Henry E. Bliss
| Henry Elvyn Bliss | |
|---|---|
| Born | January 29, 1870 New York City, U.S |
| Died |
August 9, 1955 (aged 85) Bucharest, Romania |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Librarian, Author, Poet |
Henry Evelyn Bliss (January 29, 1870 – August 9, 1955) was the author of a classification system he called Bibliographic Classification which is often abbreviated to BC and is sometimes called Bliss Classification. He was named one of the 100 most important leaders in the field of library and Information science in the 20th century by American Libraries in December 1999, which praised his “subject approach to information” as “one of the most flexible ever conceived.” Despite these praises, Bliss was “met with apathy and even derision in his efforts” during his lifetime. His classification system was generally disregarded in favor of other more established classification systems such as the Dewey Decimal System created by Melvil Dewey and the Library of Congress Classification system, causing “more than one author” to label him as a, “prophet without honor.” Although Bliss was an American, his system was more popular in British libraries than in American libraries. A second edition of the system has been developed in the United Kingdom in 1977. Several volumes have been published.
Henry Bliss was born in New York City. The son of Henry H. Bliss and Evalina Matilda Davis. He became the deputy librarian of City College of the City University of New York, now known as the City College of New York, in 1891, where he worked until he retired in 1940. Interestingly, Bliss never obtained a degree of higher education yet he was extremely erudite and well learned. He was also a poet and published a collection of poems entitled Better Late Than Never (1937.) He was married in 1901 and had four children with his wife, Ellen deKoster, before she died in 1943. Bliss’ relationship with the American Library Association was strained at best. He resigned from the institution in 1933 saying that he had received “so dubious a welcome there” and was “treated like an outsider.” He rejoined however in 1937. Bliss was generally rather blunt and biting in his criticism of the work of other librarians, and after his wife’s death, and near the end of his life, Bliss became something of a recluse. Despite this, at Bliss’s death in 1955 “a generous and moving obituary tribute” was written for him by none other than S.R. Ranganathan. despite the fact that Bliss had criticized Ranganathan by saying that he took him, “Less seriously then some others do, including himself.”
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