William Charles Berwick Sayers (1881–1960) was a British librarian and teacher.[1] He was one of a "small but remarkable" group of librarians involved in public libraries in the early 20th century[2] and was President of the Library Association in the United Kingdom in the year 1938.[1][3]

Early life

Sayers was born in Mitcham, Surrey on 23 December 1881.[4]

Career

In 1896 Sayers began as a junior assistant at the Bournemouth Public Library and in 1904 he was appointed as deputy librarian, working under principal librarian Stanley Jast, at the Public Library in Croydon which then a small country town near south London.

In 1915, he became the chief librarian of the Croydon Public Library and under his leadership he introduced a library service for children and during the 1930s he opened several branch libraries. He made every library an arts centre with a "programme of lectures, recitals and exhibitions".[1] He also set up libraries in hospitals and schools in the country. He was successful in convincing the local council to provide a generous budget and his libraries gained an international reputation for their high standards.[1]

After the Second World War, during which he had been badly injured while serving as a Civil Defence controller, he retired from the Croydon Public Libraries.

Legacy

Sayers contributed in several areas of librarianship: he served in the Library Assistants' Association, contributed to children's librarianship, was a respected teacher and "an outstanding authority"[5] on library classification, and served as a long-term editor of the journal Library World.

He was also a personal friend of musician Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, and after Coleridge-Taylor's untimely death in 1912, Coleridge-Taylor's widow asked Sayers to become his biographer.[6]

Bibliography

As author

As editor

Further reading

References

  1. ^ a b c d Olle, James G. (October 1981). "W.C. Berwick Sayers, librarian and teacher". Journal of Librarianship and Information Science. 13 (4): 232–247. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.850.6334. doi:10.1177/096100068101300403. S2CID 144041642.
  2. ^ Collection AR1011 - W.C. Berwick Sayers Collection, museumofcroydoncollections.com. Retrieved on 23 September 2020.
  3. ^ "A Word for the Lowbrow", The Guardian, 17 August 1938, p. 8.
  4. ^ "Sayers and Donker Duyvis" (PDF). nopr.niscair.res.in.
  5. ^ W. A. Munford, A History of the Library Association 1877-1977, London: The Library Association, 1976, p. 129.
  6. ^ McQueeney, Kerry (29 July 2004). "The sound of dignity". Sutton & Croydon Guardian.
  7. ^ Reviews of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Musician: The Musical Times (1916), doi:10.2307/908929, JSTOR 908929; The Crisis (1916), [1]; J. R. Davis, The Journal of Negro History (1916), doi:10.2307/3035618, JSTOR 3035618
  8. ^ Reviews of A Manual of Classification for Librarians and Bibliographers: Henry Bartlett Van Hoesen (1945), The Library Quarterly, JSTOR 4303392, Ruth French Strout (1956), The Library Quarterly, JSTOR 4304539
  9. ^ Reviews of A Manual of Children's Libraries: Mary Duncan Carter (1933), The Library Quarterly, JSTOR 4301947; Vittorio Camerani (1932), La Bibliofilía, JSTOR 26209598; H. Lemaître (1932), Bibliothèque de l'École des chartes, JSTOR 43009373; Gloria Escamilla G. (1969), Boletín del Instituto de Investigaciones Bibliográficas, [2]
  10. ^ Reviews of An Introduction to Library Classification: Henry E. Bliss (1936), The Library Quarterly, JSTOR 4302241; Vittorio Camerani (1935), La Bibliofilía, JSTOR 26209831
  11. ^ Review of Library Local Collections: Jackson E. Towne (1939), The Library Quarterly, JSTOR 4302651

External links

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