Rudolph Hjalmar Gjelsness (October 18, 1894 – August 16, 1968) was a prominent American librarian and literary translator who served as Dean of the University of Michigan's Library Science Department from 1940 to 1964.

[3] Gjelsness began his college education at the University of North Dakota and graduated with a degree in zoology and a teacher's certificate in 1916.

[5] After his time in Europe, Gjelsness returned to the University of Illinois to finish his education, earning a bachelor's degree in library science in 1920.

[5] Upon his return to the United States, Gjelsness took a job in the University of Michigan Library, where he spent four years principally in the cataloging department.

In 1954 he was honored with the inaugural Beta Phi Mu Award by the American Library Association for distinguished service to education for librarianship.

Among these were a program he helped set up in Bogota, Colombia, and Mexico City's Benjamin Franklin Library, where he served as director between 1943 and 1944.

However, he never managed to establish a relationship with the President, and seems to have done little other than organise some training on cataloguing and classification for 5 of the Central Library’s staff over a 2-month period in 1963.

During his tenure as dean at the University of Michigan, Gjelsness observed in one such article originally published in 1945 that library science departments were improving but more still needed to be done to attract better candidates to careers in the field.

[6] A collection of Gjelsness' personal papers, including some material written by members of his family, is housed at the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan.