author
Charles C. (Charles Coffin) Jewett
1816–1868
An early American librarian with a big, modern idea: that libraries should share consistent catalogs instead of working in isolation. His work at Brown, the Smithsonian, and the Boston Public Library helped shape how books were organized and discovered in the nineteenth century.
1 Audiobook
On the Construction of Catalogues of Libraries and Their Publication by Means of Separate, Stereotyped Titles With Rules and Examples
by Charles C. (Charles Coffin) Jewett
About the author
Born in Lebanon, Maine, in 1816, Charles Coffin Jewett became one of the best-known American librarians of his era. After studying at Brown University, he worked on the university library's catalog and earned a reputation for careful organization and ambitious thinking about how libraries should serve readers.
Jewett later served at the Smithsonian Institution, where he pushed for a broad national library plan and for standardized cataloging methods that could be shared across institutions. He is especially remembered for promoting the idea of a union catalog and for his work on publishing catalog entries in a more uniform way.
In 1858 he became superintendent of the Boston Public Library, continuing a career centered on making library collections more useful and more accessible. He died in 1868, but his efforts to bring order, consistency, and cooperation to library work left a lasting mark on American librarianship.