Information Is Power: Women as Information Providers to the President’s Budgeting Men; A History of the Bureau of the Budget Library, 1940-1970
Keyword(s):
The Us
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Quietly tucked within the elite agency exercising the president’s power of the purse was a little-known in-house library. Given that information is power, the women of the library of the US Bureau of the Budget collected, cataloged and disseminated information to the bureau’s male budgeteers. This article traces the history of the budget bureau’s library, which has been largely overlooked in the literature, including the extended career of its chief administrator, Ruth Fine, who headed it from 1940 to 1972. Starting her career during the era of the “spinster librarian” and anti-Semitism in the professions, she rose to have a long-time management career as the Bureau’s library director.