Verner Warren Clapp (June 3, 1901 – June 15, 1972) was a librarian, writer, and polymath.
Starting as a summer clerk at the Library of Congress in 1922, Clapp rose to chief assistant librarian and acting Librarian of Congress. In 1956, he left the Library to serve as the first President of the Council on Library Resources. In these and other capacities, Clapp significantly contributed to administrative and technological modernization of the Library of Congress and to librarianship generally.
Known to his peers as "Mr. Librarian", a "library giant" "the librarian's librarian",Grove, 66 and, among other accolades, "the library world's Da Vinci"Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, 85-86. The entry continues, "Described by Rudy Rogers as 'the library world's Da Vinci', Verner Clapp was a man of vision and stature, and like Da Vinci, a man not likely to be seen again anytime soon." across his varied career Clapp earned tremendous professional and personal respect and many of the library industry's highest honors and awards. Librarian of Congress Lawrence Quincy Mumford said of Clapp, "His contributions to the Library of Congress and to the library world are so varied and numerous that one is staggered at the knowledge that a single person in his lifetime could accomplish this."A Memorial Tribute, 3 Librarian of Princeton University, William S. Dix, said of Clapp, he was "close to the center of almost every important development in scholarly librarianship for at least 30 years"."A Memorial Tribute", 6
Clapp never formally trained in librarianship, having received an A.B. from Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut and studied graduate-level philosophy at Harvard University. Instead, he applied a practical mind and insatiable curiosity to problem solving, coordination and technological solutions."A Memorial Tribute", 11 Clapp's professional focus and accomplishments include materials preservation, library cooperation, technology, including microfilm and computerization, copyright, fair use, Cataloging in Publication (CIP), inter-library networking and cooperation and user access. Clapp also played significant roles in the preservation of the Declaration of Independence and other foundational documents during World War II, post-War library acquisitions, and the creation of both the United Nations Library (now Dag Hammarskjöld Library) and the Japanese National Diet Library.
Early life
Clapp was born in Johannesburg, South Africa (then "Transvaal") to an English mother, Mary Sybil Helms Clapp, and an American father, George Herbert Clapp. Mary Helms, daughter of Danish mining engineer Ludvig Verner Helms, was born in Sarawak in Borneo and educated in Europe and had moved to the Transvaal to work in a law office when she met George Clapp, an American entrepreneur from Dover, New Hampshire, who was in Johannesburg to sell bicycles. Excerpt: "AN AFRICAN DEALER HERE – George H. Clapp, who represents one of the pioneer American bicycle houses at Johannesburg, South Africa, has just returned to this country on the St. Paul. He is on the lookout for cycle manufacturers who wish to compete with those of England, France and Germany in a good market." They were married in 1898. During the Second Boer War, Mary Clapp served as a British army nurse.
In 1905 the family moved to the United States, settling in Poughkeepsie, New York, where George Clapp's brother ran a drug store. Clapp and his father took long hikes across the countryside and swam in the Hudson River, which led to Clapp's life-long passion for brisk, extended walks and the outdoors. Clapp credited a foundry across from his home for his fascination with machinery and mechanical processes, as the foundry workers entertained his questions and curiosity."Mr. Librarian": Verner Warren Clapp, 63 Throughout his childhood Clapp was an avid reader who, he said, "finished most of Dickens, and Scott by the time I was fourteen", as well as Herodotus, given him by his mother for his fourteenth birthday and which he later read in Greek.
From Poughkeepsie High School, Clapp attended Trinity College, graduating with an A.B. in 1922. Clapp was captain of the Trinity track team, member of Sigma Nu fraternity, joined the Student Army Training Corps in 1918 (see Reserve Officers' Training Corps) and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa in 1921. In 1922, he enrolled at Harvard University to study graduate-level philosophy, where he studied under Bertrand Russell. He additionally audited literature courses by John Livingston Lowes and Irving Babbitt, "to whom", Clapp recollected, "I suppose I am more indebted than I know. And of course, there is T.S. Eliot – and so many others."Interview with Verner Clapp, 152
Career at Library of Congress
Clapp's 33-year span at the Library of Congress was described by a biographer as "a career of immense diversity and depth, a career not likely to be matched in today's age of specialization".Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, 79 Such rise in "specialization" came hand-in-hand with enormous technological change, making Clapp's entrance to librarianship, although unintended, propitious. Clapp scoffed at distinctions in the field between "the librarian as bookman and the librarian as retriever of information", as an interviewer queried of him in 1965, calling it: "sheer baloney".Interview with Verner Clapp, 153 Educated in the liberal arts and philosophy, fascinated by books, gadgets, technology, and ideas—and untrained in librarianship, Clapp's contribution to what he called the "professional memory,"Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, 156 was enormous, to which his peers would repeatedly attest, such as his entry in the Dictionary of American Library Biography: "His interests were so broad and his knowledge so extensive that one is baffled in trying to highlight his accomplishments."Dictionary of American Library Biography, 81 While promoting the study of librarianship for others, it was his overarching view of the field as a human and not just professional endeavor that yielded such a diverse and acclaimed career that started, quite literally, at the reference desk of the Library of Congress's Main Reading Room. At the 1956 dedication to the National Library of Canada, Clapp described his vision for libraries and, as such, his professional purpose: "Libraries are the repositories of man's tradition, and so, in a manner of speaking, of his collective soul."Encyclopedia, p 85-86; from his speech, "Libraries in the Life of the Nation: The National Library", an address to the Canadian Library Association, Ottawa, August 27, 1953.
Summer internship and career start During the summer of 1922, Clapp joined his parents, who had moved to Washington, D.C., and found temporary work at the Library of Congress as a cataloger in the Manuscript Division. There, Clapp filled in for another cataloger who, Clapp recalled, "usually turned out in a year somewhat less than a third of what I turned out that summer".Interview with Verner Clapp, 151 Clapp cataloged collections relating to the American Revolution, the Civil War and the papers of Reverdy Johnson, whose "execrable penmanship", Clapp said, "was even worse than that of Horace Greeley, which was notably bad".Interview with Verner Clapp, 151
"Disenchanted" with study of philosophy at Harvard, Clapp returned to the Library of Congress the following year, "thinking then that I would put in a year there before deciding on a profession".Interview with Verner Clapp, 152 Employed as an assistant reference librarian in the Main Reading Room, Clapp recalled, "They turned me loose and I began to explore this extraordinary institution into which I had fallen."Interview with Verner Clapp, 152 Clapp engaged his innate curiosity to learn about the Library, as "I had no qualifications for the job whatsoever except a simple B.A. and I had had no library experience except my stint during the summer." On "slow evenings", Clapp would seek out chief cataloger and famed librarian, Charles Martel (creator of the Library of Congress classification system), "And then I would talk to him about cataloging problems for an hour before slipping back to work."Interview with Verner Clapp, 152 From there Clapp immersed himself in librarianship, crediting significant influence from Librarian of Congress Herbert Putnam, whose reports to Congress Clapp read studiously, Charles C. Jewett, Librarian of the Smithsonian, John Shaw Billings, creator of the Library of the Surgeon General's Office, Harry Miller Lydenberg of the New York Library, and Melvil Dewey.Interview with Verner Clapp, 152
Mid-career and promotions After five years at the Main Reading Room, Clapp was tasked as the first head of the Congressional Unit, which had started in 1914 as the Legislative Reference Bureau and which was the precursor to the Congressional Research Service. The Congressional Unit was charged with responding to requests for information from Congress, primarily by collating research and publications from government organizations and agencies. In 1931, Clapp was named Special Assistant to the Superintendent of the Reading Room. In this position, Clapp and his colleague, David C. Mearns, researched the early locations of the Supreme Court, cataloged the existing books in the Library from Jefferson's personal library, and helped catalog President Calvin Coolidge's books in the White House and the library of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt requested of Clapp and Mearns a history of the White House egg roll, for which the pair produced a monograph with two editions, one listing Clapp and Mearns as authors and the other Mearns and Clapp, which caused a "minor panic" among catalogers.Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, 80
Clapp additionally supervised the Division of Books for the Adult Blind, for which he was credited with expanding the program, including to earn it "separate annual appropriation" to "provide books for the use of the adult blind readers in the United States", as well as to develop standards for Braille and other Library services for the blind. In 1937, Clapp was promoted to Assistant Superintendent of the Reading Room, and in 1940 was named Director of the Administrative Department.Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, 80
Library of Congress reorganization In 1939, Archibald MacLeish took over as Librarian of Congress from Putnam, who had served as Librarian for forty years. Following recommendations of the Librarian's Committee, consisting of three outside technical experts, and with Clapp's close guidance and direct input, MacLeish reorganized the Library's 35 administrative units into three departments (excepting statutory offices of Copyright and the Law Library), Administrative, Reference, and Processing, placing Clapp as budget officer and administrative assistant of the Administrative Department, overseeing personnel, accounting, buildings and grounds and publications.Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, 80 In 1943, MacLeish moved all acquisition activities into a new Acquisitions Department headed by Clapp (and abolishing the Administrative Department).Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, 80
Clapp remained at the Library until 1956, having served as Chief Assistant Librarian and Acting Librarian, roles and events for which are outlined below.
Preservation of the Declaration of Independence during World War II