In April in Washington, D.C., residents and workers enjoy the coming of spring, cherry blossoms, Poetry Month and National Library Week. This week is a good time to reflect on the value that libraries provide to everyone, and to find a way to show love for our libraries. Here at the Law Library, we are still working every day to provide new or improved access to collections in a digital format and to acquire, organize, and house our collection to serve our users.

If during this week of library celebration, you are looking for notable librarians to study (famous librarians are infrequent), here are a handful to motivate any bibliophile, researcher or colleague. All are librarians who worked to serve their particular communities, but are possibly less well known:

John T. Vance, 13th Law Librarian of Congress, established the Law Library’s reputation as a foreign law research center.

Henrietta Avram, MARC developer at the Library of Congress.

Darcy McNickle (Salish Kootenai), anthropologist, library founder, and Indigenous rights activist.

Alma Smith Jacobs, Montana State Librarian and civil rights activist.

Sanford Berman, head cataloger at Hennepin County Library, Minnesota and activist.

Tsuen-hsuin Tsien, librarian, professor of Chinese studies and library science, rare Chinese book acquisitions librarian and cataloger of rare Chinese books.

Lotsee Patterson (Comanche), librarian, founding member of AILA.

Adelaide R.Hasse, government documents librarian, developer of government documents classification system.

Arna Bontemps, Harlem Renaissance poet and Fisk University librarian.

Frederick Goff, Library of Congress Rare Book Chief and incunabula specialist.

Pura Belpre, first Puerto Rican Librarian in NYC, children’s book author.