Putnam Putnam!

At the urging of the American Library Association, President McKinley appointed an actual librarian as Librarian of Congress in the spring of 1899. Herbert Putnam had served as librarian of the Minneapolis Public Library, the Boston Public Library, president of the ALA, and was generally considered an all-around respected fellow of books. Putnam transfigured a research library for the government into a national library with a worldwide reputation, making American librarianship a priority by instituting the Library of Congress classification scheme and pre-printed index cards for handsome wooden card catalogs across the U.S. He retired after 40 years with the title of Librarian Emeritus and was succeeded by a poet.