Foster E. Mohrhardt

Foster Edward Mohrhardt (March 7, 1907 – June 7, 1992) was a United States librarian.

Foster E. Mohrhardt was born in Lansing, Michigan, on March 7, 1907, to Albert Mohrhardt and Alice (Bennet) Mohrhardt.

He attended high school in Lansing and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Michigan State College (now Michigan State University).

While at Michigan State College he worked as a student stack assistant and was assistant to the librarian from 1928–1929.

He went on to earn a bachelor of science degree in Library Service in 1930 from Columbia University.

While there, he worked as a general assistant in the New York Public Library.

In 1931 he returned to Michigan and worked in the library at the University of Michigan while he completed a Master of Arts degree in English and Library Service.

During that time he earned a diploma from the University of Munich in 1932, while also taking courses at other universities as a special student (including North Carolina, New York, Purdue, and Indiana Universities).

Following his master's degree, Mohrhardt began his career as assistant librarian and faculty member at Colorado State College of Education in 1933.

By 1934 he would move back to New York to work in the Business Library at Columbia University.

While at the University of Michigan, Mohrhardt met Dr. William Warner who would go on to become his mentor and he would marry Katherine Selina Kivisto in 1936, whom he also met during his time there.

They had two children, a son David and a daughter, Katri.

When William Warner became chairman of the Carnegie Corporation of New York he hired Mohrhardt to assist him with a project that would produce a bibliography published by the American Library Association (ALA) in 1937 called A List of Books for Junior College Libraries.

During this time he traveled throughout the United States meeting various library and education representatives of junior college with the purpose of compiling a list of books beneficial to those institutions.

Through his travels he would gain expertise in library evaluation which he would draw on and publish about throughout his career.

From 1938 until 1946 Mohrhardt would become librarian of Washington and Lee University in Virginia.

During his tenure there he was responsible for completing renovations to the Library building as well as developing special collections.

During World War II, the Library of Congress was interested in protecting some of its more valuable collections and Mohrhardt offered surplus space available at Washington and Lee University for this purpose.

During the war Mohrhardt performed military service in the U.S. Army Air Force, U.S. Navy and was involved in civilian duty.

During this time he moved often, was stationed at Fort Lee for army service in 1942, then went to Indianapolis as a civilian instructor in electronics (during his education Mohrhardt received some training from General Electric) and aircraft turrets; in 1943 and 1944 he was involved in radar work for the Navy.

The OTS was established in 1945 as the Office of Declassification and Technical Services and was re-designated the next year.

The OTS was responsible for processing materials coming from Germany and other countries, as well as U.S. Military documents.

Processing involved indexing and listing of the materials, and sometimes translations; the documents were then appraised for their value to the public and private sector and made widely available, where appropriate.

Due to the volume of materials, it encouraged the development and application of mechanization as well as new automated techniques for information handling

In 1946, he began as assistant and was then promoted to chief of the Library and Report Division of the Office of Technical Services at the Department of Commerce.

In 1947 Mohrhardt would leave OTS to work as a contact consultant at Brookhaven National Laboratory of the Atomic Energy Commission.

During this time he was also a visiting professor at Columbia University, where he taught courses in library management and collection development.

In 1948, Mohrhardt briefly took the position of assistant to the director of the 450 libraries of the Veterans Administration, but he became director soon after.

From 1948 to 1954 his responsibilities included 450 collections located domestically and overseas.

He focused his efforts while there on reorganizing the library to achieve a more centralized administration.

During his time there he developed a central acquisitions and cataloging system that increased the direct services the center provided to the VA libraries around the country.

He established a reputation for skillfully organizing and streamlining the procurement and cataloging systems that endeared him for assignment to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Library.

In 1954 as Ralph R. Shaw was leaving the USDA library, he recommended Mohrhardt as his replacement and with his reputation at the VA, Mohrhardt was confirmed as director September 7, 1954.

In 1957 he would publish an article about the history of the library highlighting the library's growth as it had taken up the task of acquiring all information about agriculture that was obtainable, as it was assigned at its creation.

He recognized that library had essentially served as a national library since its creation saying, "It is a national library because the Department has always worked to bring agricultural information directly to the people."

As he had outlined the work of the library and its responsibilities - both nationally and internationally, he suggested that services of the library were comparable to those of the Library of Congress.

Mohrhardt served as director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Library until his retirement from federal service in 1968.

Mohrhardt would immediately spearhead re-designating the library as National Library.

He had a long and illustrious career in library and information science as a scholar, organizer and diplomat, and was listed by American Libraries among "100 Leaders we had in the 20th Century".

Mohrhardt is also known for his work to have the United States Department of Agriculture Library re-designated as a national library.