Thirty-nine librarians gathered together in San Francisco in June 1971 for a breakfast meeting. The meeting was chaired by Marc Bornfleth of Swift & Company. Ann Dail presented a brief review of the Industrial Information Services (I.I.S.) of Dallas, Texas. A discussion concerning "Keeping up with the FDA" was led by Greg Aspnes. Tom Crawford, CCM Corporation, led a question and answer session about the Bibliography of Agriculture.
At the meeting in San Francisco, the Ad Hoc Committee met and generally decided to remain informal while trying to increase the membership.
In August 1971, Helen Hall, Carnation Company, received a letter from Dr. McKenna, Executive Director of SLA, concerning the "meeting during the SLA Conferences of groups without formalized affiliation within SLA." She passed the letter to Marc Bornfleth, who called Dr. McKenna to briefly explain the group known as Food Librarians. Dr. McKenna did agree a Tuesday morning breakfast meeting would not interfere with SLA scheduled events, but did urge the group to petition for status of either a section or a division. He also referred us to Bess Walford, Division liaison Officer. Bess called Marc in September to state she would explain the status of the Food Librarians at the SLA Board Meeting in October.
Fifty-seven food librarians attended at 7 a.m. breakfast meeting in Boston on June 6, 1972. The desire of the group to affiliate formally with SLA was the highlight of the meeting. A petition was circulated and fifty names were gathered. The names were presented to the Division Liaison Officer, Shirley Echelman, for presentation to the Board of Directors on Friday, June 9th. Originally, we petitioned for sectional status. The Division Liaison Officer told us about SLA's new provisional division program, so we immediately changed our petition to request provisional division status.
We quote from the minutes of the SLA Board of Directors, June, 1972...
"Voted to APPROVE a petition...for the establishment of the Food Librarians Provisional Division as presented and recommended by the Division Liaison Officer."
On June 8, 1974, the SLA Board of Directors accepted the recommendation of the Division Liaison Officer that full divisional status be granted to the Food Librarians Division. At the Division Annual Meeting in Toronto on June 10, 1974, Elinor Cohen, Chair, announced our elevation to a full division of SLA.
The Division changed its name to the Food and Nutrition Division at the Annual Business Meeting in New York in June, 1977.
Food Publications Round-up was launched in 1977 as a subscription-based bibliographic periodical. Until then, it had been issued as part of the division bulletin, Food for Thought. Larry Walton was the editor. It ceased publishing with Volume 4, no.3, in 1983. A task force to study the publication concluded that the effort of putting together such a regularly scheduled bibliographic publication was too time-consuming for a volunteer organization.
Food Science and Technology: a bibliography of recommended materials was published jointly by the Division and the National Agricultural Library in 1978. The bibliography was based on papers presented at the Denver Conference in 1976. It was edited by Dick Wallace.
During the Annual Conference in Detroit in 1982, the Division sponsored an Agricultural Librarians Roundtable. A committee was formed to investigate changing the Division's name to reflect the agricultural interests of many members. The name was changed by a vote of the members at the Annual Business Meeting in New York on June 11, 1984 to the Food, Agriculture, and Nutrition Division.
Written by Marc Bornfleth, Dick Wallace, and Larry Walton.
Addenda:
In 1988, Tom Whitemarsh volunteered to revise the Procedure Manual for the Division. Of the many things done in that revision, the Name was officially changed to the current form.
In 1988, also, there was a tornado during the Denver Conference. In that year the Washington Post carried an article entitled "How Special Librarians Serve the Food Industry." It was run on May 4, 1988.
In 1989 Rue Olson received the first Distinguished Member Award in New York.
In 1990, members were very concerned with copyright issues. Also, member Julia Peterson of Cargill Information Center won the John Cotton Dana award for a video on information center services. FAN went international when three members traveled to Budapest for the International Association of Agricultural Librarians and Documentalists Conference. Robyn Frank of NAL hosed a two hour television program via satellite TV in 29 states.
1991 was the year of the survey. FAN looked at membership's needs, surveyed e-mail systems in use, and cataloging processes.
In 1992 membership increased to 339.
In 1993 use of the Internet for communications (SLA-FAN) was launched. The second edition of the Directory of Food and Nutrition Information (edited by Robyn Frank and Holly Berry) was published. Also, The Journal of Agricultural and Food Information is launched with FAN members as contributors to regular feature on electronic media, books, etc.
Submitted by Mary Anne Walton
From Food for Thought
vol. 28, no. 4