Winsor, Dewey and Putnam: The Boston Experience

Citation

James, S. (2002), "Winsor, Dewey and Putnam: The Boston Experience", Library Review, Vol. 51 No. 9, pp. 487-487. https://doi.org/10.1108/lr.2002.51.9.487.12

I remember being disappointed at having to miss this session at IFLA in Boston last year because of another appointment. It seems I might not have got in anyway as the session was over‐crowded, but I am even more disappointed to have missed them now that I have read the lectures. This is good, lively library history and biography to a purpose: we learn about the Boston careers of three eminent librarians (or two eminent and describe Melvil Dewey as you will). But this is much more than descriptive history, for their Boston episodes are fully discussed in relation to their overall careers and in the context of US librarianship of the later nineteenth century. This is not just professional history: three clear and distinct characters emerge. Winsor the librarian and scholar, perhaps the latter in reaction to frustrations experienced at Harvard following his achievements in Boston Public Library. Dewey the entrepreneur; the lecture would be worth hearing if only for the description of him by the wife of his Library Journal publisher: “… I thought Dewey about as miserable a specimen of a gabbling idiot as I had ever beheld”. Putnam (one of G.P. Putnam’s Sons of publishing fame) the lawyer turned library administrator (he only ever served as a chief librarian) who restored the Boston Public Library to the eminence it had achieved under Winsor after more than a decade of decline.

Boston is a fascinating and enticing city steeped in literary and library history. This IFLA session did the city and its libraries proud, as indeed they did more widely in their welcome to all of us IFLA delegates. These Occasional Papers are an ideal and attractive way of preserving the record of an informative and entertaining contribution to US library history, taking a “parochial” approach which draws lessons and morals for the rest of us too.