This article is part of the retrospective series by the ACRL 75th Anniversary Task Force Research Working Group that explores major

changes, themes, technologies, and issues in academic and research libraries throughout the history of ACRL. The 1940s were a time of great change for the world and academic libraries. On May 31, 1940, ALA Council for-mally recognized the Association for College and Ref-erence Libraries (Reference would later change to Research) as its first division. The path to becoming a division was not an easy one. At one point, many members favored breaking away from ALA entirely. They felt ALA was not adequately addressing the interests of academic librarians, despite the formation of the College Library Advisory Board. It was evident ALA needed to be re-structured if it was going to meet the diverse interests of academic and research librarians. Thanks to the work of the Third Activities Committee, a reorganization plan was devised that would allow for the creation of divisions with semi-autonomous status. Charles Harvey Brown used his consider-able political skills to ensure the recommen-dations of the Third Activities Committee would be implemented, passing up the op-portunity to become ACRL’s first president.1 In the early years, ACRL had six subsec-tions to meet the needs of the members