History of Library and Information Science Education
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ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN PRODUCTION NOTE University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library Large-scale Digitization Project, 2007. Library Trends VOLUME 34 NUMBER 3 WINTER 1986 University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science Wherr necessary, permission is granted by the copyright owner for lihrarim arid others registerrd with the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) to photocopy any artirle herein for $3.00 per article. Pay- ments should be sent directly to the Copy- right Clearance Center, 21 Congress Street, Salem, Massachusetts 10970. Copy- ing done for other than personal or inter- nal referenre use-surh a5 copying for general distribution, for advertising or promotional purposes, for creating new rollective works, or for resale-without the expressed permission of The Board of Trustees of The University of Illinois is prohibited. Requests for special permis- sion or bulk orders should he addressed to The Graduate School of Library and Infor- mation Science, 249 Armory Building, 505 E. Armory St., Champaign, Illinois 61820. Serial-fee code: 0024-2594/85 $3 f .OO. Copyright 0 1986 The Board of Trustees of The llniversity of Illinois. I History of Library and Information Science Education DONALD G. DAVIS, JR. PHYLLIS DAIN Issue Editors CONTENTS Donald G. Davis, Jr. 357 INTRODUCTION Phyllis Dain Francis L. Miksa 359 MELVIL DEWEY: THE PROFESSIONAL EDUCATOR AND HIS HEIRS Wayne A. Wiegand 383 THE SOCIALIZATION OFLIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIERTCESTUDENTS: REFLECTIONS ON A CENTURY OF FORMAL EDUCATION FOR LIBRAR- IANSHIP Mary Niles Maack 401 WOMEN IN LIBRARY EDUCATION: DOWN THE UP STAIRCASE William L. Williamson 433 A CENTURY OF STUDENTS Laurel A. Grotzinger 45 1 CURRICULUM AND TEACHING STYLES: EVOLUTION OF PEDAGOGICAL PATTERNS Philip A. Metzger 469 AN OVERVIEW OF THE HISTORY OF LIBRARY SCIENCE TEACHING MATERIALS Elizabeth W. Stone 489 THE GROWTH OF CONTINUING EDUCATION Michael H. Harris 515 THE DIALECTIC OF DEFEAT: ANTIMONIES IN RESEARCH IN LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE This Page Intentionally Left Blank Introduction DONALD G. DAVIS, JR. PHYLLIS DAIN ANNIVERSARIESARE TIMES for taking stock of the past as well as conceiv- ing new visions for the future. In librarianship we are at such a time: the centenary of library education. The first library school in the United States and in the world, opened in 1887-Melvil Dewey’s School of Library Economy of Columbia College, predecessor of the New York State Library School at Albany and the later reconstituted Columbia University School of Library Service. The creation of the School of Library Economy signified the emergence of libraries as important social institutions that needed expert, knowledgeable librarians to run them. It also heralded the rise of librarianship as a self-conscious profes- sion characterized by an evolving triad of specialized knowledge, skill in applying that knowledge, and a service ethos. This history has been a checkered one and not without struggle and ambivalence-both within the library education community and outside it in librarianship gener- ally. Today, one hundred years after the founding, graduate library education has been accepted as a prerequisite for professional practice and offered in some of the finest universities in the United States, and library schools have produced a growing body of research. Yet problems remain. There is renewed questioning of the character, quality, and value of library education in a rapidly changing, insecure world. Donald G. Davis, Jr. is Associate Professor, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Texas at Austin; and Phyllis Dain is Professor, School of Library Service, Columbia University, New York, New York. WINTER 1986 357 DAVIS & DAIN In 1986, in connection with the New York City conference of the American Library Associa tion, the Association for Library and Infor- mation Science Education, as part of the centenary celebration, spon- sored a symposium at Columbia University on library and information science education its status and future. An integral part of this meeting was a historical consideration of the course of education for librarianship-how we got from there to here, so to speak, and with speculation about where we go from here. The intellectual basis for the symposium is a two-part series in Library Trends-the first part, issued in advance of the meeting, is devoted to the history of library education; the second, the conference papers, focuses on contemporary issues and trends. This Library Trends number on the history of library education is not intended to be a comprehensive or definitive treatment of the sub- ject. Although there has been a good deal of research on related topics in recent years, much more remains to be done, as there is not yet a sufficiently large body of work to draw upon for thorough syntheses. Indeed, this Library Trends issue has been conceived as a vehicle for the presentation of original research and theoretical speculation as well as summaries and evaluations of existing research and thought. The aim was to gather together a group of thoughtful, intellectually sophisti- cated essays on a variety of themes and topics. Some papers were com- missioned de novo; others are based on research in progress or on topics on which prospective authors have already written substantially. A number of the papers take fresh points of view and have tried in a pioneering manner to integrate research in other fields with the study of our own professional education. The results constitute early attempts and initial steps to bring interpretations of our history into the main- stream of current historical and sociological thought. The conception of library education is deliberately broad, encompassing formal and informal modes and a variety of settings-library schools, libraries, and professional associations, among others. We hope that all the contribu- tions will provoke new thought and further exploration. 358 LIBRARY TRENDS Meld Dewey: The Professional Educator and His Heirs FRANCIS L. MIKSA The Assessment of Dewey’s Educational Work MELVILDEWEY IS, without question, the person most responsible for establishing formal education for librarianship in the United States. On 5 January 1887, after more than three years of planning, he opened the doors of the first library school in this country, the School of Library Economy at Columbia College in New York City. His work in the school was extensive. He developed its curriculum through a trial-and- error method and arranged for a number of outside lecturers. By his own accounting he presented more than 60 percent of the formal class sessions conducted by its resident staff during the lecture terms in its first two years. 1 He also nearly singlehandedly wrote and published a jour- nal, Library Notes, that served as a serial textbook for the school.’And, between late 1888 and early 1889 when Columbia College withdrew its support for the school, Dewey reestablished it at the New York State Library in Albany, New York. Dewey’s personal involvement in the school began to diminish as early as 1889, but his influence was such that the school continued for years afterward in the course he had originally set for it.3 Dewey’s contribution to early library education also went well beyond his own school. He was untiring in his efforts to explain, extol, defend, and promote library education throughout the larger library community. His own school also became an effective educational model by virtue of its graduates becoming staff members of the burgeoning Francis L. Miksa is Professor, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Texas at Austin. WINTER 1986 359 FRANCIS MIKSA new library education programs. Between 1887 and 1920, graduates of Dewey’s school went to no less than eleven of the other fourteen library schools that would eventually survive the early period, supplying at different times no less than fifty-three faculty members. Of those, eleven also served as directors or associate directors in seven of the schools. Graduates also became teachers at different times in no less than thirty- five less substantial educational programs including summer schools, library training classes, and library association training program^.^ Although there can be no question about Dewey’s role in establish- ing and shaping formal education for librarianship, assessing the char- acter of his contribution is quite another matter. Critical studies, beginning especially with Charles C. Williamson’s Training for Library Senlice in 1923, have tended to indict the early period in library education and Dewey himself for not bequeathing the right kind of education to the library profession. Two points in the indictment are typical. First, early library educa- tion has been faulted for not being integrallyconnected to the collegiate academic community-for not absolutely requiring college graduation as an entrance requirement and for not requiring a collegiate academic environment for its conduct. Second, the education that Dewey and others passed along has been heavily criticized for being centrally con- cerned with technical matters rather than with abstract knowledge; for functioning merely as systematic programs of apprenticeship in which chiefly clerical skills were taught. In many respects these two basic criticisms of early library education are redundant. Education that is noncollegiate in its bearing and education that is merely “technical” are simply two different ways of saying the same thing-that such educa- tion is in some way anti-intellectual (or at least a-intellectual) rather than profe~sional.~ A third criticism that arose after the beginning of the University of Chicago Graduate Library School and especially after the 1951 ALA accreditation standards is that the same early educational programs were not research-oriented. This is a moot point, however, since wide- spread research has been a more recent development in almost all social service professional fields. One may just as well criticize Charles C. Williamson as Dewey for a lack of emphasis on research.