These days, municipalities all over the US have tax-supported public libraries. Public libraries, academic libraries, and others offer patrons indexes to help them find articles in periodicals. We have William Frederick Poole to thank for both.

He first became famous for the first index to periodicals and later became a founding member of the American Library Association. For most of his career as a librarian, he advocated for public libraries.

Life of William Frederick Poole

Poole was born December 24, 1821, in Salem, Massachusetts. His parents, descendants of the Puritans of the 1630s, owned land that had been in the family for generations. Like many of his ancestors, he studied at Yale University, although he was older than most students by the time he got there.

College students then as now joined social clubs. Poole joined one called Brothers in Unity. Like many student societies, it had its own library. In his sophomore year, Poole became its assistant librarian. Among other things, members used the collection for making speeches and preparing for debates. Magazines of the day came in handy for the purpose, but it was difficult to find pertinent articles. Poole set about to make it easier.

In 1849 while a student at Yale, Poole published An Alphabetical Index to Subjects, Treated in the Reviews and Other Periodicals, to which No Indexes Have Been Published Prepared for the Library of the Brothers in Unity. Yale College. It was the first index to periodical literature ever published. Although it was limited to the holdings of a single library, and only a subject index, it ran to 154 pages. It was as close as 19th-century technology could come to a search engine.

Three years later, as the librarian at the Boston Mercantile Library, he issued a more general index, covering the holdings of additional libraries and indexing personal names in addition to subjects. This edition was 521 pages. Poole continued to work on indexing periodicals for the rest of his life and became famous for Poole’s Index to Periodical Literature.

Work in two Boston libraries

Poole served as assistant librarian at the Boston Athenaeum from 1851 to 1852, and then from 1852 to 1856 served as librarian at the Boston Mercantile Library. While there, Poole presented not only the revised version of his periodical index but also published a Dictionary Catalog of the Boston Mercantile Library.

Libraries had had catalogs for generations by that time, no two organized according to the same principles. Poole devised a simple and easy to use structure. He entered the books in alphabetical order by author. Each entry gave the title and the subject or subjects the book treated. Poole also provided numerous cross-references. Other libraries started to follow the same general plan. An associate, Charles Cutter, later issued his own Rules for a Dictionary Catalog.

In 1856, Poole became head of the Boston Athenaeum and remained there until 1869. Poole used his time at the two Boston libraries to explore innovative ways to organize their collections and catalogs. He also took interest in the design and construction of library buildings. At the Athenaeum, Poole began to train other librarians, many of whom became leading librarians themselves.

But both of these libraries were subscription libraries that existed for the sake of paying members. Poole found the idea of a public library, open to anyone free of charge, more interesting. The Boston Public Library, which opened in 1854, is the first institution deliberately founded as a tax-supported public library. Although Poole never worked there, he surely paid careful attention to how it operated.

During his last few years at the Athenaeum, Poole also served as a freelance library consultant and helped build the collections of numerous smaller libraries in New England.

Cincinnati

If the public library in Boston didn’t need Poole’s services, the one in Cincinnati did. What had started out as a subscription library became a public library in 1853. It had outgrown two locations when, in 1868, it bought the shell of an opera house building project that had gone bankrupt. The library board hired architect James W. McLaughlin to make a library building of it. At about the same time, it hired Poole as librarian. The two worked together and devised a modern building with central heating and an elevator. The library began to operate from there on December 9, 1870.

In describing the building, the Enquirer reported, “One is impressed not only with the magnitude and beauty of the interior, but with its adaptation to the purpose it is to serve.” Poole’s vision accounts for the practicality and usefulness.

He envisioned a library that would serve both scholars and the general public—and not only adults. Poole added more fiction to the collection and issued library cards to children. He also opened the library on Sundays. Poole wrote that, “many of that class of young men who [had previously] strolled about the streets on Sunday, and spent the day in a less profitable manner, [began] habitually frequenting the rooms and spending a portion of the day in reading.”

Chicago Public Library

Even as he began his work in Cincinnati, the river towns that had long dominated the economy of the Midwest had begun to lose influence to the upstart town of Chicago.  It was an economic powerhouse but had no important cultural institutions. The fire of 1871 barely slowed its growth. It had no public library until 1873. It opened in an old water tank that had survived the fire. In the opinion of the first library board, who better to lead it than William Frederick Poole? He jumped at the chance to start a new public library from scratch.

He brought the same energy and attitudes toward library collection development to Chicago that he had always displayed. In particular, he insisted that, aside from immoral literature, a library collection ought to provide the whole range of what the public wanted. He reasoned that it was preferable for someone to read worthless literature than nothing at all. And if they started with bad books, they would eventually find better books. The late 19th century was an era when people like Poole firmly believed in the ability of cultural institutions to elevate public taste.

Poole strongly believed that library books should be accessible to library patrons. He protested against the closed stacks that other librarians favored. They removed books from a patron’s immediate reach. He saw libraries—even large public libraries—as akin to a gentleman’s study. They should be comfortable, and the books should be within easy reach.

As head of the Chicago Public Library, then, Poole allowed patrons to browse freely. Patrons complained that his successor could not bear to have anyone touch the books without some kind of institutional barrier.

Newberry Library

Businessman and book lover Walter L. Newberry, who died in 1868, had written a codicil in his will leaving his fortune to establish a public library if his daughters died without issue. One died childless in 1874 and the other in 1876. His widow died in 1885.

By that time, the trustees of his estate could have simply donated the Newberry fortune to the Chicago Public Library. Instead, they chose to establish a new library that, according to the will, would be free and open to the public. They asked Poole to lead it. With no collection (Newberry’s had burned in the fire), no building, and a considerable pile of money, it was an offer Poole could not resist. He resigned from the Chicago Public Library in 1887 to develop the Newberry Library.

Ultimately, the Newberry Library had a non-circulating collection like that of the Boston Athenaeum, but it not a subscription library. Poole’s experience with both models of library organization gave him a unique background for defining what the Newberry Library would become.

He envisioned a research library so that it would not compete with the public library for patrons. By analogy with education, the public library would be like public schools and the Newberry Library like a university. It would have a very different collection, but complete in all departments.

He had one blind spot. Chicago was already an ethnically diverse city in the 1870s. As head of the public library, Poole had overseen development of large collections of materials to appeal to the city’s various ethnic groups. As he created the Newberry Library’s collection development policy, he largely ignored them, perhaps supposing that “non-natives” would have little interest in intellectual pursuits.

The current Newberry Library building opened in 1893. Poole died March 1, 1894.

Poole’s Index to Periodical Literature

Poole began his lifelong work on indexing periodicals as a student. His first two versions were limited in scope. With the help of associate editor William I. Fletcher, the edition in use today appeared in 1882, a two-part volume of 1,400 pages covering periodicals from 1802 to 1881. Poole and Fletcher enlisted the help of about 50 libraries to broaden its scope.

It was an informal and voluntary cooperation, however. Not long into the 20th century, the library world recognized that the best cooperation depended on employing and paying people to do the work.

Whole-article periodical indexes existed before Poole’s index, but he developed the first modern one. It is an alphabetical subject index to articles, published as a multivolume book. Its contents covered general-interest periodicals, in English only, and included popular and semi-professional magazines. Poole did not attempt to index research periodicals.

Supplements appeared in 1881, 1893, 1897, 1903, and 1908. Each supplement nominally covers certain years, but they all include retrospective indexing of periodicals that had not appeared in earlier supplements.

The H.W. Wilson company introduced the Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature in 1901, and it eventually supplanted Poole’s. Wilson later issued a retrospective index that covers as far back as 1890. Scholars who want to find earlier periodical literature than that must still use Poole’s.

Some deficiencies

Poole’s Index to Periodical Literature is a monumental and unprecedented achievement. Unfortunately, Poole made some decisions that make it more difficult to use than it should have been.

• Poole made a diligent search to identify the authors of anonymous articles, but he never cited his sources in the index entries. Enough of them are incorrect that none of them ought to be accepted uncritically.
• He identified authors in parentheses in each entry but provided no way to find all the articles by or attributed to any particular author.
• Periodical publishers in general have a bad habit of changing titles and their system of numbering them. Poole entered them under what he considered the best-known title and, where necessary, numbered them as he thought they should have been numbered. Each volume has a “Chronological Conspectus,” which attempts to identify what year a volume number appeared. Modern indexing practice has improved on his methods by tracing all the various changes.
• Poole’s Index to Periodical Literature is a subject index, but Poole resisted the idea of a standard list of index terms. He believed that the author’s title adequately defined the subjects. Therefore, if two articles about the same topic used different words in the title, Poole’s structure makes it difficult or impossible to find them both.

Poole and the American Library Association

Melvil Dewey and the editors of Publishers Weekly conceived the idea of having a conference of librarians at the Centennial Exposition (Philadelphia, 1876). They sent a preliminary call to libraries all over the country. Poole at the time did not recognize Dewey’s name and at first hesitated to endorse the idea. Eventually, he agreed to allow his name on the first printed call for the conference.

The 103 librarians who attended the conference (October 4-6, 1876) became charter members of the American Library Association. Poole was one of four men who shared the office of vice president. At that first meeting, the new organization gave its official support to the enlargement and publication of Poole’s index. His partnership with Fletcher began as a result.

Poole served as ALA president from 1885 to 1887. In 1888, he became president of the American Historical Association, being as widely known for his historical scholarship as for his librarianship.

No charter member of the ALA worked west of Chicago. As a westerner, Poole resisted dominance of the new organization by easterners. He frequently clashed with Dewey for the rest of his life.

Poole was always more interested in the spirit of library work than in mechanical routine. When Dewey began to urge standardized and uniform methods among libraries, Poole resisted for a while before seeing the advantages.

He disapproved of Dewey’s classification system for the same reason he disliked closed stacks. It seemed to form a barrier to the reader’s immediate access to books. The subsequent development of librarianship has followed Dewey’s lead more than Poole’s. It is perhaps for that reason why Poole has become so much less known.

Sources:

Aids to the use of Poole’s Index / Wayne Somers, Victorian Periodicals Newsletter 8 (April 1970): 15-22
Charming “Old Main” Library / Jeff Suess, Cincinnati Enquirer. March 2, 2014
Class and culture in late nineteenth-century Chicago: The founding of the Newberry Library / Paul Finkelman. American Studies (Spring 1974), 5-22
Five men of ’76 / William E. Foster. Bulletin of the American Library Association 20 (October 1926): 312-23
Irrepressible reformer: a biography of Melvil Dewey / Wayne A. Wiegland (Chicago and London: American Library Association, 1996
Let’s have a Poole party: celebrating the 200th birthday of the Newberry’s first librarian / Paul Durico, The Newberry Library. December 21, 2021
Memorial sketch of Dr. William Frederick Poole / Newberry Library Trustees. 1895
The return of cooperative indexing / E.C. Richardson. Bulletin of the American Library Association 11(July 1917):222-226
William Frederick Poole issues the first index to periodical literature / Jeremy Norton, History of Information