California Library Hall of Fame

Laura Steffens was born in Sacramento in 1874, the daughter of prominent banker Joseph Steffens and sister of well-known author and social reformer Lincoln Steffens. In 1903, she was hired by the California State Library to establish a traveling library program providing books to rural areas lacking library service. As chief of the library’s new extension department, she developed additional outreach programs, such as library services for the blind, and helped establish public and county libraries throughout the state. Steffens was also the founding editor of News Notes of California Libraries, a journal providing current information about and for California libraries, the State Library, and the California Library Association (CLA). In 1917, Steffens moved to San Francisco to administer the new Sutro Library, a major research collection donated to the state. An active member of CLA, she chaired the Conditions of Librarians Committee and, in a 1908 report, argued that librarians, as the poorest paid city officials, should be classified and paid on a par with public school teachers.  Although she left the State Library in May 1923, she continued as a library professional for several years, renting an office in the Mark Hopkins Hotel with her social activist husband Allen Suggett, and worked as a “Consulting Librarian.” In 1924, Suggett self-published the highly influential book, The Beginning and the End of the Best Library Service in the World, a fitting tribute to the major outreach services she had developed for the state as well as the nation.

Laura Steffens Suggett was inducted into the California Library Hall of Fame in 2020. For more information about her, please see:

Held, Ray. The Rise of the Public Library in California. ALA, 1973.  

Steffens, Laura. “Conditions of Librarians.” Handbook and Proceedings of Annual Meeting. Sacramento: California Library Association, 1908, 38-41.  

Suggett, Laura Steffens. The Beginning and the End of the Best Library Service in the World. San Francisco Publishing Co., 1924.

Photo source: Betty Coon Wheelwright. “The Road to Zurich: Jane and Jo Wheelwright, 1929-1932.” Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche (Winter 2009)