Pioneers in Librarianship

Pioneers in Librarianship profiles sixty notable librarians who made significant contributions to the field. Librarians chosen for inclusion in this volume met one or more of these three criteria:

• The librarian conceived a new method for improving library services, invented their own method of book cataloging, or devised an administrative system for libraries to operate under.
• The librarian is historically famous because he/she was notable historically.
• The librarian was the first woman or minority to make significant achievements within the field of LIS.

The achievements of the librarians profiled here are important because they shaped the field. Many of their theories, ideas, and contributions are still being utilized in libraries today.

Librarians profiled here include Melvil Dewey, Carla Hayden, S. R. Ranganathan, Justin Winsor, Charles Coffin Jewett, Katharine Sharp, Pura Belpré, Allie Beth Martin, and John Cotton Dana.

The field of librarianship is young and rapidly evolving, but there are people who laid the foundations for the profession. In this volume, Nappo pays tribute to these pioneers. The 60 profiles appear in alphabetical order. Each entry is six to eight pages long with notes and a bibliography. The well-known contributors (Melvil Dewey, Charles Ammi Cutter) appear along with older contributors such as the 16th-century Belgian Aubertus Miraeus, who first made books available to the public, and Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya, Lenin?s wife and the founder of Soviet librarianship. Pura Belpré, the first Puerto Rican librarian at the New York Public Library, and Carla Hayden, the first Black woman to serve as Librarian of Congress, are included as well. The entries cover the lives, educations, and major contributions of the subjects. They do not shy away from shortcomings, noting, for instance, that Dewey was known to be a racist, an antisemite, and a sexual harasser who did not give due credit to the colleagues who helped him. A useful work that gives long overdue recognition to the library profession. Recommended for all library school professional development collections.