She was described as being: outspoken, having beautiful features, unorthodox in management, Catholic in attitudes and literary tastes, worldly in experience, with many interests from libraries, law, to poetry.

[7][10] She left Davenport in February 1905[7][10] to take a position as Head of the Reference Department at the Louisville Free Public Library upon its opening.

[12] The University of Memphis held law classes at night in the Goodwyn Institute building, and Freeman took advantage of this.

The bookmarks were designed to complement movies, plays, and symphonies presented around the city with printing costs borne by the theaters.

[4]: 150 At Cleveland Public Library, Freeman also helped created the business information department, a standard of its type throughout the country.

In fact, Masefield, in a radio address on May 12, 1937, mentioned Freeman by name: I shall never forget going to a city library in Memphis, Tennessee, and seeing a big and beautiful room for the use of the youth of the city which had been arranged by Miss Freeman, who now directs your great library at Cleveland, Ohio.Freeman and King George VI were the only two people Masefield mentioned by name in that address.

[14][4] Freeman's prolific writing career spanned decades and she contributed articles to Library Journal from July 1899 until late summer 1959.

[4]: 153–4  In fact, Freeman served as the model for the librarian character, Helen Raymond, in Dell's first successful novel, Moon-Calf.

[2][4] In an essay written by Freeman for Library Journal in February 1911 entitled The Psychological Moment, she took librarians to task for making sure they served the public in a timely, professional manner.

And whatever happens, we do want them back again, in large and increasing numbers, for they are our only reason for being, and without their presence and approval, all our careful plans and efforts are in vain.

[17]: 59 Freeman again laid out her general philosophy towards librarianship in a later editorial she wrote for Library Journal in 1938:[7] I hope and believe that librarians are, as a rule, among the unprejudiced, broad-minded, and broad-sympathied members of society-persons who possess what Sir John Adams, of the University of London, called the most important single quality of the librarian, namely, sympathy, ability to put ones self behind the bar of the eye of the other person, to see, for a moment at least, through the other man's eye.

And the ridiculous and often tragic mistake is to see things only through ones own eye, and to act accordingly .... "How may a librarian remain neutral," I am asked, "and yet not abandon intellectual leadership in a world assailed by 'isms'?"

Informed intelligence precludes prejudice, recognizes propaganda, weighs all the evidence, cherishes the open mind, treasures its freedom, and steers an even course between neutrality and partisanship ....