Background
Mary was born on February 27, 1865 in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. She was the daughter of Dr. John Franklin Isom and Frances A. (Walter) Isom.
Mary was born on February 27, 1865 in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. She was the daughter of Dr. John Franklin Isom and Frances A. (Walter) Isom.
Mary Frances attended Wellesley College (1883 - 84), but on account of failing health was unable to continue her college course. She, later, entered the Pratt Institute of Library Science.
In 1899, after the death of her father, Mary determined upon library work as a career. Finishing the Pratt Institute of Library Science in 1901, she went directly to Portland, Oregon, as cataloguer of the John Wilson Collection in the Library Association of Portland, a small subscription library with 1, 000 members. She was made librarian in January 1902, at which time the library became a free public institution. A law was passed in 1903 which extended its privileges to the rural communities of Multnomah County.
Her ideas (''The public library is the people's library'') were faithfully fulfilled under her administration. She was vice-president and member of the council of the American Library Association, 1912-13.
At the time of the World War she was appointed director of war work in Oregon for the American Library Association, which entailed among other things supplying the spruce camps with books. She volunteered to the American Library Association for library service over seas, and for six months was engaged in organizing libraries in the American hospitals in France. She took part in many activities making for the development and betterment of the community, and was a member of a number of important civic organizations.
She died in 1920.
Mary Frances Isom's career is characterized by the great improvements she accomplished in library service. She helped to secure the enactment, in 1905, of the law creating the Oregon Library Commission, which was designed to coordinate library activities throughout the state, and was a member of the commission from its creation till the time of her death. Besides, she founded the State Library Association, was one of the organizers of the Pacific Northwest Library Association and its president. A tablet of her is installed in the stairway at Central Library, and the organization's administration building is named for her.
Miss Isom's conception of the function of a public library is expressed in her words at the opening of the new Central library building, September 6, 1913: "The public library is the people's library. .. . It is but a sorry library that in addition to its volumes of classics, its treasured shelves of wit and wisdom of past ages, does not offer also the best of modern thought, does not take pride in its collections on engineering, on agriculture, on housekeeping, on mechanics, on all the trades carried on in the community. "
Mary was a woman of keen intellect, of forceful character, and especially qualified for leadership.
