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Mary Wright Plummer was born to a Quaker family in Richmond, Indiana in
1856. She graduated from the first class of the first library school, the
Library School of Columbia College, in 1888. She was a cataloguer at the
St. Louis Public Library, then later moved to the Pratt Institute, where
she created the second program in library studies. She spent nine years as
the director of that library, and is credited as being the to create a
separate room entirely for the children's collection. She is also
credited with originating the idea of having special training for
children's librarians. Upon retiring
as director of the Pratt Institute Free Library, she moved to the New York
Public Library and founded another library training program. Over the
course of her career, wrote several children's books, authored articles in
librarianship, published essays in literary magazines, and she held
various positions in the American Library Association. She was to become
the president of the ALA in 1915 when she fell ill. The next year on
September 21, she
died of cancer at the age of sixty.
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