Ruth Campbell McBirney was born in Boise, Idaho, on January 16, 1918, the daughter of James F. and Bertha Campbell McBirney. She graduated from Boise High School in 1935, attended Boise Junior College for one year, and entered Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, in the fall of 1936. She was awarded an A.B. degree from Whitman College in May 1939, graduating with a major in French. She was a soloist with the college glee club. In 1940 she received a bachelor's degree in library science from the University of Washington and returned to Boise where she worked for two years as a librarian at Boise Public Library and Boise Junior College.
In 1942 Miss McBirney went to New York, where she worked for the Music Library at Columbia University. In 1947 she went to France to become reference librarian for the American Library in Paris. She later was appointed head librarian. Ruth McBirney returned to Boise, Idaho, in1954 and became head librarian at Boise Junior College. During her twenty-three years in that post, Boise Junior College became a four-year college and, in 1974, Boise State University. As head librarian, Miss McBirney oversaw the construction of a new library building and built the collection from one of 20,000 volumes to one containing 300,000 volumes.
Miss McBirney retired from Boise State University in 1977. She was a member of Mu Phi Epsilon, the national music honorary, and of the First Presbyterian Church of Boise. She served as president of the Idaho Library Association and the Soroptimist Club of Boise. Ruth McBirney died in Boise, Idaho, on March 20, 1991.
Source: Based on her obituary which appeared in the Idaho Statesman of March 22, 1991, and on information from her contract file in the Boise State University Archives.
The Ruth McBirney papers document the personal life and professional career of a librarian from Boise, Idaho. A graduate of Whitman College and the University of Washington, she worked at Columbia University in New York (1942-1946) and the American Library in Paris (1947-1953) before returning to her hometown, where she became head of the Boise Junior College Library. During the course of her twenty-three years at BSU (1954-1977) she oversaw its transition from a junior college library to one serving a four-year comprehensive state university. Her papers include correspondence, datebooks, scrapbooks, clippings, memorabilia, family papers, and photos, and it is particularly rich in documenting her life and work in post-World War II France.
McBirney's letters home present an almost day-by-day account of personal, social, and cultural life at college and in New York and Paris, as well as descriptions of political and social conditions in France in the immediate post-World War II period. Letters from McBirney's parents record family and social life in Boise and civilian activities on the wartime home front. There is a small file documenting McBirney's financial backing of Marcel Marceau (1949) and two early handbills of his pantomime programs with Pierre Sonnier. Other correspondents include Ian Forbes Fraser.
The collection is arranged in eight series: 1: Biographical and personal papers; 2: Family correspondence; 3: General correspondence; 4: American Library in Paris; 5: Travel memorabilia; 6: Memorabilia (including datebooks); 7: Family papers; and 8: Photos.
Collection is available for research.
Gift, 1991.
See also University Archives, Record Group 50 (Library).
[item description], Ruth McBirney Papers, Box [number] Folder [number], Boise State University Special Collections and Archives.
This series contains a variety of miscellaneous papers relating to various aspects of Ruth McBirney's personal life and library career. While there are several files relating to her career at Boise State, most of the records of her work at the university (including the library's annual reports) are located in the University Archives, Record Group 50 (Library).
Ruth McBirney's letters home to her parents from Whitman College (1936-1939), University of Washington (1939-1940), New York City (1942-1947), and Paris (1947-1948), present almost day-by-day accounts of her activities while away from Boise. She recounts entertainment and social events, as well as the trials, joys, and routines of daily life, with occasional comments about academics and work. Her letters from France present vivid descriptions of the political and social turmoil of post-war Paris and the vibrant cultural life that continued despite it all, as well as the work of the American Library and her colleagues there. After the death of her mother in 1948, only occasional letters home (to her father and Aunt Clara) are present in the files.
Ruth McBirney saved letters she received from her parents, and they are full of local Boise news and family matters. This series of letters is most complete through 1947, when she left for France. The letters Ruth McBirney's mother wrote during World War II, when Ruth was in New York, offer glimpses of wartime activities on the home front, as well as commentary on social events, local concerts, and activities at the First Presbyterian Church in Boise, of which the McBirneys were active members. Ruth's mother sent her letters more than once a week, while her father was a less frequent correspondent.
Other letters written by Ruth McBirney to her father during later vacation travel (after she moved back to Boise) are found in Series 5, Travel memorabilia.
Other than two files labeled "Professional Correspondence" (relating mainly to job searches and other business and non-personal concerns), the bulk of the material in this series consists of letters Ruth McBirney received from European friends after her return to America in 1953. Among them were Ian Forbes Fraser, who continued as director of the American Library in Paris, and Suzanne Wang (Suzanne Mozère), whom she hired as a cataloger in 1949. Other former colleagues from the American Library also continued to write to her up through the 1980s, relating news of the Library as well as their own personal lives.
Other foreign correspondents include Louise Ferry (in French, from Paris), British bookseller Bertram Rota, and (in the chronological letter files) Helena O'Loghlen (an occasional travel companion, from England) and Kit Atkinson (a mutual friend of Ian Forbes Fraser, also in England). The series also includes a small file of papers documenting the financial support Ruth McBirney gave to Marcel Marceau in Paris at the outset of his career (Box 9, Folder 10). Among the papers in that file are two handbills announcing Marceau's pantomime programs with Pierre Sonnier at the Théâtre de Poche in 1949.
American Library colleague Suzanne Wang Mozère was born in China of a Chinese father and German mother. Her father and at least one of her siblings remained there after the Communist revolution; other family members made their way to Europe and America. Her letters (Box 9, Folders 12 and 13) reflect the experiences of a family separated by the Cold War divide, her father's imprisonment in China, and their unsuccessful attempts to secure his release. Her letters, like those of some of the other correspondents from France, also include comments on the French political crisis in the 1950s and early 1960s brought on by the war in Algeria.
Ruth McBirney maintained an active interest in the American Library in Paris even after returning to the United States in 1953. Most of the material in this series dates after her return to Boise. The Library's 30th anniversary brochure (Folder 15) contains her picture as the institution's head librarian; otherwise the only other papers in this series contemporaneous with her service there are some of the clippings in Folder 9. Extensive correspondence with former colleagues at the Library (notably Ian Forbes Fraser and Suzanne Wang Mozère) is located in Series 3 (General correspondence), and Ruth McBirney's own comments on the Library during her tenure there can be found in her letters home to her parents (Series 2). Photos of the Library and her colleagues are located in Series 8 (Photos).
This series consists chiefly of letters Ruth McBirney wrote to her father and other relatives during vacation trips from 1956 on; together with miscellaneous travel memorabilia. Photos from many of her trips are included in Series 8 (Photos). The lecture notes (Folder 1) recapitulate her work at the American Library in Paris and contain some of her impressions of the country and the people. They appear to have been written shortly after her return, for presentation to an audience.
Among the notable items in this series are Ruth McBirney's date books, or pocket diaries, from 1947 to 1966 (Box 13). By and large they are a curt record of social activities ("Dinner with Louise," "Races at Longchamps, 2 pm,"), and rarely are there any other comments. Hand in hand with her letters home, however, they document an active social and cultural life during her years in Paris, 1947-1953. A childhood diary (in Box 14), which she kept intermittently from the age of ten until she was nineteen, are full of comments on family, friends, school work, and news (she made particular note of the closure of Boise's banks in August 1932 and the impact on her family's finances, for example ), as well as introspective personal reflections on her life and future. The series also contains notes and texts of talks she gave to the Saturday Fortnightly Club, a women's study club in Boise; memorabilia from Boise High School, Whitman College, the P.E.O. Club, and Soroptimist Club; concert programs from Europe and America; and her pearls.
This series contains papers of Ruth McBirney's parents, J.F. and Bertha Campbell McBirney, and genealogical notes and compilations on the McBirney, Campbell, and Tiedgen families. Miss McBirney's paternal grandfather, Thomas McBirney (1837-1932), was born in Northern Ireland, settled and married in Iowa (where her father was born), and eventually relocated to Boise, Idaho, as did most of his adult children in the first decade of the 20th century. Ruth's maternal grandparents, J.M. and Mary Campbell, also moved from Iowa to Boise about 1900. The basic charts outlining her parents' siblings are found in Box 17, Folder 16. Old family photos are located in Series 8 (Photos).