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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adelaide Hasse | 2/4 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adelaide_Hasse | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T17:06:11.891784+00:00 | kb-cron |
== The Government Printing Office and the work that launched her career == Upon her departure from the LAPL, Hasse went to work in the newly formed Government Printing Office library program under Francis Crandall. Her assigned task was to collect, organize, and classify government documents from its various departments, divisions, and bureaus. Hasse set to work immediately, uncovering documents from all over Washington, D.C., even going so far as to look in ceilings and behind walls. According to The New York Times article from 1897, Hasse's work "unearth[ing] the heap from the sub-cellar of the Interior Department" took "ten men and four teams six weeks' time to remove the mass to her office" from a room that had supposedly been sealed for almost two decades. Of this experience, Hasse reportedly exclaimed: "I dare say never had a young collector been given such an opportunity to revel in a very orgy of collecting." In fact, in just a little over a year, Hasse had "unearthed" 252,602 volumes. Once she had all of the documents, she had to come up with a way to classify them. Building on her work with the Department of Agriculture documents at LAPL, she devised a system of letters and numbers that denoted the department, division, document type, and volume or series (if needed). This system is now generally referred to Superintendent of Documents Classification, or SuDocs. While she was collecting and organizing, Hasse continued to regularly publish not only bibliographies of government publications, but also items of other interest such as "Travel and Exploration" that appeared in List of Books for Girls and Women and Their Clubs. Crandall eventually hired several catalogers to assist in the GPO's work; Edith Clarke was one such employee. Right away, Clarke made it clear to Hasse that their relationship was one of associate, not of supervisor-employee. In both Hasse and Clarke's personal documents, there are vague references to regular squabbling over whether SuDocs or DDC was a better system; Clarke favored the latter, though, and later declared that SuDocs was "indisputable for its special situation." Hasse grew tired of Crandall's lack of recognition for her work and resigned from the GPO in March 1897. Hasse's worries about Crandall were not unfounded as he later accused her of stealing GPO documents and often publicly took the bulk of the credit for the system over which Hasse had so lovingly labored. In the 1980s, Hasse finally received the GPO recognition she deserved when it named a room for her.