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The Era of Herbert Putnam and the Library of Congress: 1899-1939

Amy B. Nÿkamp

San José State University

Spring, 2017

nykamp – Herbert putnam and the library of congress 2

The Beginning of the Library of Congress

“Universal in scope; national in service.” This perfectly describes the Library of Congress

(LC) in a simple phrase coined by its eighth Librarian, Herbert Putnam, in 1936 (Library of

Congress, 1956, p. 41). Rich in history, the LC has its roots in the late 1700s, just before the

Revolutionary War, when the Library Company of Philadelphia offered to share its collection

with the Continental Congress (Cole, 1979, p. 3). However, an official LC was not so designated

until after the government moved to Washington, D.C, when an Act of Congress was signed by

President John Adams in 1800. The first Librarian of Congress was selected in 1802, John

Beckley (chosen by Thomas Jefferson), who also served as the Clerk of the House of

Representatives. It became a practice that the Clerk would serve in the capacity of Librarian, but

that dual role ended in 1815 when being the Librarian became a full-time position (Conaway,

2000, p. 31).

Beckley was a politician through-and-through. He was born in England in 1757 but was

sent to Virginia as a young boy to serve as “a scribe for John Clayton, [the] clerk of court for

Gloucester County and a well-known botanist” (Library of Congress, n.d., para. 2). As a result, he

was steeped in politics and found himself the clerk of the Virginia House of Delegates; from that

he became a councilman and, eventually, Mayor of Richmond, VA. He had no formal library

training, but while he was clerk at the Virginia Senate, he had been responsible for their

collection (Library of Congress, n.d., para.6). When he was elected to the position of Clerk of the

House of Representatives, he became friends with Thomas Jefferson and it was after Jefferson

became President that the LC Librarian position was created. Beckley thought he could step into

this role as well as be Clerk, so he applied and was appointed on January 29, 1802.


In the beginning, the LC was housed in a rather grand room in the Capitol and Beckley

did have assistance in running the day-to-day tasks from other clerks appointed to that role while

he himself was busy increasing the size of the collection. All new books were purchased under

the authorization of, not the Librarian, but the Joint Committee on the Library, which Congress

created. While Beckley didn’t have sole say in what was purchased, he did suggest titles and, in

addition, encouraged publishers and authors to donate copies of their books to the LC collection.

By 1803, there were nearly 1,500 books in the LC, in addition to other paraphernalia. Beckley

was very organized and printed Thomas Jefferson’s catalog of the books in the library.

Interestingly, Beckley’s salary was only $2 a day, per the terms in the “Act Concerning the

Library for the Use of Both Houses of Congress” (Conaway, 2000, pp. 13-15).

However, politics ruled the LC and Beckley found himself increasingly on the wrong side

with his ambitions and machinations, which cost him his health, his money, and sadly, his life.

He died in April 1807, while still Librarian. A new successor wasn’t chosen until that November,

who also served as both Clerk of the House and Librarian. That practice ended in 1815, when the

third Librarian was appointed to be full-time (Conaway, 2000, p. 31).

In the meantime, the collection at the LC continued to increase exponentially, despite

terrible fires in both 1814 (by the British) and in 1851 (by accident). Finally, by 1872, the LC

had grown to “246,000 volumes” (Conaway, 2000, p. 98), and was to the point that people

recognized the need for a separate building. Although they at last persuaded Congress to provide

funding (in 1873), it took nearly 25 years from the time the initial designs were created and there

was much wrangling over the final plans. In 1897, a new structure was completed and the entire

collection of the LC (which by now numbered several hundred thousand items) moved. The

Librarian at the time was John Russell Young, who died less than two years after being


appointed. He was succeeded by the first professional librarian, Herbert Putnam, who at the time

was head of the Boston Public Library. This paper will show that, as a result of the leadership he

brought to the LC, this institution has contributed heavily to the library profession worldwide.

Biography of Herbert Putnam

George Herbert Putnam was born in 1861, the “sixth son and tenth child” (Waters, 1976,

p. 153) in his family. His father was George Palmer Putnam, who ran a famous publishing

business, still thriving today. The difference between the first Librarian and the eighth was like

night and day. Where Beckley was a politician, Putnam was a true librarian, despite his

beginnings as a lawyer. Herbert, as he was known, attended Harvard and “graduated magna cum

laude....The following year, he studied law at Columbia University and then became a librarian”

(Waters, 1976, p. 153). His first position was as librarian of the Minneapolis Athenaeum. He

worked there from 1884 until his mother-in-law became ill in 1891 and his family had to move to

Boston (Waters, p. 154). He worked as a lawyer in Massachusetts until 1895 when he decided to

go back into librarianship and was hired as director of the Boston Public Library, where he

stayed until his call to the LC in 1899. He was young—only 37—when he became the head of

the LC. Not only was he very well educated, but also he had a passion for books, as can be seen

by the enhancements he made to the LC’s collection and its reputation under his forty-year

tenure.

Putnam’s Appointment and the ALA

Putnam had an excellent relationship with the American Library Association (which was

founded in 1876); in fact, he was their president in both 1898 and in 1904. Three members of the

ALA actually recommended him to President McKinley for the position in the LC. These were

Thorvald Solberg, chief of the Copyright division, who in 1939 wrote about the circumstances


surrounding Putnam’s nomination and appointment; James C.M. Hanson, who was already

serving as chief of the Catalog division at the LC; and David Hutcheson, who headed the LC’s

Reading Room (Rosenberg, 1993, p. 20). They stepped in to avoid a potential political

appointment; in the ALA’s view, a professional librarian was needed to shoulder such a

responsibility. They didn’t want to run into the situation that had happened under the previous

administration when many of the applicants were totally unsuitable for the posts. Solberg quotes

Hanson when he writes:

…there swooped down on Congress, the President, and the library an eager horde of would-be

librarians. There were needy journalists, clergymen without a call, teachers unable to teach,

unsuccessful authors, actors without engagements, college and university graduates whose mental

development must have been arrested soon after graduation, and the usual assortment of lame

ducks from states east and west… (J.C.M. Hanson as cited in Solberg, 1939, p. 288)

Given this concern, it was important to the ALA that “one of their own” would be chosen

and their ideal candidates were few: Besides Putnam, there was also Melvil Dewey, who didn’t

want the job but wrote a glowing letter of endorsement for Putnam. In the meantime, Samuel

Jones Barrows, a Congressman, was vying for the position and thought he would be able to

secure the appointment, but a large contingent of Senators opposed his nomination, so he had to

withdraw. Putnam became the eighth Librarian of Congress, which thrilled the ALA members.

Thus, there was a special bond between Putnam and the ALA. Here was in the greatest

library in the land someone who could identify with the visions the ALA had about librarianship

and who could shape the future of it through his leadership. He and they both desired to see the

LC become a true “National Library.” To that end, among his first actions was to overhaul the

LC staff.


Putnam and the LC Staff

Putnam knew that to increase the scope of the library, he needed workers that were

properly educated in librarianship. Upon arrival at the LC, he assessed the skills of his

predecessor’s staff, predominately men who had ties to the Congress—in other words, those

chosen not for skill but for political reasons. Putnam decided that it was important for him to

have autonomy in the appointments of his staff, though he had to be careful about “offending too

many politicians” (Rosenberg, 1991, p. 259). The first action Putnam took (in October 1899) was

to request more funds to increase the staffing to the level he believed was necessary to maintain

the LC. Congress granted him nearly all the funding he requested (a 60% increase over prior

allotments) to hire 96 more employees. While he encouraged and expected his staff to have

library school training, “the Librarian did not…consider library school graduates capable of

filling every position….It was for the Catalog division, the Card Section, and the functions of

ordering, shelf-listing, binding, and classifying that he intended to employ librarians”

(Rosenberg, 1991, p. 260). For the higher-level positions, all chiefs of divisions, he wanted

experts in their fields, having not only a college degree, but also knowing other languages,

particularly, French and German. It was also an advantage if they had traveled abroad

(Rosenberg, 1993, p. 32).

As mentioned, Putnam’s staff was predominantly male. While females made up nearly

75% of the library field (Rosenberg, 1993, p. 34), the LC had a tiny number in proportion to his

male staff members. This was due to Putnam’s belief that women weren’t suited to all positions;

in fact, Rosenberg (1993) writes, “Believing that female employees experienced more physical

and emotional difficulties than men…” he was more willing to have women only in those roles

that “required detailed or repetitive work” (p. 35). Men were hired to run the various divisions


and be seen behind the circulation desk. This mindset was not uncommon in that era, and in fact,

overall, women didn’t question their lot, even when they were highly educated. It wasn’t until

women noticed the salaries that men were paid when doing same work that there was a bit of

discontent. However, in Victorian society, it was seen as a woman’s duty to be at home, so any

role a female could have outside of child rearing was a benefit, even with low salaries (Garrison,

1972, pp 10-14).

As few females as worked in the LC during that time, there were still more women than

African Americans on Putnam’s staff. In fact, the only African-American librarian mentioned in

the LC’s early history is Daniel Alexander Payne Murray, who had been hired in 1871 by the

sixth Librarian, Ainsworth Rand Spofford. Murray enjoyed a 52-year career at the LC before his

retirement in 1923. In 1899, Putnam asked Murray to gather all materials written by African

Americans to display at the 1900 Paris Exposition. Murray went at this willingly, and in time for

the Exposition, had compiled “a list of 270 titles…covering topics ranging from African history,

the African race, the history of blacks in America…” and many others (Walker, 2005, p. 28). This

earned him a permanent place in LC history, particularly because after the Exposition, he

continued to amass materials. By the time he died in 1925, Murray had increased the LC

collection to “over two thousand titles by Negro authors” (p. 28) and was attempting to publish

his own encyclopedia of African-American history, when he died. Walker (2005) writes that

Murray “bequeathed to the Library of Congress his personal library of works by blacks,

including 1,448 volumes and pamphlets” (of which 351 pamphlets have since been digitized by

the LC) (p. 34). Spofford hired Murray; there are no records of any African Americans whom

Putnam himself may have hired.


A political staffing issue for Putnam was pressure from Congress in 1906 to have a higher

proportion of southerners in the federal government. The House Committee on Reform in Civil

Service had decreed there should be a minimum number, approximately twice that of the 34

southerners (eleven percent of 303 workers) then employed by the LC. Putnam explained that the

most qualified employees happened to have come from the other regions in the country.

Fortunately for him and his job, Congress accepted that explanation (Rosenberg, 1993, pp. 69-

70),

Putnam and Salaries

Putnam struggled with hiring and keeping staff during his entire tenure, simply because

the salaries offered by the government were lower than those offered in non-governmental public

libraries. The LC entry-level salary in 1899 was $720, which was just above the average starting

salary for a cataloger of $686; but at the upper end, even the chiefs were being paid far less than

their experience entitled them. Rosenberg (1991) observes that some of the library schools didn’t

encourage their graduates to apply to the LC because of the salaries (p. 260). While Putnam

advocated strongly for higher salaries for his staff, especially when qualifications demanded it

(Rosenberg, 1993, p. 33), he only asked once for a raise for himself. Putnam’s salary was $6,000

annually when he was hired (substantial compared with Beckley’s $730 per annum), and wasn’t

raised until 1921, when Congress approved an increase to $7,500. This was to be compared to

$12,000 by head librarians in other public libraries. In 1928, Putnam earned $10,000 (Cole,

1979, p. 95). This was the last increase he received; when he retired to the position of Librarian

Emeritus in 1938, he was given only half of that (Cole, 1979, p. 102). Clearly, Congress was

very stingy in its compensation!


Putnam and the LC Classification System

Besides evaluating his staff, one of the actions Putnam took in his first days at the LC

was to assess the collection. The LC had amassed nearly one million books—not to mention the

hundreds of thousands of other types of materials, such as maps, manuscripts, music, and prints.

However, the entire library was in disarray, even after two years in that building. “Putnam

estimated that to reclassify, shelf-list, and catalog all this in the space of [a] year would require

448 workers and would cost $383,000” (Conaway, 2000, p. 99). Previous classification systems

were inadequate. In its earliest history, the LC collection had undergone a variety of systems,

such as sorting by size and accession number (Chan & Hodges, 2010, p. 3383), or by subject

matter, using Thomas Jefferson’s system of “44 main categories with many subcategories” (p.

3384). Jefferson’s classification arrangement remained in use until 1897, at which point, under

John Russell Young’s tenure, the thought was to modify one developed by Charles A. Cutter, as

described in his book, “Expansive Classification.” (p. 3384). However, after Young’s death and

after Putnam had a chance to evaluate the collection, he realized Cutter’s system was not

adequate for the number and types of materials collected and so a completely new classification

system had to be designed. Two men began this work: Charles Martel, chief classifier, and James

C. M. Hanson, head of the catalog division (p. 3384). The enormous task of re-cataloging every

piece in the collection could not be completed by just those two. Thanks to great negotiating

skills with Congress, Putnam was able to hire 91 additional catalogers by 1904 (Rosenberg,

1993, p. 29).

The foundation of the LC classification system is more flexible than other systems, e.g.,

the Dewey Decimal System, because the LC system has main classes denoted by “one capital

letter,” and subclasses indicated “by two or three capital letters followed by the Arabic numbers


1-9999 treated as integers” (Chan & Hodges, 2010, p. 3385). This process took years of hard

work and many people to review and catalog every piece, but it was fully in place by 1948 (p.

3384). The arrangement has worked so well that the LC is “one of the most widely used

classification systems…in the United States and around the world” (p. 3383).

Of course, the LC classification of each item involved printing catalog cards—and this is

where Herbert Putnam began to think on a much larger scale. On the advice of the outgoing

president of Ohio State University, James H. Canfield, Putnam instituted the process of printing

sets of the catalog cards for the largest libraries in the nation. In 1900, “a branch of the

Government Printing Office is established within the library to print cards and continue to repair

historical documents” (Cole, 1979, p. 70). The GPO printing presses were fast and “the Library

began to crank out new cards at a rate of 225 titles a day, nearly 70,000 a year (The Library of

Congress, 2017, pp. 109-110). On June 28, 1902, the President enacted a law that the LC could

sell sets of its cards to any who wanted them and all proceeds would be given to the U.S.

Treasury (Cole, 1979, p. 75). That November, the Library sent out its first sets to 21 libraries.

Before long, it was nationwide—thousands of libraries had signed up for this service. This

service was so much in demand that it was “self-supporting by 1905” and the ALA started

encouraging its members to purchase “all catalog cards” from the LC (The Library of Congress,

2017, pp. 146-147). Moreover, “at its peak in 1969, approximately seventy-nine million cards

were printed and distributed annually” (The Library of Congress, 2017, p. 113). In 1997, the card

service ended after decades of being available. Computers had taken over the workload (p. 113).

The LC Classification System was not perfect, far from it. Although it met the LC’s

needs, it didn’t or couldn’t meet those of all libraries, particularly the academic ones and the

small libraries. The librarians of these ran into challenges using the LC method and many used


the Dewey Classification or others. In December of 1932, forty-two libraries formed the

Association of Research Libraries (ARL) to solve the issue of cataloging their specific and

unique collections. Although the LC was a charter member, Putnam didn’t support the group

until he was forced to, at which point, he appointed H. H. B. Meyer (who was the director for the

Books of the Adult Blind division of the LC) to represent the Library (Rosenberg, 1993, p. 127).

Even so, the ARL and the LC Librarian did not always agree and there were several occasions

where the ARL was stymied by Putnam’s inaction. However, an interlibrary loan system was

created at the ARL’s request in 1936, though it took a lot of persuasion and effort on the part of

the ARL leaders. Ironically, without Putnam’s stance on assisting research libraries to find a

common cataloging system, there might be no ARL. It thrives even today as a “nonprofit

membership organization of 124 research libraries in the US and Canada representing

universities, public libraries, and special libraries” (Association of Research Libraries, n.d. para.

2). What’s more, the LC is still a member!

Putnam and the LC Collection

Concurrent with the classification of existing material was that of cataloging new. While

Putnam saw the LC as a center of Americana that would serve “both the entire country and the

entire world” (Putnam as cited in Cole, 1979, p. 70), he traveled extensively overseas to procure

materials. He obtained thousands of items, beginning with his trip to Europe in 1900 “to

‘stimulate’ the Library’s exchange agreements and reorganize its overseas purchase methods”

(p. 70). He wanted to ensure the LC had an international presence and a global perspective by

purchasing many foreign language materials; to that end, he made efforts to collect as diverse a

collection as he could. For instance, in 1907, he acquired “more than 80,000 volumes” on the

Russian empire from Gennadii Vasil’evich Yudin’s enormous personal library (Conaway, 2000,


p. 101). Another major accomplishment was that of adding “twelve thousand printed librettos in

German and Italian…plus…materials relating to early opera” (p. 101). He also built up

collections from many other countries, including substantial collections from Germany, Japan,

Russia, and China (Cole, 2010, p. 3424). The cataloguers were hard pressed to keep up!

Besides purchase of materials, much of the Library’s extensive collection has been built

through donations. In Cole’s history (1979), some of the more interesting items given to the LC

during Putnam’s tenure are the “world’s largest printed encyclopedia, the 5,041-volume Tu Shu

Tsi Cheng” from the Chinese government in 1908 (p. 80); works by James McNeil Whistler

presented in 1917 (p. 87); an “Art-Victrola” given in 1925 (p. 91), and five Stradivarius violins

gifted to the LC from Gertrude Clarke Whittall (pp. 100-101). When Putnam retired in 1939 and

his successor Andrew MacLeish was appointed, the LC collection exceeded six million items.

However, the volume of manuscripts was unknown because no one had counted them, so there

was likely a much higher number of items in the collective works (Conaway, 2000, p. 118)!

Putnam and Public Service

Putnam’s vision of turning the LC into a national library was broad and he worked to

ensure it was helpful to the public at large and, especially, to the entire library system. Services

that the LC provided were originally only to members of Congress. By 1899, access had

extended to researchers, but Putnam took it several steps further: He not only had a new

classification system created and provided printed catalog cards of the LC's collection to libraries

nationwide, but also, he instituted the interlibrary loan system at a time when many major

libraries in the U.S. and Europe did not loan books or other materials. When Putnam was director

at the Boston Public Library, patrons had the ability to borrow; he felt that the LC should lead in

this particular service. Cole (2010) quotes Putnam as saying “A book used, is after all, fulfilling a


higher mission than a book which is merely being preserved for possible future use” (p. 3424).

Prior to this, the LC materials had not been allowed outside of the District of Columbia, to the

dismay of members of Congress, who wanted time to read them. In 1901, Congress changed the

rules to allow materials to be distributed nationally (Rosenberg, 1993, p. 61). The following year,

they approved the $2,000 purchase of an electric car for the delivery of materials twice a day to

the local community (Cole, 1979, p. 70), and thus was the beginning of the interlibrary loan

system. Interestingly, the demand for loans was not high and the opportunity never reached the

bulk of the libraries, perhaps due to lack of communication or transportation, or cost to libraries

to have materials delivered (Rosenberg, 1993, pp. 61-62). However, the initiative did set a good

precedent for other interlibrary collaboration, and demonstrated good leadership on the part of

the LC.

Putnam also envisioned a bibliographic service for libraries nationwide. His staff began

creating lists with descriptions of various parts of the LC collections and, in 1910, printed the

“Monthly List of State Publications, enabling librarians to know what documents were available

at the state level. The Government Printing Office had already been offering a similar

compilation at the federal level. The bibliographies continued to list the wealth of material

contained in the LC, and the ALA asked for it to be expanded to dissertations. Putnam not only

complied, but he ensured that universities provided the LC with doctoral dissertations and began

publishing bibliographies of these in 1914 (Rosenberg, 1993, p. 76).

Besides services of bibliographies, card printing, and the interlibrary loan system, Putnam

expanded into assisting a marginalized population—that of the visually-impaired. The Library

had been collecting since 1913, “one copy of each embossed book” published by the American

Printing House (Cole, 1979, p. 85). However, they began offering these to patrons in 1931, when


despite the ongoing Depression, Congress was authorized to provide monies on an annual basis

to the LC to “provide books for the use of the adult blind readers of the United States” (p. 97). In

1934, recordings, known as “Talking Books,” were added and were very popular to that clientele

(p. 98). So many recorded books were made, that the LC began publishing annual bibliographies

of these, beginning in 1935 (p. 100). This service spread to many other libraries and the LC

continually added to this unique part of its collection.

Putnam and the Library War Service

The LC financially was doing quite well in 1914 and Putnam’s printed card service was

serving about two thousand libraries (Rosenberg, 1993, p. 80). However, Congress felt a bit

slighted and members pointed out that the primary function of the LC was to serve them. At the

bequest of President Wilson, Putnam created the Legislative Reference Service to provide

immediate assistance whenever any was needed by members of the Senate or the House of

Representatives. The LRS eventually was renamed the Congressional Research Service, and

exists today.

Meanwhile, World War I began and that changed the conversation about the

responsibilities of the LC, both as a national library and as a leader of the entire library

profession. Leaders recognized that European libraries were being destroyed. The first to go was

in Louvain, Belgium, and all over Europe, libraries lost staff to the military (ALA, 1915, p. 129).

However, at that early point, this awareness was only from a distance. As the war continued,

there were proponents for actively working to keep the peace, for instance, George F. Bowerman

of the Public Library of the District of Columbia, (ALA, 1915, pp. 129-133). Others wanted only

to remain non-partisan and continue with everyday life. In 1916 the president of the ALA,

Andrew Linn Bostwick, stated: “For it has come to pass that the library is now almost the only


non-partisan institution that we possess; and community education, to be effective, must be non-

partisan” (ALA, 1916, p. 118). As the war progressed, there were more and more calls for action,

especially as staff began to leave their posts to serve their country. Librarians tried to ensure their

collections contained materials on the war and on the circumstances surrounding the war, and

offered alternative viewpoints; financially, though, it proved harder to acquire new materials due

to budget cuts and difficulty of shipping the books, particularly those from overseas (Rosenberg,

1993, pp. 84-85).

Putnam worked closely with the ALA on creating a program to serve the military and

there were many long discussions on how best to do this. In fact, in 1916, there was already a

library cooperative who sent books to the soldiers in the U.S. training camps and asked the LC to

be a part of that. However, Putnam didn’t think the LC’s materials would be of interest

(particularly, it didn’t include much fiction) and suggested buying large numbers of copies that

would. Things came to a head when the U.S. entered the war on April 2, 1917. Putnam

immediately worked out a plan with the Secretary of War and then told the ALA that it and the

LC would begin providing services to the military. Fortunately, the ALA members heartily

supported this decision and formed an advisory committee, which Putnam led. In June 1917, the

ALA, at the recommendation of the advisory committee, joined forces with “the YMCA, the

American Red Cross, and the Commission on Training Camp Activities” (Rosenberg, 1993, p.

86). In addition, at the conference, Theodore Koch (chief of the Order division at the LC) spoke

on the success of the British War Library Service; so enamored were the attendees, they

determined to follow suit. Plans were made to begin the development of and fundraising for a

service that would build libraries in the camps and provide all necessary materials to run those


libraries. They also ensured that when the soldiers went overseas, books were sent to them

(Rosenberg, 1993, pp. 85-87).

While the War Service was an excellent idea and did have success in getting thirty-six

libraries built using Carnegie funds, there were financial issues, staffing issues—Putnam

disregarded “applications from African Americans, German Americans, and women”

(Rosenberg, 1993, p. 87)—and book selection challenges, especially, the last of these. At the

mandate of the army, there was quite a bit of censorship of the materials chosen. Rosenberg

(1993) writes: “The army decided to ban works by German nationals and sympathizers,

socialists, and pacifists, and the War Service helped compile a list of eighty allegedly harmful

titles, called the Army Index” (p. 88).

Despite these tensions, the Library War Service committee did fulfill its goals in

providing books to the troops; it opened an office in Paris, and operated even beyond the ending

of the war. They created hospital libraries for the wounded and many books were put onto

transport ships heading back to the U.S. Here are statistics that were reported in the ALA 1919

conference proceedings:

The number of camps, stations, hospitals and vessels which were served according to last

year's statement, was 777. The total number served since that time is 3,981….Books

bearing the A. L. A. bookplate have reached the men in America, France, Germany,

Russia, Siberia, the Philippine Islands, Alaska, the West Indies, the Canal Zone, Hawaii,

the Virgin Islands, Guam, Samoa, Bermuda, Nicaragua and China; and on board ship

everywhere. (ALA, 1919, p. 201)


Some Americans questioned how long the Library War Service committee should remain

in operation because it wasn’t clearly defined. The committee operated until November 1, 1919,

when the government took over the library duties of the military (ALA, 1920, p. 215).

LC Becomes a Cultural Institution

Once WWI was over and life regained a semblance of normalcy, libraries scrambled to

recover staffing and lost funds due to the economy for the previous few years. It was especially

difficult for the LC because its collection exceeded three million items and the funding was

insufficient for all of the expenses the LC had. Putnam looked for ways to increase the presence

of the LC in the community. Fortunately, he had patrons who were interested in the arts and

culture. Two outstanding musicians and patrons of the arts, Gertrude Clarke Whittall and

Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, were particularly keen on donating musical instruments and musical

scores. It was fortuitous that Putnam hired a professional musician in Carl Engle to head the

Music Division. It was Engle who connected with Coolidge about donating the music and she in

turn, proffered funds for the LC to host several recitals. While Putnam initially wasn’t happy

with holding these in the Library itself, he did consent to hosting after Coolidge proposed that

concerts could be held in one of the Smithsonian’s art galleries. The first concert took place in

February, 1924. Putnam was so delighted at the public response and the publicity that he

attended one of the Pittsburgh Festivals (which Coolidge had founded). Putnam and Elizabeth

Coolidge began to correspond. As a result, Coolidge not only moved the festival permanently out

of Pittsburgh and held future ones at the LC; but also, she granted $60,000 to the Library to have

an auditorium built for festivals and concerts. In addition, she set up an endowment to underwrite

concert expenses (Rosenberg, 1993, pp. 101-102) and “to aid the Music Division in the

development of the study, composition, and appreciation of music” (Cole, 1979, p. 91).


Putnam was inspired to integrate the LC into the community at large. However, there

were stipulations for federal agencies in accepting monies and gifts. The LC couldn’t accept

these directly; instead, President Coolidge (no apparent relation to Elizabeth) approved a Library

of Congress Trust Fund Board. The Board members were “the secretary of the treasury, the

chairman of the Joint Library Committee, and the Librarian of Congress” (Cole, 1979, p. 91).

Having this trust fund in place encouraged other donors to offer their endowments. In 1926,

Richard R. Bowker, one of the founders of the ALA and board member of two major libraries,

donated funds to support the LC’s bibliographic service; another man “bequeathed most of his

estate to the United States government to be used for the promotion of collections and services in

the Division of Prints in the Library of Congress” (Cole, 1979, p. 93); and again, another bequest

to the LC was a collection of incunabula, manuscripts, and other materials (p. 93). The Carnegie

Corporation also set up an endowment for the Indica collection (p. 102). Thus, the LC thrived

and grew exponentially. In fact, Rosenberg (1993) reports that, in 1926, there were three million

volumes. By 1932, there were 4.5 million (p. 128). Congress helped greatly over the next few

years by appropriating hundreds of thousands of dollars for Putnam to increase staff salaries,

expand the building, build an annex, and of course, acquire more items (Rosenberg, 1993, p.

114). The Library grew despite the stock market crash in 1929 and even received an endowment

on October 29 from the Guggenheim Foundation to establish an Aeronautics division (Cole,

1979, p. 95)!

Putnam and the LC 1929-1939

Putnam celebrated his thirtieth anniversary about six months before the Great Depression

began and while it first appeared that the LC would not be affected overmuch by the market’s

downfall, in fact, by 1931, Putnam experienced firsthand the difficulties that libraries nationwide


were having. Because other libraries were reliant on the LC’s sets of printed catalog cards and

suddenly had no funds to be timely in their payments, the LC’s income was reduced. Then too, as

the Library was again running out of space to house materials (and moreover, the card catalogs

themselves), Putnam hoped for government funding to build and to add to his staff again.

President Hoover was not inclined to provide anything more, given the economy, and his

successor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, actually cut the Library’s budget by two percent in 1934, in

addition to putting a freeze on construction projects (Rosenberg, 1993, p. 129).

Another area in which Putnam and his staff struggled lay in the continued printing of

catalog cards for so many libraries, and librarians’ complaints that the classification system was

not sufficient for the needs of academic libraries. Putnam was so busy overseeing maintenance of

the LC and the cataloging of all materials pouring into the Library’s collection that it proved

impossible to keep up and pay attention to the ARL. For instance, Cole (1979) reports on the new

kinds of materials the LC began to store: “sound reproductions for the use of the blind” (p. 98);

“photographs and drawings from the American Buildings Survey (p. 98); and, if that wasn’t

enough, Congress authorized “…150 copies of all government publications” to be given to the

LC, of which 125 could be distributed to other institutions (p. 101). Additionally, approximately

60,000 items arrived annually (Rosenberg, 1993, p. 128). Whereas, in 1932 there were 4.5

million items, by the time Putnam retired in 1939 and his successor, Archibald MacLeish was

appointed, there were six million (Cole, 1979, p. 104). While by that time, the Annex had been

built to store some of the collection and additional rooms had been constructed, there still were

hundreds of thousands of items to catalog and properly store. Even a staff of 1,100 (that

MacLeish inherited) was not sufficient to complete the task.


Putnam was respected by all who knew him, but his personality was such that he held

himself apart from his staff and many saw him as rather uncompromising and rigid. This

perception caused difficulty for him, especially in his later years. Because of the issues Putnam

encountered, he found himself on the wrong side of public opinion, not only from the ARL, but

also from Congress, and even the ALA. Many found him unresponsive to the growing needs of

libraries nationwide, to the staff of the LC, and to the political environment in which he

increasingly played a part, despite his efforts to remain non-partisan. Keyes D. Metcalf (1976),

who became the Executive Secretary of the ARL in 1938, wrote that “by 1930, [Putnam] had lost

contact with the younger members of the profession. The quality of his staff had deteriorated…”

(p. 337). In the mid-1930s, a senator insisted that Putnam hire George Schultz, who, Rosenberg

(1993) relates, was difficult to deal with; in 1937, Putnam felt compelled to fire him (p. 153).

However, Schultz and the senator both believed that Putnam terminated Schultz because Putnam

was Republican and Schultz was not. At least one reporter gave Putnam bad press, alleging, “…

Putnam hired and fired and raised and lowered wages as he wished. Staff in high position were

all Republicans...he ruled with the highhandedness of an industrial baron” (Rosenberg, 1993, p.

154). Congress began to heavily criticize Putnam, and although he defended his position on the

Schultz matter, Putnam also had to field other complaints from critics in the ALA who felt that

he was not dealing adequately with growing library demands; it was a difficult time and he

decided to retire. Some people called for his removal from office; but, instead, Congress allowed

him to retire as Librarian Emeritus with a $5,000 annual stipend. As of July 1, 1938, Putnam

became Librarian Emeritus, still running the LC until July 10, 1939 when MacLeish took office

as the new Librarian of Congress. Even afterwards, MacLeish consulted Putnam at times. (It is


interesting to note that the first Librarian and the eighth Librarian both ended their careers

because of politics!)

Despite the controversy of his last few years as Librarian, Putnam is remembered for the

good work he did and the way that he brought the LC into a strong role as our National Library.

It contained by the mid-1930s, the largest collection in the United States and “comparable to

those of the prestigious European national libraries” (Rosenberg, 1993, p. 158). What Putnam

accomplished in his forty years was enormous—libraries began to cooperate through the

interlibrary system he devised; he created a central cataloging source adopted by the largest

libraries and numerous smaller ones; he ensured the LC’s place in the public community through

leading the Library War Service, allowing the LC to become a truly cultural institution, and

expanding its services both nationally and internationally. Today, the LC collection contains at

least “162 million items, including more than 38 million cataloged books and other print

materials in 470 languages” (Library of Congress, 2017, p. 7). The LC has a major online

presence for all the world to see, and serves nearly two million visitors a year (Library of

Congress, n.d., Volunteer Opportunities section), all the while, remaining focused on the needs of

Congress. Truly, it has become “Universal in scope; national in service.”


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