The bulk of the collection consists of Gjelsness' professional correspondence between 1930 and 1965; materials concerning the committees of the American Library Association on which he served, and relating to his foreign assignments; extensive files of drafts of the revision of the Catalog Code, together with related. correspondence; and comments on the final draft of the Code.
Some unusual items are letters in Norwegian written between 1881 and 1935 to Marius S. and Karoline O. Gjelsness, parents of Rudolph Gjelsness. The correspondents were family and friends in Norway, and residents of other Norwegian. communities in north-central United States. Business papers of Marius S. Gjelsness from 1885 to 1917 reflect his activities as a member of the local school board and as a leader in his church. Several catalogues of merchandise are included.
There are also early personal letters of Rudolph H. Gjelsness written to his mother and his sister Helen during the years he was in the army and later a student in Norway, as well as a few from his days as a library science student and a beginning librarian. There are also a few folders of his World War memorabilia.
Rudolph Hjalmar Gjelsness (1894-1968), librarian and library educator, was born October 18, 1894 in Reynolds, North Dakota. His Norwegian-born parents, Marius S. and Karoline O. Gjelsness, had settled on a farm in that community when it was part of the Dakota Territory. As a child, he learned to speak and write Norwegian in his home. He attended the University of North Dakota, from which he graduated in 1916 with an A.B. degree in Zoology, and a teaching certificate. In 1916-1917, he was high school principal in Adams North Dakota, and in the fall of 1917 he entered the University or Illinois Library School.
His library studies were interrupted by World War I; from 1917-1919 he served in the U.S. Air Force 5th Company, 3rd Regiment, American Expeditionary Forces, with assignments in the United States, France and Germany. In March of 1919, while still in France, he was discharged from the Air Force in order to work under the auspices of the American Library Association as reference librarian at the AFF University at Beaume, France.
On return rig to the United States in September 1,919, he resumed his library studies and obtained the Bachelor of Library Science degree from the University of Illinois in 1920. In 1930, he married Ruth Weaver in New York City. They had two children, Elizabeth (Mrs. Donelson E. Dulany, Jr.) and Barent.
Gjelsness began his professional library career in 1920 as Head of the Order Department at the University of Oregon Library, where he remained until 1922. In the next ten years he progressed to exceedingly more responsible positions at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Michigan, and the New York Public Library, always engaging in some aspect of ordering or cataloging work.
Progress in his library career was interrupted in 1924-25 by a stimulating year at the University of Oslo, Norway, studying Norwegian Literature as a Fellow of the American-Scandinavian Foundation. There he developed a strong interest, in several contemporary Norwegian writers and translated works of Björnsterne Björnson, Johan Ludvig Herberg, Olaf Dunn and Johann Falkberget. For several years after his return from Norway he corresponded with Falkberget, and in 1930, W.W. Norton Published Gjelsness' translation of Falkberget's Lisbeth of Jarnfjeld.
From 1932-37, he was Librarian and Professor at the University of Arizona, which he left to become Professor of Library Science at the University of Michigan and later Head of the Department of Library Science, remaining in that position until his retirement in 1964. He then returned to the University of Arizona Library as Chief of the Special Collections Division, a post he was occupying at the time of his accidental death on August 16, 1968 while in San Juan, Puerto Rico on a special assignment.
At various times during his career he was on leave to carry out library projects in foreign countries, most notably in Mexico, where he was Director of the United States-sponsored Benjamin Franklin Library in Mexico City. He held positions on numerous committees of the American Library Association, the most significant of which was as Chairman of the Committee on Catalog Code Revision. The work of the Code Revision Committee resulted in the 1941 publication of ALA Catalog Rules, Author and Title Entries, with Gjelsness as Editor in Chief. He was the author of more than sixty articles in professional periodicals.
