[LIB11016]

[LIB10742] - When Spear Library was completed in 1885, the faculty decided that it was an appropriate time to modernize the library's system of organization.  Nine years earlier, Melvil Dewey's method of classification and Cutter's system of cataloging had been published.  In 1885, the faculty voted to adopt Dewey's system.  They commissioned Azariah Smith Root, who had graduated from Oberlin in 1884 and was then a law student at Boston University, to undertake the classification of Oberlin's library and establish a card catalog.  Root completed the project in one year and then left to attend Harvard Law School.  When he had been at Harvard for one year, Oberlin invited him back to serve as its first professional librarian. [website]