Scope and Content Note
The papers of Herbert Putnam (full name George Herbert Putnam) (1861-1955) span the years 1783-1958, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the period 1899-1939. The collection includes family diaries and journals, family correspondence, general correspondence, speeches and articles, scrapbooks, clippings, legal papers, genealogies, and miscellaneous printed matter. The papers are organized into eight series: Family Diaries and Journals , Family Correspondence , General Correspondence , Speeches and Writings , Clippings File , Subject File , Miscellany , and Oversize .
The Family Correspondence series and Family Diaries and Journals give the collection its essentially personal character and document the Putnam family’s many and varied interests. Herbert Putnam’s letters to his wife, Charlotte Elizabeth Munroe Putnam, to his grandmother, C. H. Putnam, and to his sister, Victorine Amy Putnam Pinhey, reveal his indecision regarding the choice of librarianship or the legal profession as his life’s work. Later letters to his wife and to his daughters, Brenda Putnam and Shirley Putnam O’Hara, document not only his ever-widening interests in all aspects of library work and early years as Librarian of Congress, but reveal his many intellectual interests and love of poetry as well. Other family members represented in the Family Correspondence file include Putnam’s sister, the historian Ruth Putnam; General Israel Putnam of Revolutionary War fame; Putnam’s son-in-law, the artist Eliot O’Hara; his father, George Palmer Putnam, founder of the publishing company that bears his name; and his sister, Mary Putnam Jacobi, one of the first women to graduate from 1' Ecole de Mèdecine, Paris, France.
The General Correspondence file and Speeches and Writings relate mainly to Herbert Putnam’s professional interests. His thoughts on library work can be found here, including his comments regarding Harvard Library policy and the examination for a librarian at the Chicago Public Library. Information is provided on such landmarks in the history of the Library of Congress as the purchase of the Otto Vollbehr Collection of incunabula, including the Gutenberg Bible; the decision to sell catalog cards; the establishment of the Library of Congress classification system; the initiation of interlibrary loans; and the establishment of the Trust Fund Board, which Putnam considered his greatest achievement as Librarian of Congress.
The Library of Congress Round Table guest books in the Subject File contain the autographs of statesmen, writers, kings, presidents, Supreme Court justices, and others who shared the hospitality of the librarian’s luncheon circle.