Eleanor (Edwards) Ledbetter, who served immigrant populations in Cleveland throughout most of the Progressive Era and the Great Depression, was one of the first librarians to advocate for multiculturalism (then called cultural pluralism) as opposed to Americanism. In providing multicultural and multilingual library services for immigrants, Ledbetter was active locally as librarian at the Broadway Branch of the Cleveland Public Library and member of the Cleveland Americanization Committee and nationally as chair of the American Library Association's Committee on Work with the Foreign Born. She was recognized internationally as a bibliographer of Polish literature and translator of Czech folktales, for which she was awarded honors by the Polish and Czechoslovak governments, and as an unofficial ambassador for the American public library in eastern and southeastern Europe, specifically the countries of the former Yugoslavia.