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Article Excerpt
ABSTRACT
This paper traces the history of library education primarily as it developed in the United States. The issues pertaining to curriculum, students, and faculty are presented as are the current questions of whether the educational program should have a professional, vocational, or discipline-based focus.
INTRODUCTION
The modern period in the history of education for librarianship began in the mid-1800s as librarians around the world recognized that systematic education and training were required so that order could be brought to the collections that had been growing in all libraries. Librarians also sought ways to bring techniques of organization and management to the public libraries as the public library movement gained momentum. Librarians sought to apply standards to the acquisition and preservation of collections, to consider services to users, and to adopt careful management practices to libraries. This paper sketches the highlights of development of the educational system for the profession and traces the continual assessment of the curriculum, the standards that help shape the elements of the educational programs, the development of the faculty, and the continuing debate over certification and accreditation. It acknowledges the ever-present tensions between librarianship as it is practiced and librarianship as it is taught. While some reference is made to library education in other countries, the dominant perspective is that of the United States.
The paper acknowledges the important contributions of Professor F. Wilfrid Lancaster to library education. Lancaster was one of the information scientists in the 1970s who was instrumental in infusing library education with theories and research from information science. Famous for his classes at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on the evaluation of library services and the use of standards in undertaking such evaluations, Lancaster also lectured and consulted throughout the world. He inspired many students in the United States and abroad to take up careers in library and information science and was generous to them as they sought his advice and counsel.
The history of the education for the field has been well studied and well documented. Its complexity and its richness cannot be examined thoroughly in this paper. Various readers will find a topic of great importance mentioned only briefly or not dealt with here at all. The author urges a closer look at the references cited to gain a greater understanding of the education for librarianship, the role dedicated men and women played in creating the vibrant profession that exists today, and the inevitable changes that occur as society itself changes.
The past encompasses the period beginning with 1853, the date of the first library conference held in the United States, to 1990, a somewhat arbitrary date reflecting the adoption of computer science techniques and automation elements into most curricula of accredited library school programs in the United States. The present includes the 1990s to the present. The final section presents some indicators for the future and comments on the central debates that have and will continue to rage over whether the educational programs reflect education for a profession, whether a return to vocational training will occur, or whether information studies is an academic discipline unattached to any particular profession.
ANTECEDENTS OF PROFESSIONAL LIBRARY EDUCATION
Most general histories of the development of the profession of librarianship in the United States establish 1876 as the year in which the profession emerged. Three events are singled out to establish 1876 as the year: the publication of the first issue of Library Journal (founded as the American Library Journal); the 1876 conference in Philadelphia, which led to the formation of the American Library Association; and the publication of the monumental Public Libraries in the United States of American, Their History, Condition, and Management, issued by the U.S. Bureau of Education, which documented the development of libraries in the United States and offered papers on the standards of practice in existence at that time. The events surrounding the organization of the Librarians' Conference of 1853, however, offer the evidence that the profession had emerged earlier than 1876 and the issues that would form the basis of education for the profession already were identified. Had the Civil War not intervened, it is possible that the profession would have made greater progress earlier in its establishment. Similar developments were going on in Europe, but the American librarians, while aware of them, were unable to take full advantage of those because of the war and the postwar construction that engaged the country.
Although the 1853 conference did not address directly the issue of education for the profession, the participants considered issues of importance in the organization and management of libraries (Utley, 1951). Under the leadership of Charles Coffin Jewett, the librarian of the Smithsonian Institution who was elected president of the conference, the eighty-three men attending considered issues relating to the purchase of books, their arrangement, the formation of catalogs, and the protection of the books.
Jewett's opening address set the stage for the meeting:
we have assembled this morning ... [for the purpose] of conferring together upon the means of advancing the prosperity and usefulness of public libraries and of seeking mutual instruction and encouragement in the discharge of the quiet and unostentatious labors of our vocation, for which each, at his separate post, finds perhaps but little sympathy--for which each, when at home, must derive enthusiasm only from within himself and from the silent masters of his daily communion.... our object ... is of a more manifestly and eminently practical and utilitarian character. We meet to provide for the diffusion of knowledge of good books, and for enlarging the means of public access to them. Our wishes are for the public, not for ourselves. (1)
The attendees shared information and debated the issues, presented forcefully by Jewett: a central catalog and adoption of agreed upon rules for cataloging. The convention adopted resolutions in support of the development of public libraries in the United States and, in particular, recognized the need for the development of a "popular Library Manual," which would include information on:
* the best organization of a Library society, in regard to its officers, laws, funds and general regulations;
* the best plans for Library edifices and the arrangements of the shelves and books, with the requisite architectural drawings;
* the most approved method of making out and printing catalogues;
* the most desirable principle to be followed in the selection and purchase of books, as to authors and editions; with lists of such works as are best suited for libraries of various sizes, from 500 to 1,000 volumes of upwards. (2)
The delegates shared their own experiences and points of view with each other and developed networks of support that continued after the meeting. By and large, though, each librarian attending the meeting sought to find his own solution to the particular problems surrounding the responsibilities he had for managing a library.
In the United States as well as in Europe, the apprenticeship system of education was the accepted practice. In the United States it continued long after the founding of Dewey's school at Columbia University in 1887.
The great comprehensive survey of public libraries in the United States (Public Libraries in the United States, 1876) includes advice regarding education for librarianship. The emphasis in these chapters is on books and reading and the placement of such study in professorships in American universities. In the introduction to the survey, however, the authors suggest another approach to library education:
it is clear that the librarian must soon be called upon to assume a distinct position, as something more than a mere custodian of books, and the scientific scope and value of his office be recognized and estimated in a becoming manner. To meet the demands that will be made on him be should be granted opportunities in instruction for all the departments of library science.
The authors then refer to developments in Germany, specifically to a proposal authored by Dr. F. Rullmann, librarian of the University of Frieberg. In 1874 Rullmann proposed that librarians should be especially trained for the post, specifically in a university course of three years at the end of which the student would sit for an examination that would lead to a certificate. Rullman was making reference to those people, primarily professors in universities, who also were appointed to head the university's library; he was not making reference to the various people who did the more routine or clerical tasks necessary to library operations (Rullman, 1874). In his paper Rullman also refers to a paper published in Vienna in 1834 by Schrettinger. Schrettinger, in his Manual of Library Science, (1834) was advocating for a special school for educating librarians. So proposals for systematic education for library science were made in Europe early in the 1800s, and librarians in the United States were aware of these proposals.
American librarians were influenced by the proposals from Europe as they were...
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