List of people known for contributions to the library profession
A-E
Laura Bush, First Lady of the United States and librarian, reads a book to children in a school library in Texas.
- Ada Adler
- Mary Eileen Ahern
- Camila Alire
- Edna Allyn – first librarian of the Hawaii State Library
- Lester Asheim
- Ashurbanipal II
- Sarah B. Askew – pioneered the establishment of county libraries in the United States
- Basil Atkinson
- Derek Austin
- Winifred Austin – pioneer of UK Library for the blind
- Henriette Avram – MARC standards developer
- Antoine Alexandre Barbier
- John Davis Barnett – Canada
- John J. Beckley – first Librarian of Congress; politician
- Pura Belpré – librarian and author
- Sanford Berman
- Bob Berring – law librarian
- John Carlo Bertot – library educator, researcher, editor of The Library Quarterly
- Anastasius Bibliothecarius
- James H. Billington – 13th librarian of Congress; historian
- Robert H. Blackburn – former chief librarian of the University of Toronto
- Thomas Bodley – founder of the Bodleian Library; English diplomat; 1545–1613
- Arna Bontemps – author, bibliographer, and Fisk University librarian
- Daniel J. Boorstin – 12th Librarian of Congress; historian
- Marjorie Adele Blackistone Bradfield – as the Detroit Public Library's first African-American librarian, expanded its African-American literature collection[1]
- Aase Bredsdorff (1919–2017) – Danish library inspector specialising in children's literature
- Wallace Breem – novelist and law librarian
- Suzanne Briet
- Edward Dundas Butler – translator and senior librarian at the Department of Printed Books, British Museum
- Lee Pierce Butler
- Andrew Carnegie – Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist who financed thousands of libraries around the world
- Leon Carnovsky
- Daniel J. Caron
- Amalia Kahana-Carmon
- Mayme Agnew Clayton
- Cecilia Cleve (d. 1819) – Swedish pioneer librarian
- Morris L. Cohen – attorney, law librarian and professor of law at the University at Buffalo, University of Pennsylvania, Harvard Law School and Yale Law School
- Marjorie Cotton – first professionally qualified children's librarian in New South Wales, Australia
- Andrea Crestadoro
- Charles Ammi Cutter
- Laura Dallapiccola – Italian librarian and translator
- John Cotton Dana (1856–1931)
- Robert Darnton
- Lorcan Dempsey
- Beryl May Dent – mathematical physicist, technical librarian at Metropolitan-Vickers, honorary secretary of ASLIB branch
- Melvil Dewey
- William S. Dix
- Leaonead Pack Drain-Bailey (1906-1983), Head of Library at West Virginia State University
- Mollie E. Dunlap
- Karl Franz Otto Dziatzko
- Linda Eastman
- Margaret A. Edwards
- El Sayed Mahmoud El Sheniti – seminal figure in professional librarianship in Egypt
- Theresa Elmendorf
- Miriam Eshkol
- Luther H. Evans – 10th Librarian of Congress
- Woody Evans
- Oliver Everett
- Chinwe Nwogo Ezeani – first female University Librarian at University of Nigeria, Nsukka
F-M
- Johann Albert Fabricius – bibliographer
- Mary Cutler Fairchild – pioneer library educator
- Adele M. Fasick – historical fiction writer, library science scholar, professor
- David Ferriero – former M.I.T librarian and current Archivist of the United States
- Anette Fischer (1946–1992) – librarian and human rights activist
- Herman H. Fussler
- Elizabeth Futas – director of the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Library and Information Studies
- Mary Virginia Gaver
- Helen Thornton Geer – ALA Headquarters librarian, author, consultant, and professor
- Johann Matthias Gesner – bibliographer
- Kenneth MacLean Glazier Sr. – Canadian librarian
- Eliza Atkins Gleason – first African American to receive doctorate of Library Science
- Frederick R. Goff – incunabula scholar
- Michael Gorman
- Jan Gruter – scholar
- Camilla Gryski
- Helen E. Haines
- Spencer Hall – librarian of the Athenaeum Club, London
- Adelaide Hasse
- Peter Havard-Williams – librarian educator
- Carla Hayden – public librarian, former ALA President, 14th Librarian of Congress
- Frances E. Henne
- Wolfgang Herrmann – librarian; member of Nazi Purification Committee
- Caroline Hewins
- John Howard Hickcox Sr.
- Ted Hines
- Cecil Hobbs – American scholar of Southeast Asian history, head of the Southern Asia Section of the Orientalia (now Asian) Division of the Library of Congress, a major contributor to scholarship on Asia and the development of South East Asian coverage in American library collections[2]
- Judith Hoffberg – art librarian
- Zoia Horn – American librarian jailed for refusing to divulge information that violated her belief in intellectual freedom
- Jean Blackwell Hutson – chief of Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
- Thomas James
- Anne Jarvis
- Thomas Jefferson – sold his library to the Library of Congress[3]
- Charles Coffin Jewett
- Carleton B. Joeckel
- Virginia Lacy Jones – major figure in the integration of public and academic libraries
- E.J. Josey
- Gene Joseph – founding librarian of the Xwi7xwa Library at the University of British Columbia and the first librarian of First Nations descent in British Columbia, Canada
- Muhammad Siddiq Khan
- Mohammad Khatami – former President of Iran; previously Head of National Library of Iran
- Frederick Kilgour
- Anastasiya Kobzarenko
- Judith Krug – forty-year leader of the American Library Association's Office of Intellectual Freedom
- Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya – wife of Lenin
- Philip Larkin
- Louise Payson Latimer
- Margaret Leiteritz – painter who based her work of scientific items which she knew as a librarian
- Anne Grodzins Lipow – founder of Library Solutions Institute and Press
- Audre Lorde – 20th-century US poet and activist
- Eleanor Young Love – African-American librarian from Kentucky
- Seymour Lubetzky
- Roderick Samson Mabomba – Malawian librarian
- Archibald MacLeish – 9th Librarian of Congress; Pulitzer Prize poet
- Alison Macrina - founder of the Librarian Freedom Project
- Patrick Magruder – 2nd Librarian of Congress; politician
- Margaret Mann – library educator, particularly cataloging; founding faculty member at University of Michigan library science program (1926)
- Allie Beth Martin
- Harry S. Martin – former Head Librarian, Harvard Law Library
- Kathleen de la Peña McCook – library scholar, public librarian, free speech advocate, and author
- John Silva Meehan – 4th Librarian of Congress
- Florence Milnes – first BBC librarian
- August Molinier – French historian
- Eric Moon – editor of Library Journal
- Anne Carroll Moore – pioneering children's librarian
- Everett T. Moore – freedom of information
- Elizabeth Homer Morton – important contributions to development of Canadian libraries[4]
- Isadore Gilbert Mudge – edited Guide to Resource Works
- L. Quincy Mumford – 11th Librarian of Congress
- Ludovico Antonio Muratori – Italian librarian, archivist and historian
N-Z
- Gerhard Brandt Naeseth – Norwegian-American Genealogical Center and Naeseth Library in Madison, Wisconsin
- Makoto Nagao – 19th Director of National Diet Library of Japan; computer scientist specializing in digital library
- Bonnie Nardi – information scientist
- Gabriel Naudé
- Howard Nixon
- Margaret Cross Norton
- Ekei Essien Oku – first Nigerian women chief librarian
- Paul Otlet
- John Henry Pyle Pafford
- Antonio Panizzi – chief librarian of the British Museum library
- Ingrid Parent – librarian at the University of British Columbia
- Charles V. Park – librarian at Central Michigan University
- Lotsee Patterson – librarian, educator, and founder of the American Indian Library Association
- Nancy Pearl – librarian and author
- Mary Wright Plummer
- Effie Louise Power
- Herbert Putnam – 8th Librarian of Congress
- S.R. Ranganathan – librarian and mathematician from India, known for his five laws of library science and the development of the colon classification
- Fremont Rider
- Jane, Lady Roberts
- Charlemae Hill Rollins
- Loriene Roy – first Native American president of the American Library Association
- Frances Clarke Sayers
- Louis A. Schultheiss
- Patricia G. Schuman
- Marvin H. Scilken
- Margaret Scoggin – young adult librarian
- Marianne Scott
- Ralph R. Shaw
- Spencer Shaw (1916–2010) – American children's librarian and educator
- Jesse Shera
- Louis Shores
- Regina Smith – librarian at Jenkins Law Library, a membership library in Philadelphia
- Frances Lander Spain (1903-1999) – American Library Association President 1960-61
- Ainsworth Rand Spofford – 6th Librarian of Congress
- John G. Stephenson – 5th Librarian of Congress
- Mari Strachan – 21st-century Welsh novelist in English
- Suetonius – Roman historian and archivist
- Peggy Sullivan
- Don R. Swanson
- Friedrich Sylburg – 16th-century German scholar
- John Szabo – City Librarian of the Los Angeles Public Library and National Medal for Museum and Library Service recipient
- Henry Richard Tedder – librarian of the Athenaeum Club, London
- Florence Davy Thompson – founding librarian at the University of Manitoba
- Louis Timothee – first American librarian
- Arnulfo Trejo – U.S. Hispanic-American librarian
- Gottfried van Swieten – Austrian Imperial librarian 1777-1803; introduced first card catalog
- Eva Verona
- Brian Campbell Vickery
- Douglas Waples
- George Watterston – 3rd Librarian of Congress
- Jessamyn West
- Edwina Whitney – librarian at the University of Connecticut
- John Wilkin – digital library management researcher
- Ian E. Wilson
- Louis Round Wilson
- Patrick Wilson
- Marianne Winder – librarian at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine
- Justin Winsor – Harvard University librarian
- Mary Elizabeth Wood – promoted Western librarianship practices and programs in China
- Lawrence C. Wroth – librarian at the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University
- Ella Gaines Yates
- Victor Yngve
- John Russell Young – 7th Librarian of Congress; journalist
- Zenodotus – first superintendent of Library of Alexandria; scholar of the 3rd century BC
- Shen Zurong – father of library science in China
