Further Contributions
She was also an organizer and avid participant in Library organizations. These include organizing the Indiana Library Association in 1891, serving as President three times of the Illinois Library Association, and being a lifelong member of the American Library Association. At the 13th annual meeting of the Illinois Library Association Mary Ahern as President gave the annual address. She encouraged her audience with these words, “We are librarians because we feel that in these lines there are greater opportunities for helpfulness, greater vistas of optimistic outlook, greater results in actual returns of the worthwhile, than in any other line of work which we might have chosen.”
Mary Ahern also continued serving government. She was Secretary of the Library Department of the National Education Association. During WWI she served as publicity agent and distributed books for the US military in France from January to July 1919.
Mary continued to learn and advocate library policy. She visited France and England in 1927 to study their library systems. In America she was influential in establishing and strengthening connections between libraries and schools. She was an advocate for the potential of libraries to provide lifelong education for a nation. Her influence was widespread. WC Berwick Sayers described her: “How intensely alive Miss Ahern seemed, how full of ideas, ideals, enthusiasms, how enquiringly humorous!” In 1931 Mary Ahern gave up her editorship of Libraries when her eyesight became too poor to continue. The publishers decided the journal could not continue without her. The last issue of the journal was a tribute to her many years of service. Seven years later she died on a train near Atlanta, Georgia as she was traveling back home on May 22, 1938.
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