John Cotton Dana (b. August 19, 1856 in Woodstock, Vermont — d. July 21, 1929 in New Jersey) was an American librarian and museum director whose main objective was to make the library relevant to the daily lives of the citizens and to promote the benefits of reading. He was a public librarian for forty years and achieved a great deal in his field.
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In 1878 Dana graduated from Dartmouth College where he studied law. In 1880 he went to Denver, Colorado where he passed the Colorado bar and began to practice. In 1889 became director of the Denver Public Library until 1898. While there, he pioneered the patron's right to open stacks, allowing them to browse for themselves instead of having a librarian monitoring their every request. He wanted to update libraries into the 20th century by making them vibrant community centers instead of collections of relics that only appealed to a small segment of the community. He also organized the first-ever children's library room. He was personally opposed to the concept of storytime, preferring for his children's library to focus on the continuing education of school teachers.
Dana moved to New York where he was admitted to the New York Bar in 1883. In 1885, Dana moved to Minnesota, to take up a position as the editor of the Ashby Avalanche and practice law. Soon after arriving in Minnesota, however, Dana returned again to Colorado to do more surveying and construction work. Because of the reputation he cultivated as a learned man and his connections in the Denver Public Schools, the superintendent of Denver Public Schools, Aaron Gove, nominated Dana as the director of the Denver Public Library upon its inception in 1890. In 1895, Dana left the Colorado Library when the city began discussing the lowering of his salary. Apparently, public controversy had arisen over a city tax levied for the school district and, by extension, the library. Dana also drew criticism for circulating "gold bug" literature at the library. Colorado was economically dependent on mining silver and the gold standard was a political issue. Dana felt that library patrons should have information on both sides of an issue.
Back east again, he served as a librarian at the Springfield, Massachusetts public library from 1898 - 1902. He continued many of his Denver policies there. One of the changes Dana implemented at the Springfield library was to the physical building itself. He had workers tear down many of the railings and generally open the floor plan. Although these terms were not invented until nearly a century later, Dana concerned himself heavily with the ergonomics and usability of his collections and facilities. He left Springfield after refusing to become involved in a power struggle with the library's patrons.
In 1902 Dana became employed at the Newark Public Library in Newark, New Jersey from until his death in 1929. He established foreign language collections for immigrants and also developed a special collection for the business community. This "Business Branch" was the first of its kind in the nation.
He also founded the Newark Museum in 1909, directing it until his death. The Museum was exceptional because it included contemporary American commercial products as folk art. John C. Dana personally did not like modern art, but he believed in the principle of a universal museum and thus ordered purchases of art associated with the Ashcan School. Cotton also began the Newark Museum's notable Tibetan collection.
After his death, his successor at the Newark Public Library referred to him as “The First Citizen of Newark”. Six years after his death, the city of Newark appointed October 6, 1935 as John Cotton Dana Day. Rutgers-Newark's main library is named for John Cotton Dana.
Dana was quoted as saying, “A great department store, easily reached, open at all hours, is more like a good museum of art than any of the museums we have yet established” (Hadley, 68).
Dana served as president of the American Library Association, which today gives out the John Cotton Dana Public Relations Award to libraries with exceptional public relations.[1] The NJ Associations of Museums has an annual award in his name, presented to an individual "for outstanding contributions to the New Jersey museum profession." John Cotton Dana was also the first president and founder of the Special Libraries Association. Dana is a member of the Library Hall of Fame. Also, New Jersey Law School renamed their college Dana College when it transitioned from a two year to a four year school (Watkins 2006, 2).
John Cotton Dana married, but his wife (Adine Rowena Wagener), whom he married in 1888 was not healthy, and they had no children.
One of his biographers said of him, “He would have found a library school curriculum intolerable, and doubtless a library school would have found him intolerable”.[2]