John Boynton Kaiser Papers

John Boynton Kaiser (1887-1973) was the Director of the Newark Public Library from 1943 to 1958.

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1887, Kaiser was educated at Western Reserve University (B.A., 1908) and New York State Library School in Albany, N.Y. (B.L.S., 1910 and M.L.S., 1917). He began his career at the New York State Law Library and became the assistant state librarian in charge of legislative services at the Texas State Library in 1910-11. From 1911 until 1914 he was departmental librarian in economics and sociology at the University of Illinois.

In 1914 the Tacoma Public Library recruited him as librarian and he remained in that position until 1924, although during World War I he served as the camp librarian at Camp Knox in Kentucky and Camp Upton in New York (1918-1919). He left the public library field to accept a position as the director of libraries at Iowa State University, where he also directed the Library School. In 1927 he returned to the public library field as the director of the Oakland Public Library. In this position, he was also responsible for the Oakland Public Museum, the Snow Museum, and the Oakland Art Gallery.

In 1942 the Trustees of the Newark Public Library selected Kaiser as its fourth librarian to modernize management policies and procedures, especially in terms of personnel issues. He was instrumental in securing approval for the implementation of two reports, “Personnel Classification and Pay Plan” and “Work Simplification Survey.” He was known for his formal, impersonal, studious, and objective approach to administrative problems. His assistant director, James E. “Ned” Bryan, managed many of the day-to-day issues relating to the library (see his papers for further information about the library during these years).

Kaiser was active in a number of regional and national professional organizations: Pacific Northwest Library Association, New Jersey Library Association, American Library Association, Trustees’ Advisory Committee to the School of Library Service at Columbia University, among others. Following his retirement from the Newark Public Library in 1958, he served as the executive secretary of the American Documentary Institute from 1960 to 1963