Billings, John Shaw (1838–1913)

US surgeon and librarian. Billings worked in the US surgeon general's department for 30 years, and while there he set about a huge expansion programme for the library. In 1873 he was appointed medical adviser for Johns Hopkins Hospital (Baltimore), which he had helped to found. Because of the work he had done with the surgeon general's library, he was invited to New York City to help consolidate the privately established Astor, Lenox and Tilden libraries that form the nucleus of the New York Public Library, and he spent his final years at this task.