Ideals and Standard The History of the University of lUinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science, 1893-1993 S^ig^:£i-o Digitized by tine Internet Archive in 2010 witii funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign http://www.archive.org/details/idealsstandardshOOalle Ideals and Standards: The History of the University of lUinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science, 1893-1993 © 1992 by The Board of Ihistees of the University of Illinois ISBN 0-87845-089-0 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Ideals and Siandards BBPBB maammm nwiwrn pariHiAiws ^ I ^HE ilLlNOlSl I LlBRAilYSGDOL ^" r ' :c]!l Katharine Lucinda Sharp, 1865-1914 (has relief by Lorado Taft) Contents Foreword i * Leigh Estabrook Introduction ii Walter Allen 1 Remarkable Beginnings: The First Half Century of the Graduate School of Library AND Information Science 1 Laurel Grotzinger 2 The School's Third Quarter Century with an Addendum by Robert W. Oram 23 Robert B. Downs 3 The Fourth Quarter Century: A Personal Reminiscence 36 Laivrence W. S. Auld 4 A Place of Our Own: The School's Space 57 Dale S. Montanelli 5 The Library and Information Science Library 68 Patricia Stenstrom 6 To Become Well Trained and Well Educated: Technical Services Education at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science 81 Kathryn Luther Henderson 7 Services and Sources: Reference and Other Public Service Courses 115 Christine Beserra and T^rry L Weech 8 From Mechanization in Libraries to Information Transfer: Information Science Education AT Illinois 134 Linda C. Smith 1 9 Children and Youth Services: Education for Librarianship 157 Mary E. Forbes 10 Advanced Studies at Illinois 173 F. W. Lancaster 11 The Library Research Center 180 Herbert Goldhor and Leigh Estabrook 12 Spreading the Word: The Publications Program 187 Donald W. Krummel 13 Extension Teaching: A Century of Service 195 Leslie Edmonds 14 International Influences: People at Home and Abroad 203 Selma K. Richardson and Bradford Wilson 15 Minority Students at GSLIS: The Carnegie Experiment 222 Terry Crowley 16 The Library School Association 231 Carol Bates Penka 17 Beta Phi Mu: The Alpha Chapter 238 Robert F Delzell Afterword 24 Appendices 244 Contributors 259 Index 267 List of Photos Frontispiece: Katharine Lucinda Sharp, 1865-1914 (has relief by Lorado Tkft) 1. The First Class, 1893-94 2. The First L.S. Room, Altgeld HaU, 1900 3. The Class of 1900 - Junior Year 4. The Class of 191 1 - Junior Year 5. Library Club, December 1912 6. The Senior Class, 1921 7. Advanced Students, ca. 1929 8. Summer Session Students, 1930 9. Robert B. Downs and Class, 1947-48 10. Herbert Goldhor and Buildings Class, late 1940s 11. Corridor Outside L.S. Library, ca. 1948 12. Library Science Library, ca. 1948 13. Allerton Conference, early 1950s 14. First Beta Phi Mu Initiation, 1948 15. Rose Phelps and Student, early 1950s 16. Frances Jenkins and Class, early 1950s 17. Robert B. Downs and C. Walter Stone, late 1950s 18. Public Ubrary Club, late 1950s 19. Rose Phelps's Retirement, 1958 (seated L to r.: Bond, Phelps, Boyd; standing: Lancour, Downs, Wiles, Jenkins, Windsor, Lohrer, Stone) ^ Ideals and Standards 20. Faculty, 1955-56 (seated 1. to r.: Phelps» Hostetter, Eaton, Lohrer, Jenkins; standing: Jackson, Strout, Downs, Wiles, James, Lancour Goldstein) 21. Harold Lancour, late 1950s 22. Dewey Carroll, early 1960s 23. Herbert Goldhor and Barbara Donagan (Publications), 1960s 24. LS. 434 at Illinois State Library, mid-1960s (seated left, with pipe: Don Strout; seated right, from right: J. Clement Harrison, Jessie Carney Smith, Alice Norton) 25. Alice Lohrer's Retirement, 1974 (1. to r.: Lewis Steig, Harold Lancour, Lohrer, Robert B. Downs, Herbert Goldhor) 26. Faculty, 1966 (seated, 1. to r.: Conway, Schultz, Ladley, Lohrer, Jenkins; standing: Spence, Goldstein, Stevens, Downs, Goldhor, Field, Carroll, Henderson 27. Faculty 1973-74 (seated, 1. to r.: Goldhor, W. Allen, Lohrer, Henderson, Wilkens, Bonn; standing: Stevens, Draper, Thomassen, Schlipf, Brown, Krummel, Divilbiss, Lancaster, Wert) 28. Robert Bingham Downs, 1903-1991 29. Altgeld Hall, site of the Ubrary School from 1897 to 1926 30. Main Library, site of the Ubrary School from 1926 to 1979, and David Kinley Hall, site of the Library School from 1979 to 1993 31. Faculty 1992 (front: Smith, Estabrook, Henderson; middle: Sutton, Lancaster, Richardson, Bishop, B. Allen, Bradley, Davis; rear: Newby, Williams, Weech, Krummel) 32. New site of the Library School ( 1993- ), formerly the Acacia House Foreword Leigh Estabrook Publication oi Ideals and Standards celebrates the centennial of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science in a special way. These collected essays provide a way for us to hold on to our history as the school faces an uncertain future. They reveal how much the School has always been involved in change and at the same time how much the practices of today are embedded in the work of our predecessors. It is fitting that we celebrate with a publication edited by Professors Emeritus Walter Allen, who taught for many years in the area of publishing, and Robert Delzell, long a member of the University Library faculty. Former directors of the School Robert Downs and Herbert Goldhor and many of the faculty and alumni are some of the most prolific writers in our field. The School's publishing program is long-standing and includes Library Trends, Occasional Papers, conference proceedings, and a monograph series. To those alumni, faculty, and students who read this book, thank you for your part in creating this history and in making the Graduate School of Library and Information Science excellent. Even the most quiet and unobtrusive student challenges a faculty member to think differently about how she or he teaches. Those who dissent force us to examine our assumptions. Those who are active in the School and the profession help us see our connections to one another and reaffirm our commitment to library and information science. This, then, is a family album— probably of greatest interest to its members, but enjoyable also, we hope, to others in our profession who may see, in this family, patterns similar to their own. Introduction Walter C. Allen In September 1893, a bold new program of instruction for service in libraries began at the Armour Institute of Technology in Chicago under the directorship of Katharine L. Sharp. After four years there, the rapidly developing school outgrew its original parent and moved to East Central Illinois, where, like the ubiquitous com, it grew and flourished. There have been several publications about various stages of the history of what is now known as the Graduate School of Library and Information Science of the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign. Ideals and Standards marks the centennial and takes quite a different direction from that of its predecessors. In 1943, the School issued the first volume in a sometime series called Illinois Contributions to Librarianship. Titled Fifty Years of Education for Librarianship, it was apparently edited by Carl M. White, then the University librarian and director of the School. It is a collection of brief essays, some delivered at a fiftieth anniversary dinner at the Urbana-Lincoln Hotel on March 2, 1943; the others were later contributions. While several essays (including pieces by C. C. Williamson, Phineas L. Windsor, Margaret Mann, and Frances Simpson) address the history and influence of the School, the others are on "subjects of general interest in the field, ranging from recruiting to international cooperation in education for librarianship" (White, 1943, p. x). Twenty-five years later, "the Graduate School of Library Science of the University of Illinois completed its first seventy- five years. ..A collection of reminiscences written by persons who had been affiliated with the School was chosen as an appropriate way to mark this noteworthy event.... From this collection of personal recollections there emerges a history of the first three quarters of a century of the.. School and Introduction iii the promise for continued achievement in the years ahead." So wrote Barbara Oisen Slanker (Ph.D. 70) in the Foreword of a volume entitled Reminiscences: Seventy-Five Years of a Library School (Slanker, 1969). It is a highly informative and often quite entertaining volume even today. Now, after another quarter century, the entire profession has been revolutionized, and the School with it. It was clear to the planners of the centennial celebration that a new publication was needed, not only to mark the occasion, but to put the new developments into the context of the School's total history. In late 1989, Dean Leigh Estabrook asked me to be the editor of the book At that time, I suggested that, not being an alumnus, it would be helpful to have a co-editor who was one, and I suggested Robert F. Delzell ('51), long a member of the University Library faculty, a frequent lecturer in the School, and close friend and colleague of many faculty members over a thirty-year span. I also requested that we form an editorial committee which became, formally, the centennial publication subcommittee of the centennial steering committee, of which I became a member. The other members of the subcommittee, or editorial committee, were Raymond Bial (79), librarian of Parkland College; Lynne Curry, assistant to the dean for publications; Dean Estabrook; Kathryn Luther Henderson ('57), professor in the School; Debra Park, assistant to the dean for research and development; and Patricia Stenstrom ('57), associate professor and Library Science librarian at the University of Illinois. The editorial committee met first on March 29, 1990 and began to develop a plan for the book. There was never any intention of producing a definitive history of the School; we leave that to some alumna or alumnus with an interest in education for librarianship and the role of the School in it.