Biography
A modest American farmboy, he went to college on scholarships, and achieved a Rhodes scholarship before returning to establish his academic career at Harvard and Bryn Mawr. David pioneered the "open access" concept of the college library, throwing open the doors to all students (as opposed to traditional "classed" libraries open only to faculty, "upper" or "lower" classmen) before arriving in Philadelphia to serve the University of Pennsylvania as its first Director of Libraries, where he transformed their dilapidated collection into America's first centralized, open-access library in its modern form.
Prof. David retired to West Chester, Pennsylvania, where he continued to mentor and educate until his death in 1984.
Read more about this topic: Charles Wendell David
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