Caroline Hewins

Caroline Maria Hewins (October 10, 1846 – November 4, 1926) was an American librarian.

American Libraries includes Caroline Hewins as one of the 100 Most Important Leaders we had in the 20th Century for her work as a librarian, where she is noted for her contributions to children's library services. She was a librarian at the Hartford Young Men's Institute, which is now known as the Hartford Public Library in Hartford, Connecticut for more than fifty years. An author as well as librarian, she contributed not only to the expansion of children's library services across the U.S., but also the expansion of her library's membership, as well as its transformation from a subscription library to a free public library.

Early life Caroline Hewins was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts on October 10, 1846. In the autobiographical book, A Mid-Century Child and Her Books, Hewins writes that after a bit of moving around, her family settled in West Roxbury when she was about seven years old. She was the oldest of nine children. Her father was a wealthy Boston merchant who provided a comfortable home for his wife, children, and an extended family of aunts, uncles, and grandmothers. Caroline learned to read by the age of four. Her love for books increased as she read to her younger siblings and as she progressed to reading folk and fairy tales, the English classics, and the stories from Greek, Roman, and European literary traditions. After graduation, she was hired to do Civil War research at the Boston Athenaeum. This is where she received her brief library training, learning sound bibliographic practice while working for one year under William Frederick Poole. She briefly describes that during this time she learned about the inner-workings of the library and how it was managed and funded. In 1911, Hewins was awarded an honorary master of arts degree from Hartford's Trinity College in recognition of her 51 years of service at the library. She was the first woman so honored by the college.

Career Caroline Hewins left the Boston Athenaeum to take a job as librarian at the Young Men's Institute of Hartford where she was employed from 1875 until her death in 1926. Her commitment to the success of the branch and her appreciation of the work going on there was so strong that she moved in and resided there for twelve years.

Contributions to the field of library science

Contributions to children's library services Caroline Hewins is most often credited for her contributions to children's library services. Hewins's programs for children, along with her scholarly articles and lists of recommended children's books, influenced generations of children's librarians as well as publishers of children's books and bookstores. Despite this, one of her most significant accomplishments was her success in adding a children's room in 1904 before the end of her career at the Hartford Public Library. The idea of having a children's room at a library was very influential. Soon after, other libraries followed her example and began the addition of children's rooms. The Institute Library had not welcomed children, but Hewins quickly changed that, and gathered together books by Grimm, Andersen, Hawthorne, Thackeray and Dickens to furnish a corner for them. Three years after arriving at the Young Men's Institute of Hartford, she began to include reading lists for children in the libraries news bulletin. Opinionated, iconoclastic and not a follower of rules established by others, she believed that children deserved better books than the formulaic and often violent Horatio Alger stories and weekly novels of the penny press. The Children's Room she established had furniture suitable for different ages of children, pictures of flowers, much light and a resident dog the children helped name. She used the power of the local press and professional library periodicals to encourage parents to bring their children to libraries, to read with them, and to choose quality books that would inspire the young imagination.

Linking libraries and schools Hewins was far ahead of her time in regards to building connections between the library and local schools. She partnered with local schools, often serving them tea at her house, so that children would have better access to library resources. Hewins also founded an Education Club for parents and teachers, which would later come to be known as the Parent-Teacher Association. During the time when a paid subscription to the library was $3 per year to borrow one book at a time, Hewins worked with local Hartford schools to provide subscription cards for the children, at pennies per card. Six years later her article in the January 1888 Atlantic Monthly on the history of children's books elevated the subject to the status of children's literature, worthy of scholarly attention. She is also remembered through the Hewins scholarship, available to assist women who want to become children's librarians to attain their educational goals. In late 1925, shortly before her death, she started the scholarship and it continues today.

Posthumous honors to Hewins include induction into the American Library Association's Library Hall of Fame (1951) and the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame (1995).

American Libraries includes Caroline Hewins as one of the 100 Most Important Leaders we had in the 20th Century.

Collection In addition to her work inside the library, Hewins was an avid personal collector of books and she searched for works that would re-create her childhood library, eventually greatly exceeding it. Her collection of more than 4,000 volumes is now preserved as the Hewins Collection at the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History and the Hartford Public Library.

During her travels, Hewins acquired costumed dolls from every country she visited. At the library she would hold a New Year's Day reception with her collection, hosting little girls and their Christmas dolls. Today, the Hartford History Center at Hartford Public Library is home to her collection of more than 100 dolls, as well as originals of some of the letters she wrote to Hartford children from Europe, correspondence and newspaper clippings, and a vast collection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century European and American children's books.

Works

Books Books for the Young: A Guide for Parents and Children. 1882. Books for Boys and Girls: A Selected List. Chicago, IL: American Library Association Publishing Board, 1915. A Traveler’s Letters to Boys and Girls. New York, NY: Macmillan, 1923.

Memoir A Mid-Century Child and Her Books. New York, NY: Macmillan Company, 1926.

Articles The History of Children's Books. The Atlantic Monthly (V.61, January 1888) pages 112-126 Boys' and Girls' Reading. Library Journal (1882) page 182 How Library Work with Children has Grown in Hartford and Connecticut. (H. W. Wilson company, 1914) p. 47-63