Background
She was born on May 25, 1865 at Elgin, Illinois, United States, the daughter of John William and Phebe (Thompson) Sharp.
She was born on May 25, 1865 at Elgin, Illinois, United States, the daughter of John William and Phebe (Thompson) Sharp.
After preparing for college at Elgin Academy and the Oakland, California, High School, she entered Northwestern University, Evanston, and graduated in 1885. Four years later she was awarded the master's degree. She took a course at the New York State Library School, graduated in 1892.
She taught school at Elgin for a couple of years, but without remarkable success, the unavoidable problems of discipline being distasteful to her.
In 1888, accordingly, she accepted the proffered librarianship of the public library at Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, and soon found that she had discovered a congenial life work. Better to equip herself for it she resigned her position after two years. In Chicago she was placed in charge of the exhibit of the American Library Association.
Her conspicuously excellent work, brought thus prominently to the attention of Chicago educators, resulted in her appointment as director of the newly established department of library science, opened in the fall of 1893 at Armour Institute of Technology. When, four years later, the library school was transferred to the University of Illinois, she continued as director and became also librarian of the University.
In 1894-96 she was grand president of her college sorority, Kappa Kappa Gamma. She was director of the summer school of library science at the University of Wisconsin in 1895 and 1896, and lecturer on library economy at the University of Chicago in 1896. From 1895 to 1905 she was a member of the council of the American Library Association and in 1898 and 1907 was vice-president; she was elected a fellow of the American Library Institute in 1906 and was president of the Illinois Library Association in 1903-04.
She wrote frequently for library periodicals. In the years before the establishment of a state library extension commission in Illinois, she gave much time and thought to library extension matters.
In 1907, because of impaired health, she left the professional library field and became second vice-president and an executive in the Lake Placid Club in the Adirondacks, then rapidly developing under the presidency and leadership of Melvil Dewey.
She had been actively and happily engaged in this enterprise for seven years when she died as the result of an automobile accident.
Katharine Lucinda Sharp founded the innovative University of Illinois Library School and her signally successful management of it for fourteen years brought her into the front rank of American librarians and gave her a deserved place of influence and leadership. She was the author of 800-page monograph, Illinois Libraries, that remains the foundation work on that subject. In 1922 a portrait tablet, executed in bronze in low relief by Lorado Taft, was presented to the University of Illinois by her former students. In 1999, she was named in the American Library Association's 100 leaders of the 20th century.
She had pronounced qualities of leadership, a well-balanced though perhaps not brilliant intellect, and an animated personality that compelled attention and recognition. She had rare administrative ability, an exceptional faculty for making wise decisions, and a happy combination of tact and forcefulness.
