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While it's a well-known and indeed snappy aphorism, many years after I heard it, I found out that in the mid-20th century, librarians used the term "users" for what they now call "patrons". For examples: from 1952, "A public library user is defined as an individual twelve years of age or over who used either a branch library or bookmobile during the thirty days preceding the interview." (Quoting "Rural reading habits; a study of county library planning, Prince Georges County, Md.", https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015034569759&vi... ) From 1931, "This was the first complete triple asyndetic dictionary catalog. It became a favorite with town and mercantile libraries, the idea always being that the user was searching for some book he knew about ..." ("Outline of the history of the development of the American public library", https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015019970162&vi...) From 1928, "Consider the User of Bulletins", title of a letter to the editor in Science - https://science.sciencemag.org/content/67/1724/40.2 . Maybe it wasn't specific to library science either. I just did a broader search for "user" and found, for example, a 1905 ad for a book of tables for surveyors and engineers: "The computations enable the user to ascertain the sines and cosines for a distance of twelve miles to within half an inch, and this by reference to but One Table, in place of the usual Fifteen minute computations required. This alone is evidence of the assistance which the Tables ensure to every user ... " https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015063579133&vi... |