CONCLUSION

Apparently on the road to recovery from a serious

illness, Cutter was still a professional force in 1903 when

he died suddenly in his sixty-sixth year. Left unfinished

at his death were what he felt to be his greatest contribu­

tions to the library world--a new edition of his Rules and

his Expansive Classification. His long career included a

significant number of accomplishments. He forged the prin­

ciples and outline of his system of bibliographical organi­

zation during his years at the Harvard College Library

under the inspiration of John Langdon Sibley, one of the

Library's greatest collectors, and under the rigorous

method of Ezra Abbot. He applied those principles at the

Boston Athenaeum and produced while there one of the monu­

mental printed dictionary catalogs of the nineteenth cen­

tury. In conjunction with the catalog he wrote a manual

of cataloging rules that went through four editions and

became the theoretical basis for the dictionary catalog in

the twentieth century. He completed one shelf classifica­

tion system specifically for the Athenaeum and the greater

portion of a second for libraries in general. He also made

numerous practical applications in the area of library

management and participated in the organization and devel­

opment of the American Library Association. At the Forbes

842

843

Library during his last decade, while still working on his

bibliographical systems, he built a collection from its

inception and gave full expression to his growing sense of

the service aspects of a public library.

A listing of Cutter's professional accomplishments

is impressive. It does not by itself serve, however, as

an adequate estimation of the man. This is suggested by

the memorials to him at his death. On the one hand, Cutter

was eulogized for his accomplishments listed above, espe­

cially for his work in cataloging and classification. In

that light he is pictured as an erudite scholar of great

imagination and tenacity. On the other hand, his eulo­

gizers found it necessary to explain what for some seemed

aloofness, creating for them difficulty in approaching him.

The memorial articles emphasized that he was not unap­

proachable. In fact, as they suggested, he was quite the

opposite. When an effort to overcome his shyness was made,

he was found to be not only charming and thoughtful, but

even quite playful. Such comments strongly intimate that

despite his accomplishments, Cutter lived somewhat under a

veil of personal obscurity. He was in fact a very private

person and rarely spoke of his personal motivations and

struggles. In those self-references that have been pre­

served, typically found in short notes to his closest

friends, Cutter usually displayed a strong sense of humor­

ous irony concerning himself. Few autobiographical comments

exist. Yet, one can still ascertain from his activities

844

and writings a more complete estimate. This can be done

by considering his training; how he conducted himself in

his dealings with others; and the major themes expressed

in his work, especially as they give evidence of a gradual

evolution.

Cutter came from a modest but comfortable commercial­

class New England background. Placed in a strongly Unitar­

ian religious environment early in his life, he was encour­

aged and rewarded for his scholarly capacities. He received

a sound classical preparation for Harvard in the Hopkins

Classical School when the latter was at its best. Harvard

College and Divinity School further developed his schol-

arly propensities and gave to him a moral and philosophical

outlook on life that remained with him until the end of his

days. Overtones of that outlook reappear in various forms,

for example, in his perception of the purpose of libraries

and in his appreciation of the ideal of harmony in the uni­

verse. The ideal of harmony played a strong role in his

demand for system in making recorded knowledge accessible

and in library administration.

Cutter also developed striking work habits. From

an early age he became an industrious and tenacious worker

at any task he undertook. He applied that same energy to

the emerging field of librarianship. In this he was doubt­

less influenced by the example of Ezra Abbot. He, however,

may have been simply expressing the broader motivation of

his intellectual and religious training. The library good

845

that he accomplished was his moral and religious contribu­

tion to the cultural development of the nation. Conse­

quently, Cutter sometimes spoke of the work of a librarian

in language that had overtones of religious and moral fervor.

Cutter's manner of working with other persons was

developed early and remained constant throughout his life.

For whatever the causes, Cutter was a retiring and shy

person. He seemed to gain his most intense satisfaction

from the authority of his ideas and from his ability to

work rigorously, rather than from the limelight of personal

leadership. Although he contributed an enormous amount of

work to the profession throughout his life, much of it was

anonymous--perhaps because of his shyness. He was not dif­

fident, however, about arguing a case in the appropriate

forum. He was aggressive and forceful in presenting his

views and did not hesitate to present in both his signed

and unsigned articles harsh, incisive criticism of views

that he felt to be wrong. His self-confidence showed

itself in a broad philosophy of the librarian's work, in

his ability to quickly get to the core of problems being

discussed, and in his remarkable ability to state pre­

cisely both the problems and their possible solutions.

These attributes made him an imposing and perhaps even

threatening figure to those whose grasp of library matters

was neither as comprehensive nor as exact.

His manner of work also may have given the same

impression. Guided by very high standards, in many respects

846

he worked best by himself. Likewise, he was never content

to allow the work of others to escape the same examination.

As an administrator he supervised his employees closely and

frequently revised their work procedures because he saw

opportunity for improvement. Although he had a prophetic

grasp of library goals and tasks, he seems not to have been

very successful in apportioning work, or in keeping the

processes as simple as might have been warranted. In some

cases he seems to have been more disposed to do the job

himself. In working with others in the profession (many

of whom desired more expeditious handling of library mat­

ters even at the risk of being less thorough), he must

have appeared as a difficult, albeit authoritative, col­

league.

As imposing as this side of Cutter may have been,

it was balanced by a warmth and an understanding that

caused many librarians to seek his advice and counsel, and

others, who were close to him, especially to mourn him at

his death. His playful spirit, reserved for those whQ knew

him best, was most evident in his personal correspondence

and in those social occasions at the annual conferences in

which he could exercise his subtle humor, especially in

making puns.

Taken together, Cutter's intellectual and personal

qualities suggest an almost childlike sincerity in his

approach to life. He looked for ultimate explanations in

library matters and acted without pretense in all serious

847

concerns. He seems to have expected the same of others

and poked fun at himself and others when any signs of pre­

tentiousness did appear. He was not of a political nature

and declined to follow such a course in his personal rela­

tionships. For that reason he seems to have been somewhat

vulnerable to such approaches on the part of others. As

a result of the widespread confidence in his sincerity, he

was able to serve as a mediator between others within the

library profession who were more volatile.

At the time of Cutterrs graduation from the Harvard

Divinity School, the·basic course of his life's work seems

already to have been set. Despite his training for the

ministry, he seems to have developed by that time a great

interest in bibliography. He delighted during his early

years as a librarian in listing the best of the intellectual

resources of man, especially in the areas of literature,

history, and theology. This effort doubtless was spurred

by the examples of Sibley and Abbot. It became for him a

high art in which he could not only exercise his adeptness

at finding and accurately describing materials, but also

show his awareness of the contents of the works themselves.

During the 1860's, Cutter gave expression to this interest

by his participation in several bibliographical ventures,

including the beginning volumes of Sabin's Dictionary of

Books Relating to America. This interest continued to the

end of his life and was demonstrated in his last years in

his building the collections of the Forbes Library.

848

His work at Harvard extended his bibliographical

interests to the practical organization of knowledge in

order to make it accessible to others. This concern first

showed itself in making library catalogs. Although he had

gained his first experience in cataloging while a student

in the Divinity School, the product of his work at that

time was rudimentary in comparison to his later efforts.

Under the tutelage of Ezra Abbot, he began to formulate a

systematic approach to the problem. He not only sharpened

his descriptive, bibliographical method, but, more important,

was exposed to the complex problems of subject access in

catalogs. His interest in that aspect led him to synthe­

size questions of the classification of knowledge, the

habits of inquirers in searching for information, and the

possible formats of the catalog. By 1871 he had worked

out the main outlines of a systematic approach, and by

1876 he published one of the most complete systems of cata­

log access ever devised. Despite changes made by him in

later years to accommodate the changing emphases and tech­

niques in the library world, the basic structure and idea

of his system remained the same. It has, ever since,

provided the conceptual basis for the dictionary catalog.

He did not limit his interest and involvement in

providing subject access to systematic cataloging. When

Melvil Dewey introduced the Amherst shelf classification

to the library world in 1876, Cutter turned his attention

to classification as another viable approach to subject

849

access. In going beyond Dewey's initial scheme, he devel­

oped an enumeration of knowledge for the arrangement of

books that became a model for its comprehensiveness. This

work occupied him to the end of his life.

Cutter's bibliographical interests and his quest

for system in making recorded knowledge accessible were the

underpinnings of his life and work. One can measure his

intellectual breadth by the scope of the bibliographical

tools that he developed, and his zeal by the diligence with

which he went about his work. He took the whole universe of

man's knowledge as his province. He has been aptly described

as, "an able, energetic, learned, ingenious scholar devot­

ing himself to making the knowledge available in books

useful to his contemporaries."1

Another theme, destined to modify and embellish

Cutter's fundamental quest, was a growing appreciation of

the library's public and of the library as a social agency.

Cutter's patrons at Harvard and at the Boston Athenaeum

were, for the most part, of the highest intellectual and

cultural attainments. It was natural for him to find among

them support and encouragement in his work of systematizing

libraries. But with his participation in the founding of

the American Library Association and in the advancement of

the professional library movement, Cutter encountered a

much wider variety of opinion as to the nature of the

1Letter, R. Ammi Cutter to the author, August 8,1973.

8so

library and of the profession of librarianship. He at

first participated in efforts to standardize the methods,

techniques, and equipment of libraries and to build an

organization that would promote standardization. His

participation was not accomplished without tension.

Although he advocated 'cooperation' throughout his life,

when the enthusiasm of the initial years of the Association

had passed, he found himself increasingly troubled with the

total compliance that the movement seemed to presuppose.

He came to place more emphasis on the uniqueness of the

individual library and librarian.

Of far greater importance was his exposure to a

broader library public. Although he had given tacit

recognition to a wide spectrum of users when he first

devised his cataloging system, Cutter's experience with

patrons was actually much more limited. The Harvard and

Athenaeum patrons represented too narrow and cohesive a

group to provide the broadest base for his work. This

base was somewhat extended by the representations of other

librarians. In his work at the Forbes Library after 1893,

Cutter encountered an even g-reater range of patrons. As

his experience broadened, he moved toward greater simplicity

for the sake of the user and he incorporated concessions

to users' limitations. As a result, his systems for the

access of recorded knowledge became less rigid.

The changes in his systematizing work were not as

great as the changes that occurred in his actual library

851

work with patrons. He had always conceived of the library

as an agency of cultural uplift for the populace in general.

His earlier comments on that purpose suggest that those

persons whom the library would serve and who most needed

its influence were at some distance from his actual exper­

ience. For example, during the 1880's his opinions on the

place of fiction in the library displayed a cautious, per­

haps even grudging, assent to stocking poor quality but

popular works in the library. His description of the com­

mon users of the library in his 1883 address at the Buffalo

convention of the Association exhibited something of a

condescending attitude toward them. He described the

library's purpose as the work, as much as possible, of

turning out scholars who could appreciate the whole realm

of knowledge, a purpose that .was consonant with his own

intellectual breadth.

His entrance directly into public library work

brought greater depth to his understanding of the purpose

of the library. He enthusiastically experimented with

practical programs of cultural enrichment, especially in

the realm of fine arts appreciation. He spoke of the

necessity that librarians truly empathize with patrons at

their own cultural level. He did not relinquish his ideal

that the library should help people to appreciate knowledge

in the way he did, but he expressed more readily the limi­

tations of that goal. He was able to say with great fervor

towards the end of his career, "The whole history of

852

libraries in the past century may almost be condensed into

one sentence: They~ the libraries of the one fit

reader; they ~ the libraries of the million unfit as

well as the one fit."1

Perhaps the statement most descriptive of his

developing concern was made in 1900 in an article which

surveyed the development of libraries in the nineteenth

century. It is as well a statement of his own professional

interests given almost at the close of his life. He first

~~8cribed how the library profession had moved beyond

developing the techniques and devices of library organiza-

tion. That observation fitly reflects his own pattern of

development. In his view the library movement as a whole

was progressing towards higher purposes. But rather than

stressing some absolute cultural achievement that the

library might help to obtain, he emphasized instead the

more relative but deeply humani.tic goal of helping per-

sons to fulfill their own human potential.

From time to time someone is alarmed at the exten­sion of library activity, and cries "panem et circenses."But the circenses, 'which being interpreted is novels,are so inextricably bound up with the educational workof the library, being the inducement to many to comeand be taught, and they are as now written so largelyeducational themselves, that their supply will standor fall with the libraries. For the panem, the solidwork of the library, whose paying for out of the publicpocket seems to certain theorists of dangerous tendency,only to be justified on socialistic grounds, theextremist individualist admits the necessity of com­bining for the public defence, and it is abundantly

lCutter, "Should Libraries Buy only the Best Books,"pp. 70-71. The underscoring is Cutter's.

853

clear that general ignorance menaces an attack notmerely on the rupublic but on civilisation. Moreover,it is the Anglo-Saxon way--and we are still largelyAnglo-Saxon--to make theories after trying experiments.We are at present thoroughly committed to the experi­ment of universal education. We are hoping to findthat it not only imparts information and sharpensintellects, but counteracts temptations and lessenscrime, increases the earning power of the individualand the effective force of the nation. Few thingscan be made certain in sociology, but if after a timethe prophylactic power of education appears probablethe existence of libraries is justified, for there isno doubt that they are educative. They take up thework where the schools are compelled to lay it downfor the majority of the community, and they carry iton through life; they are doing this with greater andgreater effect as the schools succeed more and morefully in giving to their pupils their best gift--thepower of self-education. 1 .

Cutter may well have shown more optimism than was merited

not only for the library movement but for education in

general. These closing words of his do, however, show

his own strong concerns and demonstrate his own develop-

mente As such they provide a final brush stroke in a

portrait of the man himself.

1C. A. Cutter, "Library Development," in The Nine-teenth Centur: A Review of Pro ress Durin the Past OneHun red Years in the Chief De art.ents of Human Activit

New York: G. P. Putnam1s Sons, 1901 , p. 9.