Another positive result of the transfer of the library to the city's control was the hiring of the first full-time librarian, Mrs. Jane Lackie. She held the post from 1878 until 1899 and Cromwell praises her as "an efficient officer" (p. 1). We know relatively little about her personal life aside from what information her obituary, published in the Petaluma Daily Courier (1904), contains. She was born in Toronto, Canada in 1845. She moved with her husband to Petaluma in the early 1860s where she was an active member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union and taught the infant class at the Methodist Episcopal Church. She was elected to the post of librarian after her husband's death, which she held for 21 years. She retired in 1899 and moved backed to Canada where she died of pneumonia five years later. It is uncertain if she had any formal training in librarianship. As no mention is made of it in her obituary, it seems unlikely that she had any.
Lackie's salary also suggests that she did not have professional library training. The Petaluma Argus published an annual report for the library in July of 1894 (Public Library, 1894) which revealed that she earned a salary of just $360 per year. The national average for professional librarians--generally, the minimum qualification for a professional library position was both a college degree and at least one year of additional library training--was $570 per year, with non-professional staff earning between $300 and $500 per year (Passett, 1994, p. 125-126).
Louane Newsome who served as the head librarian from 1930-1943 was probably the first professional librarian to hold the post. Sarah Cassiday was the librarian between Lackie and Newsome and she worked at the library for more than thirty years. She was a local woman who came to Petaluma as a young child and remained there all her life. She came from a large family of limited means; her father made a humble living as an editor at the Petaluma Argus (Murno-Fraser, 1880). Given the family's circumstances, it is unlikely that she could have afforded to attend college let alone library school. Newsome, on the other hand, received her degree in library science from the University of California at Berkeley after earning her bachelor's degree from Pomona College (Louane L. "Jerry" Newsome, 2004). She was a member of the American Library Association and even served as president of the Iowa Library Association in 1963.
Newsome, unlike her predecessors who had stayed for decades, held the position of head librarian for a relatively short period of time, leaving after a scant thirteen years of service in March, 1943 in order to become an army librarian during the Second World War (Mrs. Newsome Given Leave, 1943). An article, reporting her decision to join the war effort, heaped generous praise on her many efforts to transform the library into an active community institution. Her innovations included:
. . . longer library hours, installation of a modern system of loaning books, rearrangement of shelves, books and loan desk, new lighting system, venitian blinds, interior redecoration, enlargement of borrowing privileges, installation of a display case, public book forums, establishment of a children's department on the second floor, children's story hour each Saturday during summer vacation, institution of mail service for rural people and full borrowing privileges for servicemen in the vicinity. (Mrs. Newsome Given Leave, 1943)
Newsome modernized the library and ensured its services were useful and relevant to Petalumans. From the list of achievements given above, it is clear that Newsome actively worked to market the library and its collection. She made the library a place where not only books were available but services and she offered programming that fostered a sense of community. The library board of trustees was so impressed with her work that it hired another graduate of the library school at the University of California, Berkeley to replace Newsome. Having "been shown the value of having a trained librarian such as Mrs. Newsome," the board desired "to continue this high type of service" (Mrs. Newsome Given Leave, 1943).
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