Papers and Proceedings of the Thirty-Fourth Annual Meeting of the American Library Association: Held at Ottawa, Canada, June 26-July 2, 1912
Science
Papers and Proceedings of the Thirty-Fourth Annual Meeting of the American Library Association: Held at Ottawa, Canada, June 26-July 2, 1912
American Library Association; Library science -- Congresses
In his public writing he has expressed most clearly and happily the
fundamental principles of these relations, and it is a great pleasure
to his friends, as it was to him in the last days of his life, to know
that his statement of the value of recorded thought has been carved
in granite on the walls of his cherished institution. Nevertheless
it was to library work that the greater part of his time and thought
was given, and it is the success of his work as a constructive
librarian that naturally we most fully recognize. He combined high
executive ability with a comprehensive knowledge of the contents of the
collections under his charge. He had that sense of the real librarian,
which has been said to be "an intensive perception of the needs of the
present, and a prophetic insight into the needs of the future."
He worked zealously and unceasingly, first for the broadening of the
work of the St. Louis public schools library, then for its conversion
into a free public library, and finally for its development into a
strong institution ranking among the great libraries of the land. It is
pleasant to know that even in the last years he was able at times to
follow its course along the lines forecast by him, and that he could
realize the high appreciation of his services so generally felt by his
fellow citizens.
Almost in the beginning of his library career, he began also his
services to the American Library Association, which were secondary only
to the work he did for St. Louis.
He attended first the Boston conference of 1879, and rarely after
that did he miss a meeting. Elected councillor in 1882, he served
the association almost continuously until his illness. He was
vice-president in 1887-88, and under his presidency the Fabyans
conference of 1890 took rank as the largest and one of the most
successful meetings held up to that time. When the association met at
St. Louis, in 1889, and again in 1904, he was a most thoughtful host,
whose care for our welfare contributed largely to the success of those
meetings. He served also as one of the vice-presidents of the Chicago
conference in 1893, and as vice-president of the international library
conference at London in 1897, and was one of the chief spokesmen of the
association party. This list of offices by no means measures the debt
of the association to him. The much longer list of committees on which
he served would indicate better the character and breadth of his work,
but even this would leave unexpressed the professional knowledge and
the personal pleasure gained from his companionship by the individual
members.
This sense of personal loss must be felt by all who met him in
the other library circles in which he was interested, especially
the Missouri state library association, of which he was the first
president, and the New York state library association, whose annual
meetings he so often attended.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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