MABEL COLCORD
Assistant Librarian in Charge
1903 – May 1904
Mabel Colcord received her A.B. from Radcliffe College in 1895. She taught in public and private schools, then received her B.L.S. at the New York State Library School. Before starting at Iowa in 1902 as an assistant cataloger, she had held a library position in Albany.
In July 1904 Colcord became assistant in library science at the Bureau of Entomology in Washington DC. After the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s bureau libraries were merged with the Main Library, Colcord acted as chief of the entomological work of the Department of Agriculture Library until her retirement in 1942. Colcord had a thorough knowledge of her special field, and was best known as a bibliographer; her bibliographical contribution was five volumes of the Index to the Literature of American Entomology, covering the years 1915 to 1939 inclusive.