Anne M. Boyd

Anne M. Boyd was born January 13, 1884, in Arcola, Illinois. She left college after one year due to financial constraints and began teaching in a small Central Illinois school. Realizing the power of books in children's lives, she began to devote Saturdays and vacations to volunteer work in public libraries. Encouraged by the librarians, she returned to college and earned an AB in English history from Millikin University in 1906. She worked in public and academic libraries in Kansas; St. Louis, Missouri; Decatur, Illinois; and Whitewater, Wisconsin, before finding her professional home at the University of Illinois in 1918.

A lasting contribution to library science sprang from an assignment in Kansas where she had to sort, classify and catalog a basement full of government publications. Miss Boyd fell in love with these materials and developed a course, teaching manual and reference textbook in this area. United States Government Publications as Sources of Information for Librarieswas the first book of its kind and a standard in the field for years.

Miss Boyd's first love remained book selection and her course was celebrated both for its broad user-oriented content and its stimulating introduction to the whole world of books.

In 1949 Miss Boyd was promoted to a professorship in library science, marking the first time in the history of the Library School that the highest academic honor was granted to a full-time teaching member of the faculty. She retired in 1950.

In honor of Miss Boyd's outstanding teaching, Alpha Chapter established an annual Anne M. Boyd Award for a master's student showing outstanding promise as a librarian. The first award was presented in 1961. The honor is currently accompanied by a check for $100.