One of the oddities of our profession is the way we tend to neglect our own professional history. What do young practitioners know of Melvil Dewey, Panizzi and Carnegie nowadays? We should be proud of our great forefathers – “the giants upon whose shoulders we have stood”. This well written, short occasional publication from the Round Table on Library History brings forth three papers from the IFLA Conference in Boston 2001 (despite it stating 2002 on the title page). These papers are devoted to three of the great American pioneers of library science – Justin Winsor, Melvil Dewey and Herbert Putnam. K.E.Carpenter writes lucidly on Justin Winsor, the first President of the American Library Association and Chief Librarian of both Boston Public Library and then Harvard University Library; a truly remarkable feat. A talented scholar and energetic visionary he was a superb choice to lead the newly born American Library Association, not just once but for two other stints later. Wayne A. Wiegand writes an interesting account of Melvil Dewey’s sojourn in Boston from 1876 to 1883, aged 25 and arriving from Amherst College Library where he had created the Dewey Decimal Classification of knowledge. He set about reorganising and standardising as only he could, a true irresistible force and great entrepreneur. In all these years I never realised that Dewey, with his quirk about spelling, had actually changed his name officially on his 28th birthday to “Dui”‐only later, in 1883 did he change it back to the more familiar “Dewey”. Jane Aikin follows this up with a good account of Herbert Putnam’s tenure of Boston Public Library from 1895 to 1899, where he accomplished many good things before proceeding on to become a great Librarian of Congress.
In conclusion, an interesting production from the Graduate School of Library and Information Science of the University of Illinois, shedding valuable light on a critical period in the early days of US librarianship. Useful, informative reading for all students of library history and biography.
