Jewett, Charles Coffin (1816-1868)

US librarian and bibliographer. He was the first librarian of the Smithsonian Institution where much of his work was devoted to developing methods of cataloguing the holdings of various libraries, with an ultimate goal (never realized) of producing a national union catalogue of all the libraries in the country. He left in 1854 and was librarian and then superintendent of the Boston Public Library 1855-68. Perhaps his most familiar and lasting innovation was the use of separate slips rather than a bound ledger to keep track of individual library loans.

Born in Lebanon, Maine, he graduated from Brown University in 1835 and became the school's first academic librarian. In 1843 he published a Catalogue of the Library of Brown University and this led to his appointment at the Smithsonian. His hopes to make the Smithsonian primarily into a reference library brought him into conflict with the Secretary, Joseph Henry.