An earlier blog post listed the undergraduate and graduate economics courses taught at Bryn Mawr in 1909/10. One of the instructors was Marion Parris and the other was Charles Clarence Williamson, a Columbia economics Ph.D. graduate (1907), who only briefly taught economics but was to go on to a very distinguished career as a librarian, first at the New York Public Library and later as the director of the Columbia University Libraries and dean of the Columbia School of Library Service.
So now we know what happened to the economics Ph.D., Charles Clarence Williamson…economics’ loss was library sciences’ gain.
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From Williamson’s brief stint teaching economics
Charles Clarence Williamson, Ph.D., Associate in Economics and Politics.
A.B., Western Reserve University, 1904; Ph.D., Columbia University, 1907. Assistant in Economics and Graduate Student, Western Reserve University, First Semester, 1904-05; Scholar in Political Economy, University of Wisconsin, 1904-05; Graduate Student, University of Wisconsin, 1905-06; University Fellow in Political Economy, Columbia University, 1906-07; Research Assistant of the Carnegie Institution, 1905-07.
Source: Bryn Mawr College Calendar. Undergraduate and Graduate Courses, 1909. Vol. II, Part 3, (May, 1909), pp. 13.
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Life and career dates
1877. January 26, born in Salem, Ohio.
1904. A.B., Western Reserve University.
1907. Ph.D., Columbia University.
1907. June 22. Married Bertha L. Torrey in Cleveland, Ohio.
1907-1911. Bryn Mawr.
1911. Appointed head of a new Division of Economics and Sociology at the New York Public Library.
1913. August 15. Birth of daughter, Cornell Williamson, in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.
1914. Municipal reference librarian of New York City.
1918. Selective service registration lists employer as Carnegie Corporation, occupation “statistician”.
1921. Having returned to the New York Public Library, left to join staff of Rockefeller Foundation.
1921. Report written for the Carnegie Foundation, published 1923 as Training for Library Service.
1926-43. Director of the Columbia University Libraries and dean of the Columbia School of Library Service.
1939. September 16. Death of wife, Bertha.
1940. August 28, married to Genevieve Austen Hodge.
“Upon retirement he remained active in educational circles as a member of the Greenwich Association for the Public Schools and as consultant to the Connecticut Commission for Educational Television.”
1965. January 11, died in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Source: Columbia University Archives. Guide to the Charles Clarence Williamson Papers. Also data found at ancestry.com.
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Biographical material
[not consulted]
Williamson’s life and library career: The Greatest of Greatness: The Life and Work of Charles C. Williamson (1877-1965) by Paul A. Winckler (Scarecrow Press, 1992). Winckler also wrote the entry for Williamson in the Dictionary of American Library Biography (Libraries Unlimited, 1978)
People: Charles Williamson. Wilson Library Bulletin, Vol. 39 (February 1965), p. 439.
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Publications
Williamson, Charles Clarence. The Finances of Cleveland. Faculty of Political Science of Columbia University. Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law Vol. XXV, No. 3 (1907).
________________________. A Readers’ Guide to the Addresses and Proceedings of the Annual Conferences on State and Local Taxation. National Tax Association, 1913.
________________________. A List of Selected References on the Minimum Wage, in State of New York, Third Report of the Factory Investigating Commission, 1914. PP. 387-413.
________________________. Training for Library Service. Report prepared for the Carnegie Corporation of New York. New York: 1923.
Image Source: Portrait of Charles Clarence Williamson. University of Wisconsin-Madison, Information School Collection. Portraits of Librarians, United States.