17 Facts About Fremont Rider

Arthur Fremont Rider was an American writer, poet, editor, inventor, genealogist, and librarian.

Fremont Rider studied under Melvil Dewey, of whom he wrote a biography for the American Library Association.

Arthur Fremont Rider was born in Trenton, New Jersey on May 25,1885.

Fremont Rider's parents were George Arthur Rider and Charlotte Elizabeth Meader Rider.

In 1905 Fremont Rider received his degree, Bachelor of Philosophy, from Syracuse University.

Fremont Rider received a Masters with Phi Beta Kappa from Wesleyan in 1934, a year after the latter university's taking him on as a librarian in 1933.

Fremont Rider attended New York State Library School in 1907, but left before graduating to help his mentor, Melvil Dewey, on a revision of the latter's Decimal Classification system.

On October 8,1908 Fremont Rider married Grace Godfrey, who was Dewey's niece.

Grace Godfrey died in 1950 and one year later Fremont Rider married Marie Gallup Ambrose who was the daughter of Asa Oran Gallup, the Club's manager at the time Fremont Rider was there with Melvil Dewey.

In 1907 Fremont Rider moved to New York City and after some trial was given a job as associate editor of The Delineator.

From 1909 to 1921 Fremont Rider worked as an editor or publisher for ten different periodicals including: American Library Annual, Information, the New Idea Women's Magazine, the Monthly Book Review, International Military Digest, and The Business Digest.

In 1918 Fremont Rider became vice president of the Arrow Publishing Company.

Fremont Rider wrote on numerous topics throughout his life, and voiced his opinion and suggested solutions for the problems he saw in many of them.

In 1933 Fremont Rider returned to Middletown to take a permanent librarianship position at Wesleyan.

Subsequently, after becoming director of Wesleyan's Olin Memorial Library, Fremont Rider wrote his most significant work on the subject of Library Science, The Scholar and The Future of the Research Library.

Fremont Rider envisioned that these microcards would serve both as the catalogue and collection, thus not only saving shelving space by eliminating books, but doing away with the need to have a catalogue collection separate from manuscript collection.

Fremont Rider was noted for his controversial method of book shelving which involved shaving the books to make them fit in tighter spaces.