Mary Cutler Fairchild

Mary Salome Cutler Fairchild (née Mary Salome Cutler; June 21, 1855 – December 20, 1921) was a pioneering American librarian, educator, and school administrator. She is known for her contributions to the establishment of library science in the United States through her work at the Columbia College library and New York State Library School, as well as her service in the American Library Association. Life and career Mary Salome Cutler was born in Dalton, Massachusetts to Lydia Wakefield and Artemas Hubbard Cutler, a papermaker. She graduated from Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (now Mount Holyoke College) in 1875, then taught Latin at her alma mater from 1876 to 1878. After ill health forced her to stop teaching, she began to pursue librarianship, as she was intrigued by the work of the newly-organized American Library Association (founded in 1876). In 1884, she worked at a small country library, after which she contacted Melvil Dewey, then-librarian of Columbia College, about library-related employment. Dewey hired her as a cataloger, and she became head cataloger of the Columbia library in 1885. In 1887, Dewey opened the Columbia College School of Library Economy, the first librarian training institution in the United States, and hand-selected Cutler as a cataloging instructor. Two years later, Dewey resigned from Columbia to work as the director of the New York State Library, and he moved the School of Library Economy to Albany, New York as officials at the all-male Columbia chafed at the admission of women to the library school. Cutler "sympathized with Dewey's vision of librarianship" and moved with him and the school. In Albany, the School of Library Economy was reorganized and renamed the New York State Library School, and Cutler was appointed vice director in 1889. Under her direction, an exam and a Bachelor's degree were added to the entrance requirements. She also oversaw the expansion of the scope of library training to better suit public service as professional educators, her ideal of the librarian. Additionally, she pioneered library services for the blind, in memory of her blind father, by organizing the New York State Library for the Blind.