page_title: Nina Browne
section_title: Continued career
hierarchical_section_title: Nina Browne / Career / Continued career
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of William Coolidge Lane, ALA President from 1898-1899.
context_page_description: Nina Eliza Browne was an American librarian and archivist. She was employed as a librarian at Harvard University and Boston Athenæum, a registrar at American Library Association, and an archivist at Smith College. She invented a charging system, known as the Browne Issue System, for libraries by 1895. She was a member, secretary, and publishing board member of the American Library Association, and was a member of the Massachusetts Library Association.
context_section_description: She was co-editor with William Coolidge Lane of the A.L.A Portrait Index, published in 1906. It was an index of portraits that were published in books and periodicals. The prior year, she published A Bibliography of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Browne also created a Catalog of Officers, Graduates, and Nongraduates of Smith College.
  She was an assistant librarian at Harvard University, beginning in 1911, and at the Boston Athenaeum.
  Browne's career as an archivist began in 1921, when she was hired by Smith College as its first archivist of the Smith College Archives. Browne had been active in the Alumna Association, and material from her time as a student (saved by her mother) formed the basis of the early collection. Though she was initially hired with an eye to the college's 50th anniversary in 1925, she remained in her position long after the event. She became partially blind, which set her retirement in motion in 1937. Browne remained a strong advocate for the archive, asserting its importance and the need for a physical space for the collection. Margaret Storrs Grierson stepped into the role of college archivist in 1940.
caption: William Coolidge Lane, her co-editor on the A.L.A. portrait index, and fellow member of the American Library Association
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