Bartol Brinkler was a cataloging librarian, the head of cataloging and classification at Harvard University's Widener Library. He was educated at Princeton Graduate School and received a MA and a Ph.D. He graduated in 1937. From 1947-1982, Bartol Brinkler worked at Widener Library as head of classification and cataloging. In 1976, he trained all the catalogers at Widener Library on the Library of Congress classification system. Bartol Brinkler also served as a "consultant on classification (...this included the construction of a special classification system & supervision of reclassification for Dumbarton Oaks Research Library, Washington, DC, 59-60, and J.K.Kennedy-Institut für Amerikastudien". Bartol Brinkler died on 2 October 1993. He is remembered in the Princeton Alumni Weekly as a "quiet librarian."
He devised a modification of the LC purpose classification system, known as the Brinkler classification system to bring out better the geographical aspects of the subject in the context of a card catalog.