William Warner Bishop (1871 – 1955) was ALA President in 1918. He was named among "100 of the Most Important Leaders we had in the 20th Century". ( American Libraries, 11(30), 38–47.)
In 1926, the Vatican recruited William Warner Bishop to modernize the Vatican Library, which was founded in 1475 and still had a very medieval feel to its organization on every level, from cataloging to classification to shelf design.
As it turned out, American libraries had a reputation for innovative thinking, since they weren't constrained by so many centuries of tradition. So, the Catholic Church sought advice from leaders at the New York Public Library and the Library of Congress, who assured them that Bishop was the "doyen of American librarians." (" The Vatican Looked to Him to Build a Better Library: William Warner Bishop.")
More background:
"William Warner Bishop". H. M. Lydenberg & A. Keogh (Eds.), William Warner Bishop A Tribute 1941. London, Humphrey, Milford, Oxford University Press: New Haven Yale University Press.
Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library & Renaissance Culture
This exhibition at the Library of Congress was intended on the part of the Vatican Library, at a distance of over sixty years, to express its gratitude to all those from North America who contributed so forcefully to "the common convenience of the learned" which is at the heart of the Vatican Library--to the Carnegie Endowment and Nicholas Murray Butler, to the University of Michigan Library School at Ann Arbor and William Warner Bishop, and above all, given the location of the exhibition, to the Library of Congress and Herbert Putnam and Charles Martel.
Bishop, William Warner. "The American Library Association: Fragments of Autobiography." The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy 19, no. 1 (1949): 36–45.
The Vatican Library and the IFLA between 1928 and 1929
William Warner Bishop Papers, 1891-1955 - University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library - University of Michigan Finding Aids
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Kathleen de la Peña McCook
Distinguished University Professor
School of Information
University of South Florida
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