“The Best Man in America is a Woman”: Katharine L. Sharp and the First “Lady Librarians”

Katharine Sharp with Melvil Dewey and other librarians
Katharine Sharp and other librarians at an unknown event, c. 1900. Caption on the back reads: “Mr. Brunden, our host, Miss ‘Public Libraries’ Ahern; Mr. Dewey (with the Placid look upon his face); Miss K. L. Sharp; Miss M. McIlvaine.”

For an educated woman at the turn of the century, there were few options for a intellectually satisfying career, as Katharine L. Sharp discovered as a newly minted college graduate in 1885. She taught foreign languages at a high school in Illinois for two years, but then she took a position as Assistant Librarian at the Scoville Institute and seems to have found her calling. Believing so strongly in the burgeoning field of professional librarianship, she enrolled in the new New York State Library School in 1889, where she studied under Melvil Dewey. [1]  Continue reading ““The Best Man in America is a Woman”: Katharine L. Sharp and the First “Lady Librarians””