Maxwell Library implemented its new online catalog in June 1999. At that time, the online catalog was named Webster. The name was chosen in honor of Daniel Webster.

Daniel Webster was a native New Englander who was born in Salisbury, New Hampshire in 1782. He died in Marshfield, Massachusetts in 1852. He represented Massachusetts as a United States Congressman and as a U.S. Senator.  Daniel Webster served as Secretary of State from 1841-43 under President Harrison and then, after Harrison's death, under John Tyler, and from 1850-52 under Millard Fillmore.

In addition to these achievements, Daniel Webster is highly regarded as an orator. He brought more than 150 pleas before the U.S. Supreme Court and he debated in the U.S. Senate on the issues of federal government versus states’ rights, slavery, and free trade. He delivered major eulogies, including those on the deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.

His oratorical skills are Webster’s link to Bridgewater State College and the naming of Maxwell Library’s online catalog in his honor.

At a meeting of the Plymouth County Association for the Improvement of Common Schools in 1838, Daniel Webster gave a speech. Regrettably, there is no verbatim record of the speech but a detailed summary of his remarks appeared in the Portsmouth Journal on September 29, 1838. In this report, Webster speaks first of public education:

It is a reproach that the public schools are not superior to the private. If, said he [Webster], I had as many sons as old Priam, I would send them all to the public schools. The private schools have injured, in this respect, the public; they have impoverished them. They who should be in them are withdrawn;… those left behind are none the better.

Webster then addressed the need to establish a public institution of higher education in Plymouth County. This, of course, became Bridgewater State College:

This plan of a Normal School in Plymouth County is designed to elevate our common schools, and thus to carry out the noble ideas of our pilgrim fathers. There is a growing need that this be done. He considered the cost very slight; it cannot come into an expanded mind as an objection. If it be an experiment, it is a noble one and should be tried.

Maxwell Library names its online catalog after Daniel Webster and hopes that the Library exemplifies the vision and hope spoken of by Webster: "If it be an experiment, it is a noble one."

Anyone wishing to learn more about the life and accomplishment of Daniel Webster may read the article in the online version of Britannica Online as provided by Maxwell Library.