Two Plaques at the Library

Today I had reason to go to the main library in downtown Saint Paul. It's a beautiful building that I have not visited very often. Because I was early for my appointment, I walked up the marble stairs to the fourth floor, checking out the reading rooms and the Innovation Lab (where they have two 3D printers and a podcasting room!) along the way.

I was interested to see this stone plaque on the landing between the first and second floors. At first I didn't see the carved letters, but they became clear when I looked more closely:

On the other side of a window on the same landing is this plaque:

It's a nice pairing in a way because, as I later learned, Helen McCaine was the first Saint Paul librarian, and she was responsible for the fact that the main library was built. Carole Williams, 80 or so years later, was in charge when the by-then-historic building was renovated and preserved.

The juxtaposition of the two plaques is interesting for other reasons, at least to me. The workmanship of the McCaine plaque is not something you see much these days: stone carved by hand in the Roman style of Trajan, with mother-of-pearl inlaid:

The Carole Williams plaque, on the other hand, is laser-burned into stone. Sure, at least it's stone! But comparatively, its design is clunky and heavy, even if it's better-designed than most plaques you might see from its turn of the 21st-century era. It doesn't make you want to look at it, though... does it?

Who was Helen McCaine? I've never heard of her before, so I tried to look her up. The interweb doesn't know much, other than that she was the first librarian of the St. Paul Public Library. Obviously, she lived from 1836 to 1922, as the Roman numerals on the plaque tell us. She was the librarian leading up to the year when the main library building opened in 1917, so I infer that she had a lot to do with its completion. (I'll bet the morgue at the Pioneer Press could fill me in on this.)

There's just one other piece of information related to her online. It's from the history of the Minnesota Library Association: 

A small group of librarians met on December 29, 1891 at the Minnesota Historical Society to organize a State Library Association for Minnesota. A short constitution was drafted and adopted during the first meeting, and the Minnesota Library Association was born "for the purpose of mutual aid and cooperation in our profession, and the advantages which may be gained by union and interchange of ideas acquired by experience in our work." At the first meeting, Dr. William Watts Folwell (Librarian, University of Minnesota) was elected to serve as the first MLA President and went on to lead the Association for nine years. The other first two officers of MLA were Helen J. McCaine (Librarian, St. Paul Library), Vice-President; and J.Fletcher Williams (Librarian, Minnesota Historical Society), Secretary.

The Minnesota Library Association played a huge role in early 20th-century library development. They spearheaded support for the legislative bill to establish the first State Library Commission in 1899 (known today as State Library Services). MLA advocated for professional education programs to prepare students for librarian positions (at a time where there were only 4 library schools in the country) and library training for students and teachers.

Minnesota, I found elsewhere, was the sixth state in the U.S. to form a library association. McCaine later served as president of the MLA in 1910/1911. I wonder if she was newly retired at that point?

That's all there appears to be about her online. I wish I knew where she was from, how she came to be in Saint Paul, and how she became a librarian at a time when most women were not working in fields like that. Aside from the Pioneer Press, maybe there's something about her at the library itself! Hmm.