Sanford Berman (b. October 6, 1933) is an outspoken, radical librarian who promoted alternative viewpoints in librarianship and acted as a valuable one-man information conduit to other librarians around the world.

Berman was born in Chicago, Illinois. He attended University of California at Los Angeles, where he earned a B.A. in Political Science with minors in Sociology, Anthropology and English, and received the Phi Beta Kappa from the national scholastic honour society. After acquiring an M.S. in Library Science from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., Berman began work as a librarian. He worked for the U.S. Army Special Services Libraries, West Germany (1962-1966) ; Schiller College, Kleiningerheim, West Germany (1966-1967) ; University of California at Los Angeles Research Library (1967-1968) ; University of Zambia Library, Lusaka, Zambia (1968-1970) ; Makerere Institute of Social Research, Makerere University Library, Kampala, Uganda (1971-1972) ; and Hennepin County Library, Minnesota (1973-1999).

Alternative Classification

The spark of Berman's cataloging revolution was the inclusion in Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) of the term kaffir, which he came across while working in Zambia : "Berman was told by offended black fellow-workers that calling someone a kafir was similar to being called a nigger in America" (Pendergrast).