A librarian is a person who works professionally in a library providing access to information, and sometimes social or technical programming, or instruction on information literacy to users.
The librarian of Congress is the head of the Library of Congress, appointed by the president of the United States with the advice and consent of the United States Senate, for a term of ten years. The librarian of Congress also appoints and oversees the Register of Copyrights of the U.S. Copyright Office and has broad responsibilities around copyright, extending to electronic resources and fair use provisions outlined in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The librarian determines whether particular works are subject to DMCA prohibitions regarding technological access protection. In addition, the librarian appoints the U.S. poet laureate and awards the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song.
The American Library Association (ALA) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world.
Daniel Joseph Boorstin was an American historian at the University of Chicago who wrote on many topics in American and world history. He was appointed the twelfth Librarian of the United States Congress in 1975 and served until 1987. He was instrumental in the creation of the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress.
The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is an independent agency of the United States federal government established in 1996. It is the main source of federal support for libraries and museums within the United States, having the mission to advance, support, and empower America’s museums, libraries, and related organizations through grantmaking, research, and policy development.” In fiscal year 2023, IMLS had a budget of $313.58 million. As of 2023, IMLS currently has 70 full-time employees, many of whom still work remotely. In 2022, the employees voted to unionize, joining hundreds of thousands of federal workers who have joined the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) to “build power and have a voice at work.”
A special library is a library that provides specialized information resources on a particular subject, serves a specialized and limited clientele, and delivers specialized services to that clientele. Special libraries include corporate libraries, government libraries, law libraries, medical libraries, museum libraries, news libraries. Special libraries also exist within academic institutions. These libraries are included as special libraries because they are often funded separately from the rest of the university and they serve a targeted group of users.
Robert Bruce Croneberger Jr. was an American librarian named in American Libraries’ December 1999 article “100 of the Most Important Leaders We Had in the 20th Century”.
Virginia Lacy Jones was an American librarian who throughout her 50-year career in the field pushed for the integration of public and academic libraries. She was one of the first African Americans to earn a PhD in Library Science and became dean of Atlanta University's School of Library Sciences.
Barbara Ringer was one of the lead architects of the 1976 Copyright Act. She spent much of her career lobbying Congress and drafting legislation that overhauled the 1909 Copyright Act. Ringer was also the first woman to serve as the Register of Copyrights in the United States Copyright Office. During her three decades with the United States Copyright Office, Ringer gained a reputation as an authority on copyright law.
Carla Diane Hayden is an American librarian who is serving as the 14th librarian of Congress. Since the creation of the office of the librarian of Congress in 1802, Hayden is both the first African American and the first woman to hold this post. Appointed in 2016, she is the first professional librarian to hold the post since 1974.
Herman Howe Fussler was an American librarian, library administrator, teacher, writer and editor, who was a pioneer in the use of microphotography. Fussler was ranked as one of the "100 of the Most Important Leaders we had in the 20th Century" by American Libraries. Fussler served as director of the University of Chicago libraries from 1948 to 1971, was Dean of the University of Chicago Graduate Library School, from 1961 to 1963, and was instrumental in the founding of the Regenstein Library. He helped create the Center for Research Libraries. He was an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Maria A. Pallante is the president and chief executive officer of the Association of American Publishers, a publishing industry trade association. Pallante is an American attorney who previously served as the 12th United States Register of Copyrights. She was appointed acting register effective January 1, 2011, succeeding Marybeth Peters, who retired effective December 31, 2010. On June 1, 2011, she was appointed to the position which was intended to be permanent.
Brooke E. Sheldon was an American librarian and educator who served as the president of the American Library Association from 1983 to 1984.
Pratt Institute School of Information is the information school of the Pratt Institute, a private university in New York City. The school administers the oldest Library and Information Science program in North America. It was created in Brooklyn, New York City, in 1890 shortly after Melvil Dewey created such a program at Columbia University in 1887. Based in Manhattan, the school administers a master of information and library science degree program that has been accredited by the American Library Association since the 1924–1925 academic year.
David Mao is an American law librarian. Mao served as acting Librarian of Congress from September 30, 2015, until the confirmation of Carla Hayden in 2016.
Deanna Bowling Marcum was an American librarian and nonprofit leader who served as president of the Council on Library and Information Resources from 1995 to 2003, Associate Librarian for Library Services at the Library of Congress from 2003 to 2011, and managing director of Ithaka S+R from 2012 to 2016.
This is a timeline of women in library science throughout the world.
Betty J. Turock is an American librarian and educator who served as president of the American Library Association from 1995 to 1996. She was a member of the faculty of the Rutgers School of Communication and Information for 22 years. Turock is best known for her advocacy for equity of access to electronic information via the Internet as well as for championing diversity in the library profession.
Nancy E. Gwinn was an American librarian and administrator. She was the director of the Smithsonian Libraries, the world's largest museum library system, from 1997 until her retirement in 2020. Gwinn died on April 29, 2024, at the age of 78.
John Y. Cole is an American librarian, historian, and author. He was the founding director of the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress and in 2016 became the first official historian of the Library of Congress.
