• Journal of Korean Library and Information Science Society
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• v.55 no.3
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• pp.213-239
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• 2024

This study comprehensively reconstructs the life of Baek Rin (1923-2015), who dedicated 43 years of his life as a university librarian, and provides an overview of his influence on the development of library science and his academic achievements. After passing the librarian recruitment exam at Seoul National University in 1948, he excelled as a librarian, handling various Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and Western literary materials. During the Korean War, he was in charge of the practical tasks of transporting and storing the National Treasures from Gyujanggak to Busan. After the war, he was responsible for organizing, cataloging, and classifying the books of Gyujanggak at Seoul National University. He prepared the initial drafts of book classification and served as an executive in several organizations, including the Korean Library Association. While teaching at universities after obtaining a master's degree in library science from Yonsei University, he published 49 academic articles and 7 edited and authored books. It is highly regarded that he was the first scholar to chronologically write the history of libraries in Korea. In 1973, he transferred to Harvard University's Yenching Library as a Korean studies cataloging librarian, and until his retirement in 1991, he cataloged East Asian classical texts and Korean books at Harvard's Yenching Library and supported the research of professors there. Baek Rin is a first-generation research librarian and teacher who laid the foundation for the barren Korean library science world.