William Smith Shaw becomes the first director (then librarian) of the Boston Athenaeum.

He is succeeded by Seth Bass (1825), Charles Folsom (1847), William Poole (1856), Charles Cutter (1869), William Coolidge Lane (1893), Charles Knowles Bolton (1898), M.A. De Wolfe Howe (1933), Elinor Gregory Metcalf (1941), Walter Muir Whitehill (1946), Rodney Armstrong (1973), Richard Wendorf (2000), Paula Matthews (2009), Elizabeth Barker (1914), and Amy Ryan (2019).