ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

McNiff Is ACRL President-Elect

No. 7, July/August, 1968

ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries, Vol. 29, No. 4

Mr. McNiff

Philip J. McNiffwas elected vice president and president-elect of ACRL and assumed the duties of the office at the close of the Kansas City Conference. Mr. McNiff has been director and librarian of the Boston public library since 1963. He began his career as a student assistant in the Brookline (Mass.) public library in 1926, and became assistant in Newton (Mass.) free library in 1933, having in that year received the baccalaureate degree from Boston College. He served until 1935 in the Newton (Mass.) library and was librarian in the West Newton library from 1935 to 1940. In 1940 he received his BS in LS from Columbia University, and became head of the cataloging department in the Newton free library, where he remained until he became reference assistant in Harvard College in 1942. He was superintendent of the reading room from 1943-1948, librarian of Lamont library from 1948 to 1956, and assistant librarian of Harvard College from 1949 to 1956. In 1954 he became a member of the faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard College; in 1956 he was named associate librarian of the college, and in 1962 became

Archibald Cary Coolidge bibliographer in Harvard University.

Mr. McNiff has served as consultant for the libraries of Emerson, Merrimack, Providence, Our Lady of the Elms, and Gorham State Teachers colleges; St. Paul’s School, Andover Academy, Boston Museum of Science; Case Institute of Technology; and Southern, Southern Illinois, and Villanova universities.

He was a member of the Massachusetts Library Commission to Study State Aid to Public Libraries; chairman of the Massachusetts Library Development Committee; and a member of the advisory boards of the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Newton College of the Sacred Heart, and Newton Junior College; served on the Boston College Visiting Library Committee, and was chairman of its board of directors. He was a member of the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education Advisory Committee on Library Needs in Public Institutions of Higher Education; of the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners Advisory Committee on the Library Services and Construction Act; of the Special Advisory Committee on Certification of Librarians; and chairman of the Special Library Committee for Drafting Personnel Standards for Regional Public Library Systems.

Mr. McNiff served ARL as chairman for the Far East and member of the Latin American and Middle East committees of the Farmington Plan Committee. He is a member of the Catholic Library Association, and the Association for Asian Studies; was a member of the board of directors of New England Library Association; secretary in 1943/44 and president in 1952/54 of the Massachusetts Library Association; and a member of the board of directors of the Institute of Medieval Canon Law, He has served on the Library Committee of the Boys Club of Boston; the Committee on Censorship of the Civil Liberties Union; and on the City of Boston School Committee as a member of the Advisory Committee on Comprehensive Educational Planning. He is a member of the American Association of University Professors. From 1954 to 1961 he was a member of the ALA Council.

Mr. McNiff edited the “Catalogue of Lamont Library, Harvard College” (1953); and compiled a “List of Book Dealers in Underdeveloped Countries” (1963). ¦¦