Daniel Melcher, North American publishing executive, contributed
to library service as an innovator in developing professional
publications, reference services, and methods for improving
book production and distribution.
Melcher was born July 10, 1912, at Newton Center, Massachusetts,
the son of Marguerite Fellows Melcher and Frederic Gershom
Melcher (later President of R. R. Bowker Company). Daniel
Melcher was graduated from Harvard College (A.B.) in 1934.
In 1934 and 1935 Melcher was a publicity assistant at
the London publishing house of George Allen and Unwin
and an assistant and student of publishing methods at
other houses in London and Leipzig, Germany. From 1936
to 1942 he worked in a variety of sales promotion and
management capacities at Henry Holt and Company, Oxford
University Press, Alliance Book Corporation, and Viking
Press, all in New York City. During World War II he worked
in Washington, D.C., with the U.S. Treasury Department's
War Finance Division, first as publishing consultant and
then as National Director of its education section. In
1946 he was Director of the National Committee on Atomic
Information, also in Washington.
When he joined the R. R. Bowker Company, New York, in
1947, Melcher was appointed Publisher of the firm's Library
Journal. He quickly began developing the 70-year-old
magazine into a major publication dealing with every aspect
of the library profession, and in 1954 he founded, as
an adjunct, Junior Libraries (School Library
Journal, beginning 1961).
At the same time, Melcher had been working on the idea
of a series of current in-print directories of American
books. He devised the procedures by which the directories
could be edited and produced, and in 1948 the firm launched
the annual Books in Print, with author and title
indexes. There followed, also under Melcher's vigorous
direction, Paperbound Books in Print (1956), Subject
Guide to Books in Print (1957), Forthcoming Books (advance
listings), and American Book Publishing Record
(catalogue listings, current and cumulative, in Dewey
cataloguing sequence, 1961).
Meanwhile,
Melcher was writing articles on library questions for
LJ and on book distribution and book manufacturing
for Publishers' Weekly. He contributed to the automated
"belt press" concept of book manufacturing.
His concern for distribution made him a major force in
the mid-1960s in establishing the International Standard
Book Numbering System.
Melcher became a Director and General Manager of Bowker
in 1956; Vice-President, 1959; and President, 1963-68.
After Bowker acquired Jacques Cattell Press, biographical
directory publisher, Melcher was its Board Chairman, 1961-67.
He took part in the Bowker stockholders' decision to sell
the firm to the Xerox Corporation January 1, 1968, and
was then Bowker Chairman under Xerox but resigned early
in 1969.
He was Board Chairman of Gale Research Corporation, 1971-73,
and thereafter an independent consultant. He was a member
of the ALA Council, 1972-74, and from 1969 a board member
of Institutes for Achievement of Human Potentials, with
a special interest in the ways by which very young children
can learn to read.
From American Library Association Encyclopedia
of Library and Information Science (New York: 3rd
Edition, 1993)
Printing
and Promotion Handbook, Daniel Melcher and Nancy
Larrick (New York: McGraw Hill Book Co., 1967).
Melcher on Acquisitions , Daniel Melcher and Margaret
Saul Melcher (Chicago: American Library Association,
1971).
Unitarian
Note
Daniel
Melcher of Unity Church (Unitarian), Montclair, N.J., to
honor his father, made possible the annual Melcher Book
Award presented by the Unitarian Universalist Association
for a work judged the most significant contribution to religious
liberalism.
