Rebecca B. Rankin was the Director of the Municipal Reference Library for the City of New York. Her work included the promotion of resources and services of the library to its clients. When budget cuts forced her to curtail the traditional publications used for publicity and outreach, Rankin took the pioneering step of employing radio to communicate with prospective customers in the local government and their constituents. Rankin and her staff prepared and presented more than three hundred radio talks between 1928 and 1938. The success of this publicity strategy was demonstrated by an increase in patrons and requests. The weekly broadcasts over WNYC also succeeded as an outreach service by communicating vital civic information. Writing in February 1938, Rankin's colleague described the broadcast's early years.

The series themselves have developed logically. At first, as I have said, we were especially anxious to interest the listeners in the library. This was done by popular chats of fifteen and twenty minutes on subjects as various as the great city we pictured. 'New Yorkers,' 'The Battle of the Streets,' 'The City of Islands,' 'Art Ventures,' 'The Children of the City,' 'Where New Yorkers Eat,' 'Fires That Have Startled New York,' 'The City of Bridges,' 'The City Chemists' --to name but few of the 1929 series. [1]

Librarian Barry W. Seaver is the author of A True Politician: Rebecca Browning Rankin, Municipal Reference Library of the City of New York, 1920-1952, published in 2003. He wrote about Rankin's use of radio in this book and in an earlier article for the journal Libraries and Culture in 2001. In the article, Seaver describes Rankin's first broadcast on March 5, 1928, as the Municipal Reference Library approached its fifteenth year:

Rankin stood stiffly before the WNYC microphone and spoke to the people of New York about their government and the library. Her slightly high-pitched but clear, strong voice encouraged them to visit the municipal building, where the MRL [Municipal Reference Library] and most of the administrative departments were located. Rankin told them that after a visit 'you will have an increased feeling of pride in your City...[because] the running of your City is a huge undertaking, admirably done. You can afford to give the government machinery more attention and study.' [2]

According to Seaver, this broadcast generated enough interest on the part of Rankin's superiors that they asked her to produce a regular program emphasizing the resources of the library. Rankin was assisted by her small staff —particularly M. Margaret Kehl, who described the programs as 'popular chats' designed to encourage people to visit the library. Judging from listener letters, Kehl's May 1929 broadcast "Where New Yorkers Eat," which traced the invention of chop suey to the Waldorf Hotel in 1896, was a favorite with the public. [3]

Rebecca Rankin from an undated photograph, probably late 1930s.

(Photo courtesy of the NYC Municipal Archives)

Rankin's explanation of proportional representation, broadcast on December 1936, also generated interest: it was recorded (listen above) and repeated more than once in early 1937. The recording was also loaned out to groups seeking to educate their members about the new method of voting.[4]

Nowadays it may be hard to imagine a pre-internet world where information wasn't sloshing about like some overloaded saucepan. And while it is true that there were more local newspapers at the time, WNYC afforded Rankin and her staff the ability to go directly to the public with the civic information they believed it needed in order to make informed decisions at the voting booth.

In 1950, Rankin was interviewed on the WNYC program For the Ladies.

City Librarian Rebecca Rankin examines a newspaper with a Latin American Scholarship student in the Municipal Reference Library, New York City, 1942.

(New York State Archives)

[1] Kehl, M. Margaret, "Nine Years of Broadcasting," Special Libraries, February 1938, pg. 38.

[2] Seaver. Barry W., "Rebecca Browning Rankin Uses Radio to Promote the Municipal Reference Library of the City of New York and the Civic Education of Its Citizens," Libraries and Culture, Vol. 36, No.2, Spring 2001, pg. 294.

[3] Ibid., pg. 295.

[4] Ibid., pg. 311.

WNYC broadcast audio courtesy of the New York City Municipal Archives.