Profiles: Father Oliver Kapsner, OSB (1902-1991) – A Life in Libraries

Abstract

“I gave forty-one years of my monastic career to library work, the bulk of which was devoted to doing a cataloging job which begged to be done. The career began one month after completing the novitiate in July 1923 when Abbot Alcuin Deutsch, like myself, out for a morning stroll after breakfast, called me: ‘Father Oliver, come here. I want you to work in the library.’ And thereon hangs the tale.”1 I n 1964, when Father Oliver Kapsner, OSB, arrived in Italy to pursue the dream of a renewed Benedictine mission to preserve culture through the copying of manuscripts (with microfilm, not pen), he was already approaching an age when most librarians consider retirement. Born Leonard Kapsner in 1902 at Buckman, Minnesota, he came to Saint John’s Abbey and University in 1916 to attend Saint John’s Prep School and later the University. In 1922, he entered the novitiate and a year later professed religious vows as a Benedictine monk. Over the next ten years he studied philosophy, theology, and library science at various institutions, including Saint Vincent College, the University of Notre Dame, Catholic University of America, the University of Chicago, and the Benedictine Pontifical College (Rome). In this decade he also was ordained a priest (1928).