Reginald Gordon Williams

Working in Britain’s public library world, he served as Deputy Librarian at Bolton Public Libraries and wrote for readers who wanted solid, usable training rather than theory alone. The title page of Courses of Study in Library Science presents him as an F.L.A. and lists earlier works on reading courses and book selection, showing a strong interest in library education and guidance.

His best-known book, Courses of Study in Library Science, was first published in the 1920s and later issued in a revised and enlarged edition in 1926. It was designed as an assistant’s guide to librarianship, laying out organized study in areas such as bibliography, cataloguing, classification, and book selection.

Although biographical details about his life are scarce in the sources available here, his surviving work gives a clear sense of his contribution: he wrote to make professional knowledge more accessible. That practical, encouraging approach still makes his books interesting to readers curious about the history of library training.