Mary Eileen Ahern

Mary Eileen Ahern (1860 – 1938) was a librarian and leader of the modern library movement.She has been selected as one of the "100 of the Most Important Leaders We Had in the 20th Century" in the American Libraries list published in 1999. She was an important influencer and early organizer of libraries in America. Mary Ahern was a crusader for the value of public libraries in educating the public. In the first issue of the journal she edited, Public Libraries, as reported in the World Encyclopedia of Library and Information Services Mary said, “There is only one solution of all social problems, an increase in intelligence, a gradual education of the people.” The best source of this education, she believed, was potentially the public library. This was a time in history when Andrew Carnegie was building libraries across the nation and Melvil Dewey created the Dewey Decimal System and founded the American Library Association. Mary wrote and spoke about this optimistic vision in the same editorial, the public library “is the broadest of teachers, one may almost say the only free teacher. It is the most liberal of schools; it is the only real people’s college.” The World Encyclopedia states, “ She saw a librarian as a teacher on all occasions.” Mary shared this vision with government leaders, teachers and librarians everywhere she went, throughout her long career.