📖 Overview
Fred R. Shapiro is a librarian and lexicographer who serves as associate librarian for collections and access at Yale Law School. He specializes in compiling and editing reference works focused on quotations and proverbs.
Shapiro edited The Yale Book of Quotations, first published in 2006, which aimed to correct misattributions and provide accurate sources for famous sayings. The work challenged many traditional quotation attributions through research into historical sources and databases.
He also compiled the Dictionary of Modern Proverbs, published in 2012, which documents proverbs that entered common usage in the 20th and 21st centuries. This work differs from traditional proverb collections by focusing on recently coined sayings rather than ancient wisdom.
Shapiro's approach to reference work emphasizes scholarly accuracy over popular tradition. He uses digital databases and historical research to trace quotations to their origins, often discovering that famous quotes were never said by their supposed authors.