Poole, William Frederick

William Frederick (1821-1894), an American librarian. He was born at Salem, Massachusetts, December 24, 1821. He died at Evansville, Illinois, March 1, 1894. He is known chiefly as the author of Poole's Index to Periodical Literature, a work which he appears to have begun in 1848, the year before he was graduated at Yale. He was one of the best known librarians in the United States. He began work as an assistant in the Boston Athenaeum in 1851. In 1852 he was made librarian of the Boston Mercantile Library. He held successively the librarianship of the Boston Athenaeum, the Cincinnati Public Library, the Chicago Public Library, and the New-berry Library at Chicago. In 1877 he was made vice-president of the International Conference of Librarians at London, and in 1885 president of the American Library Association. These positions gave him excellent opportunity for his work. His famous Index contains not only the titles of the articles that appear in the various periodicals, but a short summary of their contents. A student desiring to write an article on iron, for instance, can obtain from the Index a list of all the magazine articles on that subject that have appeared since the beginning of the Index. The Index was for a time alone in the American field, but of late it has had a worthy rival in Wilson's Guide to the Periodicals, published at Minneapolis, Minnesota.