Halsey (H.W.) Wilson

H.W. Wilson (May 12, 1868 – March 1, 1954) was the creator of the "Readers' Guide", the "Cumulative Book Index", and the "Book Review Digest". Born Halsey William Wilson in Wilmington, Vermont, he was orphaned at the age of two, and was raised by his maternal grandparents. When he was 12, he moved to Iowa to live with an aunt, and later to Minnesota. He attended Beloit College, and later the University of Minnesota. He and a fellow student, Henry S. Morris, set up a student textbook store on campus in 1889, the roots of what would become the H. W. Wilson Company. In 1891, Wilson first conceived the idea of a regularly-updated catalog of books, alphabetized by subject.

Wilson saved sufficient money to launch a service in 1898, investing $500 in the hope that he and his wife could enlist 500 subscribers to the service for a dollar a year. His first year, he would say later, "was memorable for some heartening endcrsements, nearly 300 subscriptions, and a rapidly growing deficit" [ "Current Biography 1941", pp. 924-26 ] . It was in 1900 that Wilson created the "United States Catalog" and the well-known green volumes of the "Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature", known to librarians, teachers and students simply as "The Readers' Guide". The "Book Review Digest" was introduced in 1905. By 1913, Wilson had outgrown his Rochester, Minnesota, location and relocated his business, in 13 railcars, to White Plains, New York. Four years later, he moved to the Bronx, and the H.W. Wilson Company became one of the leading publishers of contemporary reference materials. As a supplement to the general interest magazine articles in the "Readers' Guide", Wilson created more specialized guides to professional journals, such as the Industrial Arts Index (1913), the Agricultural Index (1916), the Education Index (1929), the Art Index (1929), the Bibliographic Index (1938), Current Biography (1940), the Biography Index (1946), the Play Index (1949), and the Short Story Index (1953). [ www.bookrags.com/research/wilson-halsey-william-1868-1954-eci-03/ retrieved August 22, 2007.] Halsey died on March 1, 1954 at the age of 85. In addition to the subscription based guides, the H.W. Wilson Company published numerous well-known reference books, including Joseph Nathan Kane's "Facts About the Presidents" and "Famous First Facts".

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