John Davis Barnett (1848-1926) was an early Canadian curator-librarian. Barnett collected the materials to create one of the significant early personal Ontario libraries and was a vocal proponent of education through the use of freely available printed materials. He is a renowned collector writing extensively on the ideas of inter-library loans, classification scheme trends, the national library for Canada movement, collections development, scientific management theory and his own personal reference theory. Involved with books from an early age he collected widely and worked throughout his life to ensure that knowledge was available to all. His personal donation of some 40,000 volumes to the University of Western Ontario, his work as a lecturer at the first provincial library school and his commitment to the first Ontario library institute make him a notable Canadian librarian from the beginning of the confederation era right through to the period between the two world wars.