The Librarian's Life, Scholarship and Librarianship* BY DAVID A. KRONICK, PH.D., Library 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 Librarians 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.