Charles Martel

Charles Martel (born Karl David Hanke, March 5, 1860, in Zurich, Switzerland – May 15, 1945) was an American librarian responsible for the creation of the Library of Congress Classification; he is often considered to be one of the most influential librarians in American library history. Early life During Martel's childhood he was surrounded by books, as his father, Franz Hanke, was an antiquarian book dealer in Zurich. By 1872, Martel was studying at the Zurich Gymnasium, where he would continue his studies until 1876. Around the time he ended his studies at the gymnasium, his brother took him on a trip to America to attend the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. That same year the American Library Association held its first annual conference, also in Philadelphia, and it has been speculated that Martel may have had his first encounter with the American library system through this conference. After returning to Switzerland, Martel helped take care of his ailing father, who died in 1878. Following his father's death that same year, Karl moved to the USA and that was the last anyone in his family heard of him. By 1887, he had moved to Dent County, Missouri, where, in April, he became a US citizen under the name of Charles Martel. Following his citizenship, the newly minted Charles Martel moved to Council Bluffs, Iowa, where he worked as an estate manager as well as an assistant to a lawyer. Pre-Library of Congress It was in Council Bluffs that Martel would finally find his career. While in Council Bluffs, Martel heard of the Newberry Library in Chicago and by 1892 had gained employment there as an assistant cataloguer under the esteemed librarians Dr. William F. Poole and James C.M. Hanson (1864–1943), whom he would learn from and team up with at the Library of Congress. While at Newberry, Martel was first introduced to Charles Ammi Cutter's Cutter Expansive Classification system (EC) for cataloguing and classifying library resources. In 1893 James Hanson had left but the friendship developed in that single year of working together would be a boon for both of them in the years to come.