Earl Gregg Swem

E.G. Swem at work in his office

Dr. Earl Gregg Swem (December 29, 1870 – April 14, 1965) was an American historian, bibliographer and librarian

Swem started his career whilst still in high school at the Iowa Masonic Library in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. After graduation from Lafayette College in 1893, he was associated with several libraries in Chicago and in 1903 moved on to the Library of Congress, serving there as chief of the cataloging division of the Copyright Office until 1907 when he became assistant state librarian of Virginia. He not only built up the collection of the Virginia State Library in his twelve years there, but also began his work in Virginia bibliography, compiling finding lists and bibliographies of the State Library's books, manuscript materials, and historical records.^{[citation needed]}

Swem continued this work at the College of William and Mary, at which he served as librarian from 1920 to 1944. Under his direction, the William and Mary library collection grew from 25,000 books and 20,000 manuscripts to more than 240,000 books and approximately 400,000 manuscripts.^{[citation needed]} Swem also used his position to make the library more accessible to its patrons, by offering classes on library use to students and library assistants and, in a practice almost unheard of at that time, opening the stacks to students and the public.^{[citation needed]}

In 1936 he completed the Virginia Historical Index, a source for historians of Virginia.^{[citation needed]} After his retirement from William and Mary in 1944, Swem served as librarian emeritus and continued to edit books and manuscripts on Virginia history. He died aged ninety-four in 1965, a year before the completion of William and Mary's new library, designated the Earl Gregg Swem Library in honor of his contributions to the library collection and to historical research.