Ernest Cushing Richardson

Richardson was one of the foremost library scholars and innovators of early librarianship in this country. His academic background included earning degrees from Amherst College and Hartford Theological Seminary as well as an honorary masters from Princeton and an honorary doctorate from Washington and Jefferson College. A prodigious worker, he wrote over 200 books, periodicals, and other works. Classification, Theoretical and Practical and Some Aspects of Cooperative Cataloging were among his most influential books. He worked unceasingly to strengthen research library collections in the United States. His efforts in this area took him to Europe on innumerable occasions to study the great collections there. His greatest single contribution to librarianship and to scholarship was his work as Director of "Project B" in transforming the National Union Catalog of the Library of Congress from an insignificant record of one and a half million titles into a magnificent tool of seven million titles in known locations. These successes set the stage for the emergence years later of the Farming Plan and the Center for Research Libraries. He was a member of many library and scholarly organizations and served as president of ALA and the American Library Institute. Dr. Richardson was far ahead of his time, and his significant contributions to his profession have never been fully recognized. The publication of this bibliography is an attempt to fill an important gap in library history. Appendix and bibliography.