About the Libraries: Libraries and Centers: John Cotton Dana Library
John Cotton Dana - Newark's First Citizen

John Cotton Dana was a remarkable man whose vision and achievements continue to influence librarians and library users across the nation. He accepted his first position as a library director at the Denver Public Library in 1889, a time when libraries were still the domain of a small segment of the population, usually subscribers, and librarians were collection caretakers.

During the 9 years of his employment, John Cotton Dana took two giant steps toward bringing libraries and their resources and services to the people. He instituted open stacks where library users could browse the rows of book titles for themselves and he organized a separate children's room. Although we take these two services very much for granted in our use of libraries today, John Cotton Dana was one of the first library directors in the nation to incorporate such innovations. He returned to the East to work for four years at the Springfield Library in Massachusetts, where he acquired experience in reorganization and museum management. In 1902, John Cotton Dana came to Newark where he continued to work until his death in 1929.

When he arrived, John Cotton Dana found Newark to be a rich industrial center with many immigrant populations. The Public Library had been established fourteen years earlier and the collections had just been moved into a new facility, a French Renaissance style building which still retains its beauty. There were several institutions of higher learning-- a "normal" school for teacher preparation (now Kean University), a law school, the New Jersey College of Pharmacy (now Rutgers Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy), and two clusters of schools offering ambitious adult education programs. In other words, the city was a perfect environment for the development and implementation of John Cotton Dana's philosophy of librarianship, making the library relevant to the daily lives of its constituents and promoting the educational and cultural benefits of reading.

He reached out to the city's immigrants by acquiring foreign language materials and publicizing them in frequent book columns. Younger readers visited the Library's children's room or had access to a small selection of library books in their classrooms. John Cotton Dana interpreted the library's constituency in a very broad sense. He included the city's businessmen, establishing a branch devoted to business related information in the center of the commercial district. The concept of a library highly developed in one subject area was new (the Business Branch was the first of its kind in the nation) and led to special librarianship as a major branch of the field. The Library also supported the work of Newark's teachers, health care providers, and college students, to name a few.

John Cotton Dana was involved in much of the public life in Newark. For example, he served on th board of trustees for the institutions which have coalesced into Rutgers-Newark. When the New Jersey Law School first expanded its two year preparatory program into a four year college in the late 1920s, it was named the Dana College. This is approximately the time that Dana's name became associated with the library of the Seth Boyden School of Business. In honor of his contributions, John Cotton Dana was known as Newark's First Citizen.

In addition to librarianship, John Cotton Dana's revolutionizing influence extends to museums. He began to collect objects for displays and organized the Newark Museum Association in 1909. These objects ranged from the utilitarian to the finest art, particularly American art. Soon the collections outgrew the Library's exhibit spaces. A local philanthropist, Louis Bamberger, donated funds for a new building a few blocks away from the Library. The Newark Museum opened its doors in 1926.

On a biographical note, Mr. Dana was born in October 1856 to a large, established family in Woodstock, VT. After completing his schooling, he attended Dartmouth College. The intensity of his studies had an adverse affect on his health so John Cotton Dana was encouraged to travel westward. He joined a friend in Colorado to do surveying for the railroads. In a few years, rough and ready camp life had restored John Cotton Dana's health and he travelled east to study the law. He passed the bar in New York but, shortly afterward, returned to Colorado. Mr. Dana was practicing law in Denver when he began a letter writing campaign to change the "do-not-touch-the-books" policy of the Denver Public Library, in particular, and libraries in general. When the library director's office became vacant, the town fathers offered the post to him and John Cotton Dana accepted.

In photographs, John Cotton Dana appears to be a tall, slender, distinguished looking gentleman with some signs that a smile was hidden under his magnificent mustache. Anecdotes from several authors indicate that he had a great sense of humor. He met and married his wife while in Denver. Her health was fragile and, soon after their move to Newark, her invalidism increased. They had no children.

In the Fall, 1999, several institutions in Newark will have a city-wide exhibit and related programs honoring John Cotton Dana and celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Newark Museum. As we prepare for the exhibit by reading John Cotton Dana's essays and speeches, we have been struck by the freshness of his ideas and the relevance of his approach to the issues we face today- determining and meeting the information needs of a diverse population, promoting access to print and electronic resources, and marketing library services.

The librarians and staff at the Dana Library are proud of our connections with Newark's First Citizen and find continuous challenge in bringing his vision for libraries to life.