Charles Coffin Jewett was born August 12, 1816 in
Lebanon, MaineLebanon is a town in York County, Maine, United States. The population was 5,083 at the 2000 census. Lebanon includes the villages of Center Lebanon, West Lebanon, North Lebanon, South Lebanon and East Lebanon. It is part of the Portland–South Portland–Biddeford, Maine Metropolitan...
. He graduated from Salem Latin School, entered
Dartmouth CollegeDartmouth College is a private, coeducational university located in Hanover, New Hampshire, USA. Incorporated as "Trustees of Dartmouth College," it is a member of the Ivy League and one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution...
, and soon transferred to
Brown UniversityBrown University is a private university located in Providence, Rhode Island, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III...
. His first cataloging experience took place as a Brown student while helping to catalog the library of the Philermenian Literary Society. In 1837, he entered Andover Theological Seminary, where he helped catalog the Andover Theological Seminary Library. In 1841, he became the librarian of Brown University.
Charles Coffin Jewett was born August 12, 1816 in
Lebanon, MaineLebanon is a town in York County, Maine, United States. The population was 5,083 at the 2000 census. Lebanon includes the villages of Center Lebanon, West Lebanon, North Lebanon, South Lebanon and East Lebanon. It is part of the Portland–South Portland–Biddeford, Maine Metropolitan...
. He graduated from Salem Latin School, entered
Dartmouth CollegeDartmouth College is a private, coeducational university located in Hanover, New Hampshire, USA. Incorporated as "Trustees of Dartmouth College," it is a member of the Ivy League and one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution...
, and soon transferred to
Brown UniversityBrown University is a private university located in Providence, Rhode Island, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III...
. His first cataloging experience took place as a Brown student while helping to catalog the library of the Philermenian Literary Society. In 1837, he entered Andover Theological Seminary, where he helped catalog the Andover Theological Seminary Library. In 1841, he became the librarian of Brown University. He extensively rearranged that library, and created a catalog in two parts; an alphabetical descriptive catalog of the items in the library, and an alphabetical Index of Subjects. After its completion in 1843, he embarked on a two year campaign of book purchasing and study in Europe. He became Librarian and Assistant Secretary of the
Smithsonian InstitutionThe Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its shops and its magazines...
in 1848, and began the task of building the Smithsonian's library by soliciting catalogs from prominent libraries and publishing a survey of U.S. libraries. He also started mechanical duplication of individual catalog entries. Jewett was unanimously elected president at the first Librarian's Convention in 1853. Jewett left the Smithsonian after being relieved of his position due to conflicts with his supervisor and the Board of Regents over how the Institution's funds were being allocated. He went on to become Superintendent of the
Boston Public LibraryThe Boston Public Library is a municipal public library system in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It was the first publicly supported municipal library in the United States, the first large library open to the public in the United States, and the first public library to allow people to borrow...
in 1858, where he remained until his death.
Jewett had a vision for a national library, which would hold a
union catalogA union catalog is a combined library catalog describing the collections of a number of libraries. Union catalogs have been created in a range of media, including book format, microform, cards and more recently, networked electronic databases...
of all the public libraries in the United States. This catalog would give scholars access to important books, point out differences in intellectual fields, and generally act as an aid to the evolution of knowledge while making the Smithsonian Institution the preeminent center for research. He spent the greater part of his life developing guidelines toward this end.
Jewett was a strong advocate for alphabetical catalogs, both because of their convenience to catalogers and their user-friendliness. He believed that catalogs should be more than lists of titles, and should contain bibliographical and biographical information. Individual printed cards kept the costs of printing the catalog down. His idea of the union catalog included the use of “stereotyped plates,” which was a set of mass-produced titles that were created according to a set of strict rules. Jewett was hugely concerned with
uniformityUniformity may refer to more than one thing:* A uniform space, in mathematics, is a topological space with an additional convergence structure* The principle of uniformity, a principle in the philosophy of science...
, and believed stringent rules the only way to avoid confusion, no matter how difficult it made things for users.
Charles Jewett died Janury 9, 1868, the day after suffering an attack of apoplexy while working at his desk in the Boston Public Library.
Sources
Historical Development of Ideas Concerning Library Catalogues: Their Purpose and Organization, by Moya K. Mason
http://www.moyak.com/papers/history-library-catalogues.html
Charles Coffin Jewett, by the
Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed.
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0826260.html