+PARA #PAR@ ` TEXT ` Wood, Mary Elizabeth1861╨1931librarian and missionaryBorn in Elba, New York, on August 22, 1861, Mary Wood grew up and attended public schools in nearby Batavia. In 1889 she became librarian of the newly opened Richmond Library in Batavia. In 1899 she traveled to Wu-ch╒ang, China, to visit a brother who was a missionary there. At his suggestion she prolonged her visit in order to take charge of an elementary English class in the small, missionary-run Boone School. By 1904, when she received formal appointment by the (Episcopal) American Church Mission as a lay missionary, the school had grown to include a collegiate department and was in need of a library. She began slowly to build one from donations from friends and church groups. On a furlough to the United States in 1906 she raised money for a library building (Olivia Phelps Stokes was a contributor), which ultimately opened in 1910. On subsequent furloughs she studied library science at the Pratt Institute and Simmons College. In order to extend the library╒s usefulness she established branches at several locations in Wu-ch╒ang and in Hankow, and eventually she organized a system of traveling libraries that brought books in both Chinese and English to a wide area; one traveled as far as Peking. Beginning in 1915 she sent promising Chinese students to the United States for training in librarianship, and in 1920 she opened a library school in Boone College. Before the college was closed by the Communist regime in 1949, the library school had graduated nearly 500 librarians, many of whom went on to advanced training in the United States. In 1923 Wood circulated a petition among Chinese leaders asking that a portion of the $6 million still unassigned from the U.S. indemnity imposed after the Boxer Rebellion be allocated to the development of public libraries in China. In 1924 she traveled to Washington, D.C., to lobby personally for the idea. Congress passed a bill remitting funds (eventually nearly $12 million) for the development of ╥educational and other cultural activities╙ under the guidance of the China Foundation for the Promotion of Education and Culture. The foundation allotted sums for the establishment of the National Library in Peking and for scholarships and expenses at the Boone Library School. From 1924 to 1930 the school, a part of Boone College, was a constituent of the Anglo-American union Huachung University, but administrative friction led to the withdrawal of the library school in the latter year. Wood devoted her remaining time to building up a permanent endowment for the school under control of a U.S.-based board (later known as the Mary Elizabeth Wood Foundation). She died in Wu-ch╒ang on May 1, 1931. In 1950 the Boone Library School was absorbed by the National Wu-han University. ╓styl `
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