Librarians in the Family

Submitted by Jen Bell

I was honored to be invited to the California Library Association Conference in October to accept an award on behalf of my great-grandfather, W. Elmo Reavis, who was inducted into the California Library Hall of Fame. I was joined by other Reavis descendants who traveled from all over the US to be there. As the librarian in the family, I was selected to give remarks and accept the award. 

W. Elmo Reavis established the Pacific Library Binding Company in 1912, which had a contract with the Los Angeles Public Library to provide binding services. He held a number of patents for bookbinding machinery, including for an oversewing machine which helped to automate the bookbinding industry (basically, how we have library binding today). He published a bimonthly journal, Pacific Bindery Talk, to share information about bookbinding and the care of books with other bookbinders and librarians. He also taught at the Los Angeles Public Library Training School, the Riverside Library Service School, and the Los Angeles State Normal School (what is now UCLA). W. Elmo Reavis’s daughter (my grandmother, Ruth Bell) was also a librarian and my father’s cousin is a retired cataloging librarian as well, so it must run in the family!

None of this would have happened without the hard work of another librarian, Tiffney Sanford with the Los Angeles Public Library. She spent months researching W. Elmo Reavis and published a fantastic and highly detailed blog post about him on LAPL’s website. She nominated him for entry into the California Library Hall of Fame and was excited as the family was when he was selected for induction.