Burns
was born in New York and lived most of her life in Brooklyn. She graduated from Packer Institute (a girls
school in Brooklyn Heights) in 1894 and received a certificate from the Pratt
Institute Library School in 1908.
Upon
graduating from Pratt, Burns was appointed to a position at the Tompkins Square
Branch. Within months she was promoted
to First Assistant at the branch. In
1909 she took a leave of absence for unknown reasons, but she returned in
February 1910 as head of the Hudson Park Branch. In April 1911 Burns was tapped to head the
Central Circulation Branch a month before it opened in the NYPL Central
Building on Fifth Avenue. This was
regarded as the Library’s most important circulation unit, serving not only
office workers and businessmen in midtown Manhattan but also authors and publishers. It also was unusual in having a more male
clientele than the neighborhood branches.
After registering 1,800 new users during the first two days of being
open, Burns reported to the Director, Dr. John Shaw Billings, “The overwhelming
predominance of men could not fail to be significant.”
In
1916 Burns resigned from NYPL, and the details of her employment history become
less certain. In 1918 she was named
librarian at the Haskell & Sells accounting firm in NYC, and she worked
there until at least 1927. By 1934,
Burns was heading a branch of the Queens Borough Public Library and retired
from QBPL in 1941.
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