Jane Maud Campbell, 1869-1947

Jane Maud Campbell was born on March 13, 1869, in Liverpool, England, the first daughter and one of seven children of George and Jane (Cameron) Campbell. Following the death of her mother several years later, JMC was raised by a nurse and governess. When she was twelve, the family sailed to the United States, where she attended a private school in Richmond, Virginia. Returning to Great Britain the following year, JMC lived with her grandmother in Edinburgh while attending school; she later graduated from the Ladies' College of Edinburgh University and from the Edinburgh School of Cookery and Domestic Economy.

Returning to the United States, JMC worked in Charles Town, West Virginia, as secretary in a family business, before taking a job as an assistant in the reference room at the Free Public Library in Newark, New Jersey. In 1902 she accepted the position of head of public libraries in Passaic, New Jersey, where she became increasingly concerned with the plight of newly arrived immigrants. In addition to furnishing the libraries with foreign language books about American life, JMC was the sole woman on a 1906 commission (and the first woman on any New Jersey commission) appointed "to inquire into and report upon the general condition of the immigrants coming into or residents within this State." This panel was instrumental in persuading the legislature to provide free evening classes for immigrants, among the first such classes in the country.

In 1910 she left New Jersey to join the North American Civic League in New York City, where she worked with immigrants, teaching them about the naturalization process and about their prospects for employment as American citizens. In 1913 she was appointed Educational Director for Work with Aliens of the Massachusetts Library Commission, the first such post in the United States. In this capacity she traveled throughout the state, selecting and delivering foreign language books requested by town libraries, and lecturing on the important role libraries could play in the education and assimilation of immigrants. She was not only an advocate of the "library as social force," but also spoke on public policies relating to immigrants. During World War I she worked at Camp Devens, organizing a hospital library for convalescing soldiers.

In 1922 JMC left Massachusetts to assume the position of head librarian of the Jones Memorial Library in Lynchburg, Virginia. During her tenure there, several branch libraries were established, including the Dunbar branch for black readers, and the collection grew from 6,500 to more than 70,000 volumes. JMC retired in February 1947; she died that April at the age of 78.

From the guide to the Papers, 1860s-1947, 1976-1994, (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)