Charles Ammi Cutter | |
|---|---|
 | |
| President of the American Library Association | |
| In office 1887–1889 | |
| Preceded by | William Frederick Poole |
| Succeeded by | Frederick Morgan Crunden |
| Personal details | |
| Born | March 14, 1837 Boston, Massachusetts, US |
| Died | September 6, 1903 (aged 66) Walpole, New Hampshire, US |
| Alma mater | Harvard Divinity School |
| Occupation | Librarian |
| Known for | Developer of the Cutter Expansive Classification |
Charles Ammi Cutter (March 14, 1837 – September 6, 1903) was an American librarian. In the 1850s and 1860s he assisted with the re-cataloging of the Harvard College library, producing America's first public card catalog. The card system proved more flexible for librarians and far more useful to patrons than the old method of entering titles in chronological order in large books. In 1868 he joined the Boston Athenaeum, making its card catalog an international model. Cutter promoted centralized cataloging of books, which became the standard practice at the Library of Congress. He was elected to leadership positions in numerous library organizations at the local and national level. Cutter is remembered for the Cutter Expansive Classification, his system of giving standardized classification numbers to each book, and arranging them on shelves by that number so that books on similar topics would be shelved together.