It takes a beloved or significant figure in the history of an institution to name a building after that person. Illinois State University ended up naming two libraries for Angeline Vernon Milner, one of which students still use every day.
She went by Ange V. Milner. She was a townie, born in Bloomington in 1856, the eldest of six children born to JV and Angeline Baker Milner. They were an upper middle-class family. Her father was in the hardware business.
“She grew up in a kind of a palatial homestead on the north end of downtown, just west of Holy Trinity Catholic Church. She later moved to the 200 block of North University Street on campus. It's a corner of the Bone Student Center parking lot today,” said Bill Kemp, librarian at the McLean County Museum of History.
Even before she became a librarian, Milner was a passionate cataloger of botanical samples. She spent two summers in the 1870s at a vacation School of the Illinois State Laboratory of Natural History, through Illinois State Normal University [ISNU]. It was led by Stephen Forbes, who founded the Illinois Natural History Survey, now at the University of Illinois.
“After attending these vacation schools, Stephen Forbes asked Milner to do more work, including eventually cataloging and classifying scientific books at the university. Women were limited in the sciences at this period. People like Ange Milner could volunteer, could do work, but were really restricted from teaching the natural sciences,” said Kemp.
Milner was Illinois State Normal University's first full-time librarian. She took the job in 1890 and remained for 38 years.
“Why am I a librarian? I will say in four words, Because I like it…Of course I think I have the very nicest part of all because mine is the one connected with an educational institution where the people want to learn and are willing to be informed…and where if they don’t do things right there is a chance to teach them to,” said Milner in Public Libraries, 1897.
She is the namesake for the current and the previous university library, now named Williams Hall.
“She was charged with organizing five disparate collections of books into one university library,” said Kemp. "By the time she retired she had organized a library of some 40,000 volumes.”
Before the internet, libraries played a crucial role at universities and research institutions in making scholarship accessible in the 19th and 20th centuries. Searches of books and articles were by indexes and card catalogs, not keyboards.
“I have made one discovery, and that is, if you want to become the most conceited person in the world, be a librarian for one day. You will hear more questions asked that you know the answer of, and the more things that can be met the easiest way in the world; and if you want the conceit taken out of you, just be a librarian for one week. You will hear more questions you never heard of before, and more difficulties finding things out for people that you must find out or you won’t help them,” said Milner.
That would have been legacy enough. Kemp said, though, Milner also was a leader in the progressive movement to professionalize the craft of librarianship in the early 20th century.
“Milner was an academic of her own right. She authored some 80 articles and books. A common theme in her librarianship and her research was schools and institutions in small and rural settings,” said Kemp.
One of the missions of Illinois State Normal University in the first half of the 20th century was educating children in the corn belt countryside.
“Ange Milner by promoting the creation and establishment and care of small libraries for one-room schools and small-town schools really played an important role in that story, the development of the countryside,” said Kemp.
He said Milner was ahead of her time in seeing libraries as more than book houses.
“She viewed the library as a social center, a place really without walls, interconnected to the campus as a whole,” said Kemp.
A Library Talk by Ange V. Milner 1892, The Vidette
“Don’t bother the library people!”
Why, what do you think we are for?
We will answer your questions gladly
And wish you would only ask more.
At your will through the library wander,
Grow familiar with none but the best;
Form the habit of first-class reading,
And let patience dominate the rest.
She displayed student work. As early as 1901 Milner had developed a circulating collection of more than 1,000 mounted photographs and pictures, a visual library.
“She also was interested in new technologies and new teaching methods. She collected lantern slides and stereopticons as a way for information to be shared,” said Kemp.
She was portrayed, sometimes as a stereotypical librarian. That image was aided by her preferred choice of high-collared, long dresses with her hair in a bun. It was a false image.
“Contrary to the cliche, she was very active on campus in student organizations and publications and even athletics,” said Kemp.
She was active in student affairs and was affectionately known by students as "Aunt Ange."
“The best librarians should be “intelligent, interested in the progress of the library and the welfare of each individual who uses it, and ready to make every effort that will benefit either people or the library,” said Milner in New York Libraries, 1909.
She was involved with the student newspaper, The Vidette. She oversaw the Index, ISNU’s yearbook before the institution grew too big for yearbooks to be practical. She plugged into the wider campus community.
“She was known for giving splendid pep talks before homecoming football games and other athletic events, and she would outlast most students during rainstorms or cold weather during football games,” said Kemp.
She hosted student parties and invited them for ice cream, cake, games, music, and dancing.
Perhaps she's best known on campus for her work supporting U.S. troops during World War I. She took part in the American Library Association's war service work collecting magazines and books for soldiers
“Books are wanted for light reading. Good Love Stories, stories of adventure, detective stories — all of these are welcome. Good magazines are needed also, but don’t send in out-of-date magazines or cookbooks or books on ‘How to raise babies.’ And don’t forget I need them right away!” wrote Milner in The Vidette, Dec. 11, 1918.
She also assembled and preserved a collection of wartime correspondence.
“When the U.S. entered the war in 1917, she began a writing campaign with former and current Illinois State Normal University students. She wrote more than 600 letters and received many more than that in return. Many of these letters are housed now at Milner Library, and are an incredible resource for researchers,” said Kemp.
From 1890 to 1898, the library was in the building later known as Old Main. That was torn down in the 1950s. It was where the flower beds now are on the ISU quad. During Milner's years as the university librarian, it was housed at Cook Hall and later North Hall located immediately north of Old Main that also has been torn down.
Ange Milner worked until close to the time she became ill in the fall of 1927. She passed away in January 1928 at the age of 71. ISNU canceled classes during her memorial service at Capen Auditorium at Edwards Hall. She was so beloved, the crowd was standing-room only.
A birthday poem
The library brought us together,
And in helping to gain the ends
Of service men, teachers, and students,
The library gave me my friends.
Ange. V. Milner 1920
Primary and secondary research on Angeline Milner provided by Angela Bonnell, Head of Government Information and Maps, Milner Library, Illinois State University, said Kemp.
McHistory is a co-production of WGLT and the McLean County Museum of History bringing you the words and voices of people who have gone before.
