The 's Life, Scholarship and Librarianship* BY DAVID A. KRONICK, PH.D., Director The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio San Antonio, Texas

ABSTRACT have had to overcome. Both autobiographies would have some semblance of truth for all of us. I also must be more than custodians of the record or merely managers of information services if they are to suspect that some of us in our candid moments may understand their role and to participate in the life of even regard our lives as librarians in this way, scholarship. There are many approaches to this under- particularly when ruminating on what happy standing including the historical, the social, the psycho- circumstances led us into our chosen profession. logical and the epistemological. It can also be sought in through a study of the sociology of knowledge and a study Theodore Reik, the introduction to his Listen- of the ways in which changes in communications technol- ing with the third ear, tells us about one event that ogy in writing and printing have impacted on scholarship led to his choice of a career. He had been studying in the past. This may also provide us with the means of with Freud . . . but let us permit him to tell the preparing for the impact of new computer technology on story in his own way: the scholarship of the future. One evening I ran into the great man on his daily walk along the Ringstrasse in Vienna, and walked home with AN INVITATION to deliver the Janet Doe him. Friendly as always he asked me about my plans and Lecture must be considered a landmark event in I told him of my problems, which resembled those of my any librarian's life, as many of my friends and present patient [one of his patients was also having difficulty making a career choice]. Of course, I hoped colleagues who have been similarly honored have Freud would give me advice or resolve my doubts. attested. It is a kind of watershed event that "I can only tell you of my personal experience," he stimulates the recipient both to look backward and said. "When making a decision of minor importance, I to look forward in his professional life. In the have always found it advantageous to consider all the broadest sense, this is the subject I have chosen- pros and cons. In vital matters, however, such as the choice of a mate or a profession, the decision should come the librarian's life, one's life as a librarian. from the unconscious, from somewhere within ourselves. First, however, for those of you who may unac- In the important decisions of our personal life, we should countably be less interested in my life as a librarian be governed, I think, by the deep inner needs of our than I am myself, let me assure you that I intend to nature." deal with the more in a a Without telling me what to do, Freud had helped me subject generic than make my own decision. Like marriage, the choice of a specific sense, primarily the relationship between profession is a matter of destiny. We should welcome our scholarship and librarianship; and that I apologize destiny, readily accepting what comes with and out of it. in advance for any autobiographical incursions On that evening thirty-five years ago when I decided to that will inevitably creep in. become a psychoanalyst, I married the profession for 1] I suppose that everyone, no matter what his better or worse. [ circumstances, could write at least two different autobiographies. One might have as its morose I think I like that story because it appeals to my theme: How little I have been able to do despite all moral sense for making a real commitment once a the opportunities I have had, despite all the gifts choice has been made. I don't know what inner with which I have been so generously bestowed. feeling I was responding to when I chose librarian- The other autobiography would have a more ship as a profession, but I do know that what may buoyant emphasis: Look at what I have been able have started out as a marriage of convenience has to accomplish despite all the barriers that have turned into a love match. Looking back, I feel I been put in my way, despite all the difficulties I have been privileged to have spent most of my life in an atmosphere of learning in which every day has provided opportunities for intellectual growth. *The Janet Doe Lecture on the History or Philosophy of Medical Librarianship, presented June 17, 1980, at the This does not mean that like some of the rest of Eightieth Annual Meeting of the Medical Library Asso- you I may not have had some problems. First there ciation, Washington, D.C. is, as you know, the problem that our friends and Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 68(4) October 1980 327 DAVID A. KRONICK acquaintances seldom seem to know precisely what Knowing the history and background of one's we do. In my youth I had a friend who was so profession is in a way like knowing one's family uncertain about my work as a librarian that he roots, without which it is difficult to acquire a used to introduce me at parties as "my friend, the sense of belonging. I sometimes think our refer- bookie," and leave me to my own devices to explain ences to "the literature" reflect an attitude as how I earned my living, which, of course, varied mystical and as uncritical as that of Pearl Buck's with the audience I was addressing. I got so tired of peasants toward "the good earth," a medium they being asked what books I was reading that I finally cultivated in order to earn their daily bread, a invented an aphorism that goes: Librarians who source from which all good things flow. We need to read are as bad as bartenders who drink. I said this seek out and understand some of the basic ideas in the firm belief that the absurdity of the state- and mechanisms that lie behind the processes of ment would be instantly apparent to everyone. authorship, scientific communication, and infor- Unfortunately that didn't always prove to be the mation utilization, for they provide the basis for case. Of course, a librarian who does not read can our work as librarians. only be a clerk, or a technician, or, even worse, only There are undoubtedly many different ap- a manager. These are all honorable and useful proaches to this subject, including the historical, occupations, but somehow they seem much more the social, the psychological, and the epistemologi- limited in scope and aspirations than those I cal. Some investigators have sought their stimulus regarded as a part of my calling when I pledged my in the ideas generated by the sociology of knowl- vows to librarianship. edge, which has long been established as an intel- lectual discipline. The work of Robert Merton THE SOCIAL ROLE OF THE LIBRARIAN probably comes closest to our interest in this area, What, then, is the nature of this calling? That as exemplified by his pioneer study of the social question can perhaps be rephrased to ask: What is determinants of the scientific revolution as well as the social role of the librarian? What are the ideas his explorations of some of the factors which moti- and disciplines that are basic to our work? These vate and influence the scholar and author [3]. It subjects have been addressed either directly or would be a gross simplification of the concept of obliquely in some of the Janet Doe Lectures and the sociology of knowledge to say that we tend to elsewhere in the library literature. The image that believe what we want, need, or are prepared to seems to have emerged most recently is that of the believe, but it is still a powerful idea that not only library manager armed with statistical formulas lies at the bases of our social ideas but is a and expertise in operations research. It is an image fundamental problem in epistemology. It has rele- that seems almost to have obliterated the image of vance also in the history of science and medicine, the librarian as scholar that was so important a as Thomas Kuhn and other historians have pointed part of our earlier history. This may be one aspect out. It also relates to the fact that we tend to of what Roderick Cave refers to when he speaks of organize and disseminate information in the ways the "dehumanizing aspects of professional librar- our technology makes possible. A corollary to this ianship"[21. We are, to be sure, collectors, organiz- concept is that we tend to use our new technology ers, and custodians of the records of scholarship, in the same way as our old technology: The rela- though even our collecting and custodial roles are tionship between the journal article as a medium of sometimes called into question; but somehow even scientific communication and the erudite letter these functions do not seem to be enough. In some that preceded it is a good example of this. ways they cast us into the familiar role of the Jesse Shera has sought another approach to our eunuch whose purpose is to guard the sources of basic roots through a discipline he calls "social pleasure for the privileged few, but who is not epistemology," which he defines as "the study of allowed to enjoy them himself. the process by which a culture, a society, or a group collectively achieves a state of knowing" [4]. This Basic Disciplines is, he says, not another form of the sociology of One of our principal functions as librarians is to knowledge, but rather its reciprocal; that is, how facilitate scholarship and learning and to preserve knowledge affects social action rather than how and organize the records on which they are based. social conditions influence our beliefs [5]. At the same time we have an obligation to examine Shera's lecture, the Sociologicalfoundations of the processes and the materials with which we deal librarianship, was delivered in absentia in Bombay and to learn how they evolved. in 1967 via tape recorder (which is another good

328 Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 68(4) October 1980 SCHOLARSHIP AND LIBRARIANSHIP example of the impact of technology on scholar- relate more closely to the sociology of knowledge ship). It was a broad attempt at a synthesis of ideas than social epistemology, a relationship which the about the role of the library as a social agency. The editors of the International encyclopedia of the two common threads, he said, that weave through social sciences recognized when they printed Bry's our profession are: (1) that librarianship is a contribution [11]. Her views seem to reverse the service for the benefit of humanity, and (2) that it coin again when compared to the ideas that Shera is "a body of intellectual knowledge, a core of examined. In fact the subject appears to have so fundamental theory" [6]. These theses led him to many facets that I feel we are dealing with a large ask the question that has been asked so many and multidimensional object, and that we may be times: "What are the intellectual foundations of very much like the blind man reporting from librarianship?" He found them in large part in behind a small portion of the elephant's anatomy. "the study of the nature of knowledge and [of] the relationship between the structure of knowledge as TECHNOLOGY AND SCHOLARSHIP it has developed in contemporary western civiliza- I had no intention of involving myself deeply in tion and the librarian's tools for facilitating intel- any of these ideas when I started to work on early lectual access to that knowledge" [7]. The subject scientific periodicals. My motivations, I think I can matter of this study, which he called social episte- confess now that my dissertation committee is no mology, is then the study of the way in which longer looking, may have been based more on a knowledge changes society, a study which moves desire to obtain the degree than a zeal for scholar- the subject closely into our area of interest as ship. Inevitably, however, I became involved with medical librarians in our continuing concern with such problems as why, how, and where scientific how knowledge can contribute to the health of the authors publish and how changes in technology community. affect the scholarly process. We tend to think of In his 1967 Ranganathan Lecture, Shera indi- technology in terms of machines, particularly in cated that the subject had "received almost no recent times in relation to electronics and attention and certainly no real exploration" [8]. computers, but technology also encompasses He reiterated this view in an address to the Ameri- processes that represent ways of doing things. It is can Society for in 1970, when in this sense that the editors of the monumental he admitted that social epistemology for the most History of technology use the term when they part still remained a mystery. There may, however, devote an early chapter to the invention of be no need for this kind of pessimism if we can language as "the most important" and "the most consider such efforts as those going into the study characteristically human tool" [12]. of technology transfer and spread of innovation as It is also in this same sense that the introduction being related to Shera's central thesis. In fact there of the periodical in the seventeenth century, has recently appeared a journal with the imposing combining innovations in printing and transporta- title, Knowledge, Creation, Diffusion, Utilization, tion, can be considered a technological advance, an and the editor in his introductory essay indicates invention. Fielding Garrison, in his pioneer effort that librarianship should be among the many disci- to list the scientific periodicals of the seventeenth plines interested in the problems [9]. and eighteenth centuries, described their origin as Ilse Bry, whose essays were recently published follows: "The genesis of the medical and scientific under the title, The emerging field of sociobib- periodical is out of the scientific society by the liography [10], sought a similar yet different newspaper" [1 31. This leads me to suspect that his approach to a theoretical basis for librarianship. interest in stud books may not have been purely The discipline she attempted to identify and bibliographical. develop was based on her interest in the processes However, going beyond the biological analogy, of scientific communication and the methodologies there is no question that the scientific periodical of scholarship, two aspects basic to our under- was an invention that, like all inventions, took its standing of our role as librarians. basic elements from existing mechanisms and Her subject matter can perhaps be described as practices. It changed considerably the way in an examination of the reciprocal relations between which scholars reported and communicated their sociology, more specifically the behavioral ideas and observations to their peers and to the sciences, and bibliography, a study of the impact of general reading public. As a social institution it has society on bibliographic processes and the impact also gone through a process of evolution. The of bibliography on society. This approach seems to nature and character of the changes as they

Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 68(4) October 1980 -, 329 DAVID A. KRONICK occurred over the period in which the journal we honor here today. Her Bibliography of the evolved to the forms in which we know it today Works of Ambroise Pare, as Erich Meyerhoff have not yet, I believe, been adequately studied or indicated in his Janet Doe Lecture in 1977, is a understood. brilliant example of this genre [17]. It is truly, as One of my "findings" was so obvious and so she states in her preface, "an exercise in character elementary that I think it has been largely ignored appreciation as well as a bibliography" [18]. It is in the discussion of the application of new technol- based not only on a thorough knowledge of the ogy to the communication of scientific information. medicine of the period and the bibliographic The journal developed essentially as a vehicle for history of the writings but also on a knowledge of the transmission of information, fulfilling what we the social milieu and the scholarly customs of the call today the current awareness function of the period. Among other examples of this kind of medium. Henry Fielding in his History of Tom biobibliography that are well known are the works Jones was talking about the newspaper, but we of Geoffrey Keynes, Harvey Cushing, John Fulton, may be tempted to apply his words even to the and William LeFanu. Excellent as they are, scholarly periodical when he says: "They may however, they rarely begin to discuss the basic likewise be compared to a stagecoach, which dynamics of scientific authorship. LeFanu comes performs the same course, empty as well as full" closest in his discussion of the fate of William [14]. After it has run its course, the periodical is Jenner's paper on cowpox [19], which even as placed in a repository; or, to return to Fielding careful a bibliographer as John Fulton indicates Garrison's analogy, it is stabled and fed, and cared was declined for publication by the Royal Society for whether it continues to play a useful role or not. of London in 1796 [20].* It is this dichotomy between the journal's function as a vehicle and as a repository that we have never Impact of Technology reconciled or dealt with adequately. Another point of view or focus of interest that has emerged from my vantage point behind, or is it Biobibliography in front of the elephant, is that which concerns the As I have continued to work in this field, two impact of technology, in the broad sense we have central problems or areas of interest have begun to taken here, on scholarship. The introduction of the emerge. The first concerns problems relating to periodical format as a medium for the dissemina- what we can call the publication behaviors of the tion of scientific information can be regarded as scientist, the why, how, where, and when scientists but one little step forward for mankind, when we publish. A good name for this area would be consider the major technological changes which biobibliography except that that term has been have taken place in this arena. I think there would appropriated for a different but related activity: be little disagreement about the first three major Dr. Claudius Mayer, the editor of the first eight inventions or technological changes: the invention volumes of the fourth series of the Index Catalogue of language, the invention of writing, and the from 1936 to 1943, used the term in 1939. The first invention of printing. There is still some question specimen pages of his Biobibliography of XVI about whether the introduction of electronic infor- Century Authors appeared in volume four of this mation processing devices like the computer will series [15]. Mayer planned to print the bibliogra- constitute the fourth major invention, or whether phy as a series of supplementary fascicules in its impact will begin to measure up to that of the successive volumes of the Index Catalogue. The other three. I think that a study of the way in first and regretfully last fascicule appeared in which technologies involved in speaking, writing, volume five in 1941, just before what those of my and printing impacted on the way people thought, generation sometimes still call "the war." It gathered, and used information may help us to covered the first half of the letter A, from Abatia understand the revolutionary electronic environ- to Alberti, and George Sarton himself called it "a ment in which we are living today. magnificent beginning" [16]. Nevertheless, it went Some problems are universal and perennial. little beyond the birth and death dates of the Allen Veaner commented rather evangelically in a authors, the known editions of their works and recent issue of the Microform Review that all some of the principal where the works recording materials are subject to deterioration were located. and destruction. The kind of biobibliography I have in mind is *There appears to be no conclusive evidence that the better exemplified by the work of Janet Doe, whom Royal Society ever rejected the paper. 330 Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 68(4) October 1980 SCHOLARSHIP AND LIBRARIANSHIP

No incised rock, no clay tablet, no engraved metal, no the characteristics of this period in saying that tanned parchment, no rag paper, no cellulose acetate, no "virtually all preliterate cultures were nonanalyti- polyester, no magnetic spot is immune from change [21]. cal." "Analysis," he continues, "seemingly comes Ernest Posner tells us that clay tablet archivists into its own when writing lays bare the intellectual in ancient Sumeria took care to maintain a proper structure of thought in permanent relationship by environment for materials in their charge. They externalizing it in static form" [25]. Wright built their storage chambers over grooved floors summons up a host of authorities to support the through which water could evaporate to prevent contention that the change from oral to written tablets from crumbling before they could be baked transmission of information represented a much [22]. Clay tablets are a very durable medium. more revolutionary change than that from the Scholars are still working on vast collections that written to the printed record [26]. have survived for thousands of years, while the The significance of the change is reflected in the printed books of the last half of the nineteenth interesting controversy about the reasons for century are crumbling in our hands. In fact the Plato's decision to bar poets from his ideal Repub- observation that Veaner brought away with him lic. Before the introduction of writing, all Greek from a 1976 National Conference on Preservation records and traditions were stored in memory. The was that "the more recent and the more sophisti- early Greek Mnemon or memory man helped to cated the technology, the less the lifetime of the store the community's records and was, in a sense, medium" [23]. This observation may have a corol- its librarian. The great Greek classics, the Iliad lary in an axiom that the more sophisticated the and the Odyssey, were also a part of this oral technology the less impact it has on the methodol- tradition, transmitted or, as Wright says, "com- ogies of scholarship. It is hard to follow Veaner, posed spontaneously in a live performance before a however, when he concludes that we may be critical audience" [27]. Plato's motive, therefore, coming close to the end of an era when recorded for excluding the poet from his ideal state may not knowledge is associated with artifacts, because in have been due to any disdain for poetry or fear that my view a computer tape or disc can be just as it might demoralize or threaten the stability of the much an artifact as a book, as some of us have republic; what he was attacking was a dependence discovered when a computer record is inadver- on traditional knowledge and conservatism of tently dumped or wiped out. thought for which the poet provided a primary One issue of the impact of technology on schol- vehicle in that day [28]. arship is whether the nature and the manner in One of the interesting things about technology is which knowledge is stored and passed on change or that new technology does not always replace old do not change the character or the way people deal technology. In fact, frequently the old technology with it. Language seems so much a part of our imposes itself on the new technology. This can be biological makeup that it is difficult to regard it as witnessed in what is called the persistence of the a technical innovation. Yet people such as Susan oral tradition, which is demonstrated in the way Langer regard it as "man's greatest invention" some teachers continue to read their texts to their [24]. I must confess I have no information on how students, a habit that harkens back to a depen- the acquisition of language impacted on librarian- dence on oral transmission as well as the later ship or information processing at the time when scarcity of written and printed books. And the language was invented except perhaps to venture a persistence of the oral tradition can perhaps also be guess that it must have been tremendous. Some of demonstrated in such ceremonial occasions as this the recent efforts to involve the higher primates one. with language systems may have something to teach us in this regard, although I assure you I am Writing far from suggesting any similarities between The transition from oral to written transmission librarians and gorillas and chimpanzees. of records was not an inevitable one. The pre- Columbian societies in the Western Hemisphere, Oral Transition although they were well advanced in many ways, There has been, however, a great deal written did not develop a system of writing comparable to about the oral tradition that encompasses a long those developed in the Middle East and Europe. period of the history of scholarship. Jesse Shera, in Posner [29] reminds us that writing was his introduction to H. Curtis Wright's The oral invented primarily to serve administrative and antecedents ofGreek librarianship, suggests one of business interests rather than the man of learning. Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 68(4) October 1980 331 DAVID A. KRONICK

We also find this process repeated with modern Renaissance was another factor. It brought the technologies that have been found useful by the scholar out of the seclusion of his study into the scholar. Most of the records found in ancient real world and gave the craftsman access to the depositories seem to be of a political, commercial, technical wisdom of the past. or legal nature. The ability to write and keep Eisenstein points out that printing also had a records was associated with the maintenance of direct role to play in this regard: power. As a result, scribes held high administrative appointments and were generously rewarded for Other fruitful forms of collaboration brought astrono- mers and engravers, physicians and painters together, their work. To this Posner adds wistfully: "Unfor- dissolving older divisions of intellectual labor and encour- tunately such archival prosperity was not an omen aging new ways of coordinating the work of brains, eyes of future well-being for the profession" [30]. and hands [34]. The mastery of writing made possible the devel- opment of advanced societies and the ability to Resistance to new technology is not always develop complex philosophical and scientific based on conservatism and traditionalism. In many systems. It also brought in a host of other, equally cases Renaissance book collectors rejected the revolutionary changes. It is only when we begin to printed book as a substitute for the manuscript, not recognize and understand these changes and the because they thought it was inferior as a product. changes that have taken place with the introduc- Some early books were based on inferior texts tion of other technologies that we shall begin to which were hastily edited because printers were in understand the impact of technology on scholar- a hurry to get to the market first with a well-known ship and librarianship in our own age. author. There are also uses of old technology that new Printing technology cannot replace. The fifteenth-century In the seventeenth century Francis Bacon was abbot Johannes Trimethius, for instance, exhorted already observing that printing had changed "the his monks to continue to copy manuscripts despite appearance and state of the whole world" [31]. the fact that printed books were beginning to pour Despite the voluminous literature on the history of from the presses of Europe. Working in the scripto- printing and typography and the economics and rium, he insisted, not only prevented idleness, but conditions of the printing trades, there has been also contributed to a better knowledge of scripture. little effort to show how these changes took place Besides, one could not be really sure whether these until the recent publication of Elizabeth Eisen- new materials were durable. He may have had a stein's The printing press as an agent of change. point. You may recognize reverberations of the One of the difficulties, as Eisenstein points out, is good abbot's remarks in comments you heard in that while it is possible to study the differences libraries not many years ago about computers. between literate and nonliterate cultures through Nevertheless, as Eisenstein tells us, Trimethius did the work of anthropologists, the difference between not hesitate to have his own works printed by the a society which depends on handwritten texts and new presses rather than having them copied by his one which uses the printing press must be deter- monks [35]. mined by consulting the records of the past [32]. The products of the early presses were, in fact, It is no accident of history that the scientific not much different in content and context from the revolution in the seventeenth century was preceded work of the scribes. They also appealed primarily by the invention of printing. In fact it may be said to the same audience. Eisenstein adds: "The more to have established one of the necessary precondi- closely one observes the age of incunabula the less tions for an activity that depends so heavily on the likely one is to be impressed by changes wrought by development and utilization of a public record. print" [36]. The new printing presses gave impetus There were, of course, other factors, as our not only to reproductions of some of the great social historians have shown us. One was the achievements of Western thought, but also to change of scholarship in Europe into a secular much that was spurious, inaccurate and supersti- occupation which, as Ben David has shown, was tious. The selections of the printers, says George the result of the development of universities, which Sarton: made possible the institutionalization of science as .... were largely based, then as now, on commercial a part of the corporate structure of European city prospects. The early printers were businessmen; though life [33]. The interaction between scholar and not as cynical and tough as our contemporaries. They craftsman and between scientist and artist in the preferred to issue popular books rather than unpopular

332 Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 68(4) October 1980 SCHOLARSHIP AND LIBRARIANSHIP ones, and could not afford to print books that would not already beginning to play a major role in our sell. The result was that they printed books of every kind, professional lives as librarians. The rapidity with both good and bad [37]. which this has occurred is reflected in Glyn It sometimes takes a long time before the impact Evans's remarks when he refers to the period of technological change can be felt. The Acca- before 1970 in on-line library networking as its demia del Cimento founded in Florence in 1657 stone age, and acknowledges that we have has been called "the first organization founded for currently advanced to its bronze age [41 ]. the purpose of making scientific experiments" In many ways we are still experiencing the [38]. The Accademia published its first and only cultural lag that occurs with most technological report, called the Saggi, or Essays, some two innovations, just as early printers imitated the hundred years after printing was introduced. Yet it manuscript book, and automobile manufacturers was published anonymously without any attribu- put the engine in front because that was where the tion of authorship despite the fact that some of the horse went. Not all so-called cultural lag, of outstanding scientists of the age were involved. It is course, is inappropriate or undesirable; I suppose not inconsistent, then, that the work contains only there may be engineering justifications for putting twenty-five citations in total. This may not neces- the engine in front. We used to be warned about sarily be a result of the fact that the Saggi included using the computer as just a printing press, largely original work. Janet Doe, in her bibliogra- although printing on demand may very well phy of Pare, who wrote much earlier, defends him become one of its revolutionary contributions. against the charges of plagiarism that have been This, however, is no longer printing in the conven- levied against him: tional sense, because now we have the capability not only of accessing information in a nonlinear The sixteenth century did not demand the copious foot- fashion, but also of accessing it without regard to notes of the twentieth. Par6 does not make many ack- location or time. nowledgements; that he was not meticulous about all of them was the fault of the age, not of the individual [39]. New machines do not always save us from old habits. I sometimes think that we tend to use our In fact the whole concept of intellectual property computer-based information systems like elec- seems, in some ways, to be a modern development. tronic slot machines into which we drop a few Merton [40] points out, in his Science, technology, descriptors, push a button, and hope to hit a and society in seventeenth century England, that jackpot. We are thus perpetuating what Don disputes concerning priority first became marked Swanson speaks of when he describes reference in the sixteenth century, when originality and work or information retrieval by being subject- competition assumed greater recognition in schol- oriented or word-oriented, rather than being arship. The change was, to be sure, a consequence oriented toward the solution of problems [42]. In not only of the introduction of printing, but print- our reference interviews we tend to ask the ques- ing helped to provide a method of establishing tion: What is the subject, rather than what is the intellectual property and a basis on which priority problem? I am not sure that computer-based could be demonstrated. systems are going to be able to help us deal more These are but a few aspects of the impact on effectively with this problem, however. scholarship of a technology which has been with us Dr. Joshua Lederberg in a recent essay suggests now over five hundred years, and which we are just that the new electronic technology will introduce beginning to recognize. What can we say then of wide-reaching and revolutionary changes in the the impact of the computer, a technology which, it ways scholars exchange, process, and publish infor- seems, was introduced only yesterday, and which mation [43]. Some of these ways are beginning to has already become such a force not only in librar- become apparent, but the impact in other areas of ianship and information processing but in our scholarship is still unclear. What will it do to our lives? concepts of intellectual property and copyright? The subject of copyright and fair return to Computers commercial publishers has recently become a It has become a part of conventional wisdom to subject of intense controversy. One view is that equate the computer with language, writing, and publishers of scholarly communications should be printing as the fourth great invention in informa- regarded in many ways as operating a public utility tion technology. Although it may be a long time and should be subject to the same controls and before we can assess its impact on scholarship, it is regulations as other public utilities, rather than

Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 68(4) October 1980 333 DAVID A. KRONICK being ruled solely by the marketplace. The 1930s-before "the war"-which I think may computer and electronic communication may very have some relevance here. It was called A little well change these relationships in ways we cannot night music; a discovery in the exploitation of an anticipate. They may even give back to the scholar art [45]. It was written by the distinguished Amer- and investigator full control of their own intellec- ican journalist Gerald Johnson, who learned to tual products. play the flute when he was, let us say, no longer young. He had no ambitions, he said, to become a LIBRARY SCHOLARSHIP virtuoso performer on the flute; he hoped merely to There are undoubtedly many other ways in develop an appreciation (it turned out to be more which the new technology will impact the life of like awe) of excellent flute playing when he heard the scholar and the life of the librarian. It may be a it. However, in playing chamber music with his long time before the computer revolution will have friends he found delights not even the most profi- its Elizabeth Eisenstein, but we can prepare for the cient professional always achieves, such as those changes and be more sensitive and responsive to brief moments when everyone is playing in tune, them when they occur by being more aware of how and collectively one moment of sheer beauty is the other great revolutionary changes in communi- achieved. Knowing, he said, "the formidable cations had their impact. For those of us who are nature of the difficulties that have to be overcome fearful of the impending paperless society, there by an expert ... inevitably heightens the apprecia- may be some assurances in the fact that librarians tion of a fine performance" [46]. have survived the introduction of the clay tablet, One of the advantages for the amateur-and I the papyrus scroll, and the printed book. must confess it is also one of the frustrations-is As I look back at what I have said up to now, I that we can pursue our quarry pretty much as the do not seem to have been talking very much about mood moves us, and that we don't have to persist in "the librarian's life" even in the narrow sense that the chase to put meat on our tables. We must not, I intended of its relation to scholarship. The librar- of course, ignore or neglect in the process those ian's life has many more interests, challenges, and technical and intellectual pursuits which are just as opportunities for growth and sheer pleasure than I basic and necessary to our craft and profession as can even begin to suggest. What I hope I have been librarians. I hope nevertheless that in our lives as saying is that we need to look more closely at the librarians we will have some time along the way to intellectual underpinnings of our profession and make a little night music. particularly of our history. Others have said this REFERENCES more eloquently than I. Erika Love made this a theme of her presidential address before this asso- 1. Reik T. Listening with the third ear. New York: Farrar, Strauss, 1948:vii. ciation last year [44]. What I hope I have also been 2. Cave R. Rare book librarianship. London: Cleve suggesting is that if as librarians we intend to have Bingley, 1976:12. meaningful discourse with scholars, we need to 3. Merton RK. The sociology of science. Chicago: know something of the craft of the scholar, and Press, 1973. perhaps even to try our hand at a little scholarship 4. Shera JH. An epistemological foundation for . In: Montgomery EB, ed. The foundations ourselves. of access to knowledge: a symposium. Syracuse, Of course, as amateurs we shall have to be very NY: School of Library Science, 1968:13. careful. The general attitude of most professionals 5. Shera JH. Sociological foundations of librarianship. toward amateurs in many fields, I have found, Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1970:107. 6. Ibid.:29. ranges from tolerant amusement to abject scorn. I 7. Ibid.:84. am reminded of the time in my youth when I got 8. Ibid.:84. excited about what I thought was a new idea, that 9. Rich RF. The pursuit of knowledge. Knowledge, the work rhythms of any period are reflected in its Creation, Diffusion, Utilization 1979 Sept; 1:19. music. My friend the musicologist was the kind of 10. Bry I. The emerging field of sociobibliography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977. professional who smiled tolerantly when I told him 11. Bry I. Bibliographic issues in the behavioral sciences. about it. "It's a wonderful idea," he said. "In fact Int Encycl Soc Sci 1968;7:326-31. it's called Arbeitsrhythmuseinfluss or something 12. Singer C, Holmyard EJ, Hall AR, eds. A history of like that, and there's an introduction to the subject technology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1954;1 :v. in German in six volumes." 13. Garrison FH. The medical and scientific periodicals We should not be discouraged however. There of the 17th and 18th centuries. Bull Inst Hist Med was a little book that was popular back in the 1934 July; 2:287. 334 Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 68(4) October 1980 SCHOLARSHIP AND LIBRARIANSHIP

14. Fielding H. The history of Tom Jones. New York: change. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Modern Library, 1940:40. Press, 1979:4. 15. Index-Catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon 32. Ibid.:9. General's Office. Washington, DC, 1939;4:1-20. 33. Ben-David J. Scientific growth: a sociological view. 16. Sarton G. Review of Index-Catalogue Vol. VI. Isis Minerva 1964;2:455-76. 1941/42 June; 33:726-7. 34. Eisenstein op. cit.:56. 17. Meyerhoff E. Foundations of medical librarianship. 35. Ibid.: 14. Bull Med Lib Assoc 1977 Oct;65:409-18. 36. Ibid.:26. 18. Doe J. A bibliography of the works of Ambroise 37. Sarton G. Six wings: men of science in the Renais- Par6. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, sance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1937:xiii. 1957:118. 19. LeFanu WR. A bio-bibliography of Edward Jenner, 38. Middleton WEK. The experimenters: a study of the 1749-1823. London: Harvey and Blythe, 1951:23. Accademia del Cimento. Baltimore, MD: Johns 20. Fulton JF. The impact of science in American Hopkins Press, 197 1:1. history. Isis 1951 Oct;42:176-91. 21. Veaner AB. Permanence: a view from to the long 39. Doeop.cit.:xiv. range. Microform Rev 1979 Spring;8:75-7. 40. Merton R. Science, technology and society in seven- 22. Posner E. Archives in the ancient world. Cambridge, teenth century England. New York: Howard MA: Harvard University Press, 1972:54. Fertig, 1970:169. 23. Veaner op. cit. 41. Evans GT. Online library networking, a biblio- 24. Cited in 5:33. graphic essay. Bull Amer Soc Info Sci 1979 25. Wright HC. The oral antecedents of Greek librarian- June;5:1 1-14. ship. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 42. Swanson DR. Libraries and the growth of knowl- 1977:x. edge. Libr Q 1979 Jan; 49:3-25. 26. Ibid.: 129. 43. Lederberg J. Digital communication. Proc IEEE 27. Ibid.: 130. 1978 Nov; 66:1314-9. 28. Havelock EA. A preface to Plato. Cambridge, MA: 44. Love E. Research: the third dimension of librarian- Belknap Press, 1963. ship. Bull Med Libr Assoc 1980 Jan;68:1-5. 29. Posner op. cit.:23. 45. Johnson G. A little night music. 2d ed. New York: 30. Ibid.:69. Harper, 1937. 31. Eisenstein EL. The printing press as an agent of 46. Ibid.:99.

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