Herbert Putnam: A 1903 Trip to Europe

Born in New York City just as the Civil War was starting, Herbert Putnam was a Harvard graduate and a lawyer who had held two highly responsible top library posts, first at the Minneapolis Public Library and then at the Boston Public Library before he was selected by President McKinley in 1899 as Librarian of Congress. Putnam was the first librarian with prior library experience to hold this position. During his tenure, Putnam introduced what would become the Library of Congress Classification System, expanded the role of the Library of Congress to that of the Nation’s Library and not just as the reference library for Congress, established an interlibrary loan system, and increased the library’s holdings to six million volumes.
These transcribed and edited manuscripts represent a slice of life taken from the career of Putnam when he went to Europe in July, 1903, on a trip that combined work and recreation. Through Putnam’s correspondence we are given personal glimpses into a variety of sides of his unexpectedly warm temperament-husband, father, brother, and even absentee Librarian. For many years, students of the Library of Congress have instinctively felt Putnam must have been impossibly aloof and frosty. Through these firsthand accounts we see just how wrong these assumptions were.