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
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“There never was a good biography of a good novelist. There couldn’t be. He is too many people, if he’s any good.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man’s life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.”
—James Boswell (1740–95)
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)