The New International Encyclopædia/Putnam, Herbert

PUTNAM, Herbert (1861—). An American lawyer and librarian, born in New York City. He graduated at Harvard in 1883, studied for a time in the Columbia Law School, and in 1886 was admitted to the Minnesota bar. He was librarian of the Minneapolis Athenæum from 1884 to 1887 and of the Minneapolis Public Library from 1887 to 1891; practiced law in Boston from 1892 to 1895; and was librarian of the Boston Public Library from 1895 to 1899, when he became librarian of Congress. In 1898 he was president of the American Library Association.