12/04/1838 American librarian John Shaw Billings is born
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John Shaw Billings: The Early Years & the National Medical Library (NLM, 1983)
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National Library of Medicine (USPHS, 1963)
Billings was the first director of the New York Public Library and modernizer of the Library of the Surgeon General's Office. In his early years, he was a surgeon and a statistician on medicine in the U.S. Army. He was profoundly interested in advancing knowledge by creating libraries and improving access to books.