Lee Pierce Butler is best known for his book, An Introduction to Library Science, which was written in 1933. In this book, he discusses how librarianship encompasses both the sciences and the humanities. His view is that although the library profession itself came from a humanistic tradition, it should also be thought of as a technology. Butler called for librarianship to "integrate new techniques with the older intellectual tradition of librarianship."
Butler was born on December 19, 1884 in a Chicago suburb. As a child, he had scoliosis, which left him with a permanent limp and scarlet fever which resulted in serious hearing impairment. However, he overcame these obstacles and graduated from college. By 1912, he had earned a bachelor of divinity, a masters degree and a Ph.D from Dickinson College.
In 1916, Butler enrolled in the University of Illinois Library School. He never actually attended the school, but ended up working at the Newberry Library in Chicago. He began by cataloging books, but within a year was promoted to the collections department. He traveled extensively to purchase books for the Newberry Library. When the University of Chicago founded its Graduate Library School in 1928, Butler took a job teaching there. It was said that "whereas other professors in the Graduate Library School taught students how to be librarians, Butler taught them what librarianship could be."
Butler married Ruth Lapham on June 29, 1926, at the age of forty. They knew each other from the Newberry Library, where she also worked for a period of time. Visitors to the Butler's home often talked about their massive book collection. The first bookplate on the top of this page was designed for their collection in 1945. Following Butler's death from a car accident in 1953, Ruth commissioned the second bookplate to designate his collection before she dispersed it.
This page was created by University of Tennessee graduate student, Kathy Hipps, as part of the requirements for IS490, Dr. Gretchen Whitney.
Libraries and Culture, Bookplate Archive at http://www.gslis.utexas.edu/~lande/bookplates/I9_4_Butler.htm
Contemporary Authors Online, Biography Resource Center, Gale Corporation, 2004.
Richardson, John V., Book Review of The Gospel of Scholarship: Pierce Butler and a Critique of American Librarianship, Journal of American History, September 1993.
Bookplates used by permission from Libraries and Cultures Website.