Public Library, president of the American Library Association}} {{Infobox officeholder | name = Althea Warren |image = Althea Warren.jpg | office = President of the American Library Association | term_start = 1943 | term_end = 1944 | predecessor = Keyes D. Metcalf | successor = Carl Vitz | birth_date = {{Birth date|1886|12|18|mf=y}} | birth_place = Waukegan, Illinois, US | death_date= {{dda|1958|12|19|1886|12|18}} | occupation = Librarian }} '''Althea Hester Warren''' (December 18, 1886{{spaced ndash}}December 19, 1958) was the director of the Los Angeles (California) Public Library from 1933 to 1947 and president of the American Library Association in 1943-1944.<ref name=CaliforniaLibrary>Martha Boaz, ''[http://www.cla-net.org/?669 Fervent and Full of Gifts: The Life of Althea Warren]'' (New York: Scarecrow Press, 1961); Dorothy Drake and Virginia Milbank Fromme, ''Althea Warren, Librarian,'' N.P.: California Library Association, 1962, and "Happy 125th Birthday, Althea Warren," ''Library History Buff,'' as cited at California History Hall of Fame: Althea Warren</ref> She was inducted into the California Library Association's Library Hall of Fame in 2013.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.cla-net.org/page/669/California-Library-Hall-of-Fame-Althea-Warren.htm |title=California Library Hall of Fame: Althea Warren (1886-1958) |website=California Library Association |access-date=August 12, 2022}}</ref>
==Biography and career==
Warren was born on December 18, 1886, in Waukegan, Illinois, to Lansing Warren and Emma Blodgett. She attended the University of Chicago from 1904 to 1908. After traveling abroad in Europe, Warren started library school at the University of Wisconsin, graduating in 1911. She was a branch manager in a "poor neighborhood" in the Chicago Public Library system,<ref name=CaliforniaLibrary/> and she also managed a branch in the Sears, Roebuck store in that city, which served the store's employees.<ref name=WhenBooks/>{{rp|28}} In 1914 she relocated with her family to San Diego, California, and during World War I she helped furnish books to soldiers at Camp Kearny, California, outside of San Diego.<ref name=WhenBooks/>{{rp|30}} She worked in the San Diego Public Library system and was the head librarian there from 1916 to 1926. She moved to the Los Angeles Public Library in the latter year, having been chosen to oversee all the system's branch libraries. In 1933 she became LAPL head librarian, one of six women overseeing large public libraries in the United States at that time.<ref name=CaliforniaLibrary/>
In November 1941, Warren, who was considered "#1 in the field of Women Librarians," took a leave from her Los Angeles job to become director of the ALA's National Defense Book Campaign, which sought to collect and organize distribution of books to American servicemen. The campaign, headquartered in New York City, eventually became known among her closest friends as "Warren's child."<ref name=WhenBooks>{{rp|28, 29 and 54}}Molly Guptill Manning, ''When Books Went to War'' (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014), {{ISBN|9780544535022}}</ref> Warren was California Library Association president in 1921 and American Library Association (ALA) president in 1943-1944. She worked on the national level to increase federal aid to libraries and to end discrimination faced by African American librarians at ALA conference hotels.<ref name=CaliforniaLibrary/>
Warren retired in 1947 and then taught in library science programs in Wisconsin and Michigan and at the University of Southern California.<ref name=CaliforniaLibrary/>
{{s-start}} {{s-npo}} {{s-bef|before=Keyes D. Metcalf}} {{s-ttl|title=President of the American Library Association|years=1943–1944}} {{s-aft|after=Carl Vitz}} {{s-end}}
==Personal life== Warren had a romantic relationship with Gladys English, the Los Angeles Public Library's head of the Children's Department.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Orlean |first1=Susan |author-link=Susan Orlean |title=The Library Book |title-link=The Library Book |date=2018 |publisher=Simon & Schuster |location=New York |isbn=978-1-4767-4018-8 |page=197 |quote=[Warren] often described herself as an old maid, but in fact, soon after she began her job at the Los Angeles Public Library, she fell in love with the head of the Children's Department, a woman named Gladys English. In 1931, Warren and English moved in together and remained inseparable until English died in 1956.}}</ref> They lived and travelled together for years.<ref name="ajbdesign.com">{{cite web |url=http://www.ajbdesign.com/work/Read-Like-a-Cat-Sleeps.pdf |title=Read Like A Cat Sleeps: The Formidable Career of Librarian Althea Warren |last=Brozyna |first=Andrew J |access-date=August 12, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220221194736/http://www.ajbdesign.com/work/Read-Like-a-Cat-Sleeps.pdf |archive-date=February 21, 2022}}</ref> After English died, Warren created the American Library Association's Gladys English Memorial Collection, also called the Gladys English Collection.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.lapl.org/collections-resources/lapl-indexes/gladys-english |title=Gladys English |website=Los Angeles Public Library |access-date=August 12, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220811225307/https://www.lapl.org/collections-resources/lapl-indexes/gladys-english |archive-date=August 11, 2022}}</ref><ref name="ajbdesign.com"/>
==References== {{reflist}}
==External links== {{Commonscat}} * [http://archives.library.illinois.edu/alaarchon/index.php?p=collections/controlcard&id=7446 Althea B. Warren Papers, 1942-1945, The American Library Association Archives]
{{ALA Presidents}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Warren, Althea}} Category:1886 births Category:1958 deaths Category:People from Waukegan, Illinois Category:University of Chicago alumni Category:University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Library and Information Studies alumni Category:Presidents of the American Library Association Category:American women librarians Category:University of Southern California faculty Category:LGBTQ people from Illinois Category:American Library Association people Category:20th-century American women academics Category:20th-century American librarians