“Butler, Pierce (1884-1953)," In American National Biography, vol

“Butler, Pierce (1884-1953)," In American National Biography, vol. 4, pp. 98-99. Edited by John A. Garraty. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Butler, Lee Pierce (19 Dec. 1884-29 Mar. 1953), professor and rare book curator, was born in Clarendon Hills, Illinois, the son of John Pierce Butler (a.k.a. Wallace due his desire to serve twice in the Civil War), a real estate agent, farm manager, and railroad employee, and Evaline ("Eva") Content Whipple, an occasional U.S. postal mistress. Butler spent his early childhood on "Blythewood," a 460-acre farm outside Pittsfield, Massachusetts, that was designed by F. L. Olmsted & Company and owned by Wirt D. Walker, a Chicago attorney. Infantile paralysis left Butler with scoliosis and a slight lameness, which was still apparent in his adult life; his early childhood was also marked by a serious case of scarlet fever and catarrh that left him almost completely deaf. He nevertheless earned a Ph.B. in 1906 and an M.A. in Latin in 1910 from Dickinson College. Butler taught science and mathematics briefly at Locust Dale Academy in Virginia during the fall of 1906. He started at Union Theological Seminary but then transferred to divinity school at Hartford Theological Seminary to study early medieval church history, and he received a B.D. in 1910 and a Ph.D. in 1912. After difficult pastorates as a deacon in the Episcopal church in Indianapolis, Indiana, as well as DeSoto and Ironton, Missouri, he moved back to his parents' home in Clarendon Hills in late 1912.

In Chicago he worked first as a day laborer, then in his father's railroad freight office, and occasionally as a supply deacon for the Episcopal church, before a chance meeting with Dr. W. N. C. Carlton, the librarian at the Newberry Library. Carlton offered Butler a post at the Newberry in 1916, which he accepted with alacrity. Butler rose rapidly and in late 1919 became the custodian of the John M. Wing Foundation on the History of Printing. Fluent in seven languages, Butler traveled abroad, where he collected extensively and became exceedingly well known to the English and Continental booksellers. Although his hearing never improved, newly designed hearing aids allowed him to communicate with others. During his tenure, the Wing Foundation bought 1,850 incunabula (books printed before 1501) that represented eleven countries, 95 cities, and 516 printers. He is also partially credited with assuring that the massive Vollbehr Collection of incunables went to the U.S. Congressional Library: his testimony helped convince congressmen to appropriate the requisite funds for its purchase. Butler's achievements at the Newberry enabled scholars to adopt a geographical perspective in studying the nature of civilization and the spread of culture because he had provided geographical access to the newly acquired materials. They could also now find textually significant works at the Newberry rather than having to depend on the British Museum or the Bibliothèque Nationale. Even foreign scholars began to visit the Newberry Library. In 1926 he married Ruth Lapham, curator of the Edward A. Ayer Collection of Americana at the Newberry; they had no children.

In 1931 Butler joined the University of Chicago faculty in the graduate library school as a professor of bibliographical history. His years of academic and theological work had prepared him to recognize and sympathize with the new scientific approach to librarianship, such as the use of new social science techniques. The fullest articulation of his advocacy of social scientific ideas, notably quantification and its concomitant precision, can be found in his now classic Introduction to Library Science (1933). Recanting this position late in his life, Butler found himself in an ideological conflict, with the social scientist Douglas Waples, that became legendary in the 1940s. In simplistic terms, their conflict was the start of the qualitative versus quantitative debate in librarianship. Ultimately, Butler referred to many of the developments within librarianship as scientistic and began to argue for something more--a deeper, more spiritual librarianship ("Librarianship as a Profession" and "The Cultural Function of the Library," Library Quarterly 21 [Oct. 1951] and 22 [Apr. 1952], respectively). His lasting impact can be seen in the work of his graduate students, such as Rudolph Hirsch, Arna Bontemps, Jesse H. Shera, Lester Asheim, and Haynes McMullen.

Butler liked to travel and read, and he was especially fond of detective stories. His memberships included the Masons (3d degree), the Cliff-Dweller's, the American Library Association, the American Institute for the Graphic Arts, the Caxton Club, Society for Typographic Arts, and the Chicago Literary Club. While a visiting professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Butler died as a result of an automobile accident outside Burlington, North Carolina.

An authority on the history of books and printing, Butler challenged the older humanistic world view in librarianship while defending the new scientific outlook being developed at Chicago. The intellectual crisis and conflict made his classroom and office an exciting place to be. He is viewed as one of the finest minds in library science.

Bibliography

Few of Butler's papers are extant at the Newberry Library and in the Department of Special Collections at the University of Chicago's Regenstein Library. The standard work assessment of his life and contributions is John V. Richardson, Jr., The Gospel of Scholarship: Pierce Butler and a Critique of American Librarianship (1922), which reprints Butler's Introduction to Library Science and two of his sermons. See also Richardson's The Spirit of Inquiry: The Graduate Library School at Chicago, 1921-1951 (1982) and Charles I. Terbille, "Competing Models of Library Science: Waples-Berelson and Butler," Libraries & Culture 27 (Summer 1992): 296-319. An obituary is in the New York Times, 29 Mar. 1953.