Hannah Davison was appointed City Librarian on October 6th, 1903. In her first annual report she noted, "No statistics can stand for what the real work of a live public library in any community is. If developed as it should be, the mere giving out and taking in of books is but a small part of its mission. The public library should be an intellectual center in which every member of the community feels a sense of personal ownership and right to demand every help that can be supplied, for the furtherance of his own personal intellectual work and general development." In a summary of the events of 1915, written for the Jan. 1, 1916 edition of the "San Diego Herald " Hannah wrote that the public library must always "provide good fiction for recreation, so that the worker may forget his toil, the solitary find congenial company, and the dispirited forget himself." Hannah, also a founder of the San Diego Children's Home, served as Librarian Emeritus until she retired at age 81 in 1929. Title supplied by cataloger.
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