Toward a Theory of Librarianship and Information Science

8/11/2019 Toward a Theory of Librarianship and Information Science

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Toward a Theory of Librarianship andInformation Science

Jesse H. SheraDean EmeritusSchool of Library Science

Case Western Reserve University

RESUMO

As funes da biblioteconomia vm se alargandoatravs dos tempos e refletem sempre as atividades,valores e objetivos das sociedades que as susten-tam. Sua misso social no se modificou e os bi-bliotecrios tm, contudo, uma compreenso im-perfeita do livro como entidade intelectual. Devemeles conhecer o sistema cognitivo do indivduo ea rede de comunicao da sociedade, a importnciadesse conhecimento para o indivduo e a socie-dade. A epistemologia social seria uma nova dis-

ciplina cujo foco estaria na produo, fluxo, inte-grao e consumo de todas as formas de pensamentocomunicado por toda a estrutura social. A biblio-teconomia, fundamentalmente cincia do compor-tamento, considerada pelos russos como um ramodas cincias sociais. Nossa cultura, com profundasrazes da Cincia, comea a perceber que estaconstri to bem quanto destri, e a dcada de 70dever ser mais dedicada s cincias sociais doque s cincias fsicas. Quanto s atuais tendncias,a recuperao mecanizada da informao foi umcampo que despertou muito interesse mas foi bempouco produtivo, pois a nfase recaiu na mquinae no no aspecto humano, lgico, lingstico etc.;u bibliografia, atividade central do bibliotecrio entendida aqui como toda atividade que pretendecolocar usurio e livro juntos no tem consi-derado a especializao de assunto: por outro lado,verifica-se no momento interesse pela cooperao.estimulada pela tecnologia da comunicao, teoriageral dos sistemas, automao e tecnologias cor-relatas, o que significa um afastamento das huma-nidades em direo s cincias fsicas, biolgicase sociais. Pessoas de outras reas tm procurado abiblioteconomia por fatores diversos mas esta"invaso" lhe trar benefcios; quanto biblioteca

pblica, o bibliotecrio est procurando fazer ser-vio social. Todas estas tendncias implicara naalterao da educao profissional do bibliotecrio.Sua primeira necessidade ter boa formao geralou liberal, com um mestrado numa rea de assuntoespecializado, que s ter significado se tiver porbase aquela educao geral. A pesquisa na biblio-teconomia dever contar com a participao deespecialistas das diversas reas porque o bibliotec-rio sozinho no tem formao capaz de faz-lo

desenvolver seus projetos. Se o objetivo da forma-o profissional desenvolver a capacidade depropor alternativas, ento todo o sistema educacio-nal deve trabalhar em conjunto na criao de umeleitorado esclarecido capaz de uma escolha racio-nal para que a democracia possa sobreviver.

Libraries are a social invention, devised originally,and for centuries remained, as repositories of thetranscript of their culture. They were essentiallyarchival in character created to protect theimportant documents that were necessary for theoperation of state, the transactions of enterprise,

and the transmission of religious belief and ritual.They were also centers of scholarship to whichlearned men could repair to consult the clay tables,the papyrus and vellum rolls, and eventually thecodices that were needed for the advancement ofteaching and inquiry. So far as the survivingrecord reveals, libraries were first the special re-sponsibility of the state, but the priesthoods and

This paper was originally presented before a seminarat the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions,Santa Barbara, California, November l, 1972.

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private benefactors soon shared in their develop-ment. This multiplicity of functions has charac-terized the library to the present. They were, thencreatures of the aristocracy and the intellectual

elite. It would not be practicable here to tracein any detail the organizational morphology of thelibrary suffice it to say that the role of thelibrary was broadened during the eighteenth cen-tury onward to include a variety of social func-tions: the support of business and industrial en-terprise, of the educational system at all levels,the popular culture, and the growing movementfor self-education. Horace Mann called the librarythe "crowning glory of our public schools," anda century later it was, to Alvin Johnson, "thepeople's university." Thus an instrumentality thatwas originally the exclusive concern, property,if you will, of the elite, "a nest to hatch scholarsto use John Quincy Adams' phrase, became anagent of democracy, reaching its influence out evento the underpriviledged and socially disadvan-taged, but always it has been a part of the fabricof society, reflecting the attitudes, values, andgoals of the culture that supported it.

The Problem of the Individual

The sponsorship of the library, then, has throughouthistory and during varying periods of time, beenassumed by the nobility, the priesthoods, privatebenefactors, voluntary associations, business andindustrial enterprise, and a variety of governmentaagencies represented in the public sector. Thelibrary has increased dramatically in size and complexity, created a body of more or less standardizedrules and procedures, evolved new patterns for itsadministrative control, and constantly widenedits clientele, while not changing its basic mission,which is to maximize the social utility of graphicrecords for benefit of the individual and, throughthe individual, of society. The role of the li-brarian, then, is that of a mediator between manand book, where book is a generic term thatincludes all graphic records, and it is his specialresponsibility to operate in that complex associa-tion of record and human mind. Yet this re-lationship, which is at once intellectual, psycholog-ical, and physiological is still only imperfectly

understood.Traditionally librarians have made, either implicitlyor explicitly, certain ad hoc assumptions aboutbooks and men, and the benefi ts that reading theone brings to the other, nor have they seriouslyentertained the possibility that, under certaincircumstances, and for some individuals, there maybe no benefit at al l. What is a book that a manmay know it, and a man tha t he may know abook?There is certainly nothing very esoteric or mys-terious about the book as a physical entity, it is

familiar to all of us. But the book as an intermediarybetween communicator and receptor, as a mediumthat bears the message, a book that can be"known," is only very imperfectly understood. We

are all aware that the book as a physical objectdoes not change, but the impact of its intellectualcontent varies widely from reader to reader andfrom time to time even with the same reader.KingLear when read for the first time by a collegestudent is not the same King Lear read by anadult in the years of intellectual maturity. "A bookis a mirror," wrote the eighteenth century Germanphysicist and addict of aphorisms, Georg ChristophLichtenberg, "when a jackass looks into it hecannot expect to see St. Paul looking back."1Wedo know that for a large segment of the popula-tion, even in the highly literate Western World,the graphic record is a relatively unimportantsource of knowledge. Even for those whose lives

are centered about the book, graphic recordsform only a relatively small part of the total humanexperience. Harold Lasswell's "social planetarium,"is predicated on the use of total sensory perceptionto achieve insight into what man will be like inthe future. Yankee culture has always been ambiva-lent about the act of reading: on the one handextolling reading as a "good" in and of itself, whileon the other hand decrying "book larnin'." For allof our McLuhanesque babblings about the mediumand the message, or the scholarly inquiries o fFather Ong into the "presence of the word," theeffect of the graphic record sitll eludes us; onlyyour censor "knows."

But when we turn to the second part of our rhetor-ical question and begin to inquire into the natureof man in relation to the written word the comp-lexities of the problem increase sharply, for aman is a far more intricate entity than the book.As yet the neurologist, physiologist, and thosewho have studied the communication process inall its ramifications have been unable to tell uswhat happens in that mysterious chain of eventsthat takes place from printed page to eye to brainand the behavior that results therefrom. We areconcerned here, first with the process of communi-cation itself, and second, with the problem ofknowledge. The end of communication is, of course,the achievement of like-mindedness, which is not

to be mistaken for agreement, but rather compre-hension of the content of the message. The problemrelates to lhe nature of knowledge itself, of thecognitive process, and of language and its capabi-lities and limitations in communicating the message.The nature of consciousness and cognition mustnecessarily be left to the neuro-physiologists and

l The German givesAffe and Apostel, but we havesubstituted a jackass for the monkey and identifiedthe apostle as St. Paul.

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themselves is not "Is librarianship a science?" butrather "What kind of science does or should,librarianship represent?" Few will deny, we believe,that the human use of the graphic records of

society is a scientifically based study to which allbranches of human knowledge can contribute.Because librarianship is primarily concerned withthe utilization of the social transcript by humanbeings both ind ividually and collectively, it isfundamentally a behavioristic science, but becausethe methods and findings of the physical andbiological sciences are being increasingly appliedto the study of human behavior, librarianship mustbe "scientific" even in the classical use of the term.A librarian, therefore, must be a scientist, notbecause he may be doling out scientific l iteratureto scientists and will perforce need to communicateintelligibly with his patrons, but because science,in its broadest sense, is the foundation of thelibrarian's scholarship.The interdisciplinary focus of systems analysis andoperations research has not only direct relevanceto the librarian's procedures and technology, butalso a symbolic meaning for the epistemologicalproblem; for, as systems analysis directs scrutiny tothe interrelations among the component parts ofan operating whole, so the mark of social epis-temology is that it places its emphasis upon thewhole man and the whole society, and all of theirways of thinking, knowing, feeling, acting, andcommunicating. Science itself is a major social en-terprise, carried on by individuals to be sure, butin the present day increasingly by individuals

working in concert within the context or environ-ment of educational, research, industrial, andgovernmental organizations and institutions.But librarians do not live by the bread of mathe-matics alone, nor by the succotash of systemsanalysis; to say that system is the essence of thescience of librarianship states a very narrow andrestricted view. The study of social epistemology,which is in reality the study of social cognition, isthe proper foundation of a science of librarian-ship. As a study in its own right it must synthesizeand draw upon the work of many disciplines,but it must always focus upon these processes bywhich society achieves a state of knowing andcommunicates its knowledge throughout its con-

stituent parts. The librarian's responsibility is theefficient and effective management of the transcript,the graphic record of all that society knows andhas recorded about itself and its world. The domainof the library includes that which the socialorganism has learned, its values as well as itsimagery as well as its reality; it is at once historical,contemporary, and anticipatory. Thus the librariancan carry out his social responsibilities with maxi-mum effectiveness only when he understandsthe cognitive processes of society and can translate

that understanding into service; it is at oncederivative, analytic, and synthetic.Laurence Heilprin has admirably summarized theimportance of the epistemological approach to the

problems of the librarian, in reviewing an earl ierwork of the present writer on this subject:

"If the librarian ... is actually an important servicelink in optimizing the use of graphic recordedinformation, then success depends on how much ofthis process he understands. He must see it all inprofile how we manufacture knowledge, startingwith direct sense impressions and including (inscience, at least) careful comparison of commu-nicated abstractions . . . He also will tend to bemore of a scientist, and in particular will have tounderstand the way in which what once has beenaccepted as objective tends with the advance ofknowledge to slip back into its prior state of subjec-tivity. If epistemology encompasses this entirefield, including all of communication science,clearly a large expansion is needed in the back-ground of the information scientist. He must at leastbe aware of the entire process of knowledge, andof the principal constraints on and weak points inits communication. Educators who have to con-struct courses to guide and instruct the informationscientist cannot be less broad than those they aretrying to educate. To be a competent teacher inthis field will indeed be a challenge. We mayconclude that perhaps the main reason why infor-mation science has progressed such a short dis-tance as a science is that we do not understand the

connections we are groping for here. Lack ofknowledge of epistemoly is possibly the greatestbarrier to improving library and informationscience."

2

Heilprin has, to all intents and purposes, madecommunication science virtually synonymous withinformation science, and it is true that the phys-ical scientists, especially the mathematicians andengineers, have captured the latter and made ittheir own almost to the exclusion of the librarianswho, originally entered the profession largelythrough the humanities Heilprin was himselforiginally a physicist. A reasonable consensus hasbeen reached that information science is an area

of research that explores communication phenomenaand the properties of communication systems. Itdraws its substance and techniques from a varietyof overlapping disciplines to achieve an under-standing of the properties, behavior, and flow ofinformation. It includes systems analysis, environ-mental aspects of information and communication,information media and language analysis, the

2 MONTGOMERY, Edward B ed, The Foundations ofAccess to Knowledge . A Symposium. Syracuse, NewYork, Syracuse University Press, 1968. p. 26-7.

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TOWARD A THEORY OF LIBRARIANSHIP AND INFORMATION SCIENCE

organization of information, man-systems relation-ships, and other disciplines, either established orin the process of development, that might promiseto throw light on a particular area of inquiry.

By "communication," the information scientist meansany kind of knowledge through any medium orenvironment. But merely to state the definitionreveals how very far we are from understandingthe nature and behavior of information and thesocial manifestations of it.Robert Fairthorne sees in information science "adangerous tendency to bring in any and everyscience or technique or phenomenon under the in-formation science heading." He saw in thisemerging discipline no "common principles," andone does not create common principles by givingdifferent things the same name. We have no quarrelwith the scientist and the engineer, both can makesubstantial contributions to what we have calledsocial epistemology, but to pour the complex studyof social cognition into only the scientific mould,denies the obvious fact that man is a social being.He derives information from an infinite array ofsources from which he shapes and reshapes hisbehavior. Nor should the humanities be overlookedfor they, too, have an important role in the cogni-tive process. It is entirely possible that a scientistcan derive insight into a problem he is inves-tigating as much from listening to a symphony asto reading a scientific paper o r report. Playingin an amateur quartel may be much more thanrelaxation for the chemist; it may be an integralpart of the creative process. A dream of snakes,

with their tails in their mouths, rolling like hoopsgave Kekul the inspiration for the benzine ring.The study of the cognitive process in society canilluminate even the most remote areas of intellec-tual activity regardless of the methods and tech-niques that it may borrow from other disciplines.Already the Russians have subordinated informa-tion science to the social sciences. A specialcommittee reporting to the Council for MutualEconomic Assistance has written, "InformationScience is a discipline belonging to Social Sciencewhich studies the structure and general charac-teristics of scientific information and also generallaws governing all scientific communication proc-esses." But though the Russians have made infor-

mation science a branch of the social sciences,the focus is still upon scientific communication.There would certainly seem to be no valid reasonwhy other substantive arcas should not be explored.The information scientist does not, or should not,restrict himself to scientific information.Our contemporary culture is, of course, deeplyrooted in Science, with a capital S, and for betteror worse it shapes the daily lives of all of us.But recently there has been a growing disillusionwith what the scientists and engineers are doingto society, and we are descovering that Science will

not solve all the ills by which we are beset, as weso naively once thought it would. Science candestroy as well as create, and today it is doing bothremarkably well. It now seems quite likely that

the problems of the "seventies" are much more aptto be in the social, rather than the physical,sciences. Indeed many of the tasks that confrontus will be the correction of social ills that are theheritage of Science. Policy at the national, state,and local levels and in all forms of organization,whether in the public or private sectors, derivesfrom the point at which cognition (knowledge ofthe facts) and conceptualization (judgment)meet and interact. Or, to express the idea with adifferent analogy, policy is the resultant of aparal lelogram of two orces , cognition, " telling itlike it is," and conceptualization, the interpretationof those facts in the light of experience derivedfrom the immediate environment and an under-standing of the past.

The Librarian and the Machine

Perhaps no aspect of librarianship has aroused somuch interest, not to say curiosity in the publicmind as mechanized information retrieval, and nonehas been so unproductive. As early as the late1930's, Frederick Kepple, then executive directorof the Carnegie Corporation of New York, foresawin the Hollerith tabulating machines the possibilityof searching literature when the text was coded ina way appropriate to the machine's capabilities.Hope sprung anew, after the Second World War,

with the development of large-scale general purposecomputers, or "giant brains." One should not saythat all attempts to automate indexing, abstracting,and literature searching have been a failure,however, for work on the problem is still goingforward in many places, and it seems inconceivablethat an innovation so inherently powerful as thecomputer would leave the problem of the libraryuntouched. Nevertheless, the reasons for incon-spicuous success up to the present time are nu-merous. First, the costs of development and useof such examples as we do have are so great asto be economically impracticable. Second, experi-mentation began with the engineering aspects ofthe problem; that is, machines were built that were

monuments to the engineers' art, but no one knewquite what to do with them when they were built.Technology preceded theory. "Software," hadbeen neglected in deference to "hardware," and fewunderstood the linguistic, logical, and organiza-tional problems involved. The result has been thatmost of the machines have been, not informationretrieval mechanisms, but document retrieval de-vices electronic stack-boys rather than electronicreference librarians. These machines have emu-lated the physical behavior of the librarian ratherthan his intellectual processes. The engineers saw

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the motions of the librarian as he "fetched andcarried," as the early explorers of flight sought tocopy the birds. There is as yet no theory of "aero-dynamics" in librarianship.But to say that the computer has not yet fulfilledits promise as an acceptable instrument for infor-mation retrieval does not imply that its coming hasbeen without benefi t to the l ibrary world. Formany library housekeeping operations fiscal con-trol, circulation records, the preparation of cat-alogues the computer has been eminently success-ful. Moreover, on-line shared-time systems usedin conjunction with closed-circuit television havegreatly expedited the growth of library networks,such asthat of the Ohio College Library Centerin Columbus, to the substantial advantage of theparticipating libraries. Increasingly libraries aremaking use of machine-readable tapes produced byother libraries, such as the MARC project at theLibrary of Congress and comparable services per-formed by the National Library of Medicine. Inlibrary-related operations, the production of indexesand concordances, the computer has lifted aheavy manual burden of scholarly spade-work. Avery limited success has also been achieved inautornated abstracting though its efficiency in thisarea is yet to be proved. All of these adaptationsof the computer should become increasingly ben-eficial as experience is gained. That cataloging and,eventually, reference services in the library will bedrastically changed in the not-far-distant future bycomputer technology would seem to be a logicalconclusion.

Yet, as Archibald MacLeish has pointed out, mi-raculous as these electronic contraptions are, theyhave become available, "precisely at a time whenthe great human need is not for additional infor-mation or more rapid information or more uni-versally available information but for the com-prehension of the enormous quantit ies of existinginformation the scientific and other triumphs ofthe last several generations have already dumpedinto our minds. It is not additional 'messages' weneed, and least of all additional 'messages' whichmerely tell us that the medium which communi-cates the message has changed the world. We knowthe world has changed ... What we do not knowis how, precisely, it is changing and in what di-

rection and with what consequences to ourselves."3

Perhaps the greatest contribution the computer hasmade to librarianship to the present time is thatsubtle and intangible way in which it has compelledlibrarians for the first time to think analyticallyand critically about what they are doing andwhether they should be doing it. The computer hasgiven librarians a whole new frame of reference

3 MACLEISH, ARCHIBALD Champion of a Cause.Chicago, American Library Association, 1971. p. 246.

for the methods and techniques which, over theyears, they have come unquestioningly to accept asaxiomatic. There has been considerable debatein the computer community over whether or not

computers can be made which will "think." Thedebate is a futile one and most of it rests on puresemantic notions. However, there would seemto be a certain reciprocity of relationship betweenwhat the applied mathematicians and engineersare doing and the investigations of the cognitiveprocess by the neuro-physiologists and psychologists.As man learns more about the nature of thoughthe will doubtless be able to fabricate mechanismsthat simulate thought, whether they actually "think"or not. And as we learn more about computers weshould be able to derive increasingly perceptiveinsights into the operation of the brain and thecentral nervous system. To know more than we donow about how man learns, both man as an in-

dividual and mankind collectively, is an excitingprospect for both teacher and librarian, but it raisessome serious, not to say frightening, problemsrespecting the possibility of eventual thought con-trol that will make our present concern overcensorship pale into insignificance; here would bethe ultimate in brainwashing. But man is not likelyto impose upon himself a moritorium on inquiry,certainly he has not done so in the past. If we even-tually come to understand the process of personaland social cognition we inust develop an ethic andthe necessary controls that will keep it out of thehands of the unscrupulous. We cannot answerThomas Huxley's question, "What are you going todo with all these new things?" by concerningourselves with only man's place in nature, asphilosophy and science have done in the past, whileignoring man's place in the new environmentcreated by "all these new things." As Elting Morisonhas pointed out, the rate of change, all create inthe environment conditions that are beyond thehuman powers of accommodation. The result is asense of alienation that is intensified by the factthat though the system may have an intellectualand empirical integrity it has no apparent purposebeyond effective operation. Libraries, even highlymechanized and efficiently operated libraries,should not exist to give librarians something to do,though we confess to having seen some libraries

that would seem to have no other raison d'etre.More than ever our society appears to need whatlibraries have to offer, but what the nature ofthat need is, and how it should be met is stillunclear,

The Flight from Bibliography

"Bibliography bears its investigating torch into allparts of knowledge," wrote Gustave Mouravit, inpraising the Brunet system of bibliographic classi-



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fication when it was at the height of its popularity,more than a century ago. Yet almost at the verytime that Mouravit was declaring the importanceof bibliography to the world of scholarship, and the

bibliographic problem as being central to thelibrarian's responsibilitics, librarians, inspired bya vision of the library as the great agency of uni-versal education, were turning their backs on theirbibliographic heritage. There was nothing in-herently wrong, of course, in the librarians broad-ening their services and reaching out to "thecommon man," who then seemed, and still is, thehope of democracy. But when the librarians beganto proselyte they were led to forget that librarian-ship is fundamentally a bibliographic enterpriseregardless of the sophistication of the clientele. Weare here, of course, using "bibliography" in itsbroadest sense, not merely to be confined to the

compiling of bibliographies. By bibliographic activ-ity we would mean to include all those opera-tions, funetions, and insights that are required tobring book and user together, under appropriateheadings. The librarians failed to perceive that onecannot serve the library needs of the "commonman," by being a common librarian, any more thana good children's librarian can be a child. Tobring books and people intellectually togetherrequires a certain body of knowledge and skills, acertain expertise, that has not been appreciated,and for which our present system of education forlibrarianship has not prepared its students.The bibliographic enterprise is composed of three

constituent elements: acquisition, which meansknowing what materials to acquire and how toacquire them; organization, the arrangement andanalysis of the materials so that their intellectualcontent will be appropriately available; and service,which is assistance to the reader. Traditionallythese functions have been kept separate on theorganization chart of most libraries, each depart-ment with its own staff. This practice we believeto have been a mistake, for these elements arenot isolates but parts of an integrated whole. Con-ventionally we have thought in terms of acquisi-tion librarians, catalogers, and reference librarians,when we should have been thinking of subject

specialists who have the competence to unite inthemselves the three basic capabilities representedin their subject, or substantive branch of knowledge.A librarian is not just a librarian, he is a librarianof something, a librarian in a specific subjectfield, and it is, therefore, the librarians substantiveknowledge, rather than the tricks of the librarian'strade, that make him the bibliographer he shouldbe. "What is a book to a librarian?" MacLeishasked the audience assembled for the dedication ofthe Scott Library at York University in Toronto."Is it merely the unit of collection, a more or less

fungible (as the lawyers put it) object made ofpaper, print, and protective covering that fulfillsits bibliographical destiny by being classified as tosubject and catalogued by author and title and

properly shelved?"' Unfortunately there are far toomany librarians who see bibliography as being nomore than such mechanical routines. Just as wewould have the computerized information retrievalsystem be something more than an electronic stackboy, the l ibrarian should be more than a check-girl in a bibliothecal package room. The librarianto fulfill his destiny must know the subject fieldover which he presides, the literature of that field,and be able to communicate to those who seekhis services as one of their peers. To modify theIndian Proverb, he must have walked a mile inthe patron's moccasins. Yet few librarians havemade such a journey.Libraries have not taken into account, as theyshould, subject specialization in the organization oftheir staffs. To be sure, some of the the largerresearch libraries have used subject bibliographers,where it was forced upon them by linguisticnecessity, thus bibliographers in the Oriental,Middle-Eastern, and Slavic languages are certainlynot unknown in large academic libraries wheregraduate offerings in those areas have made themanecessity. There have also been specializedlibrary facilities to serve particular groups withinthe university community of which the industrialand labor relations centers at Chicago, Cornell,Illinois, and elsewhere are good examples. But oftenthe personnel for these specialties are drawn, not

from the ranks of the librarians, who receive noadequate preparation for such duties in theirprofessional education, but from the subject f ielditself. Yet, despite the success of these little prin-cipalities within the library empire, librarians havenot imaginatively redrawn their general organiza-tion charts in terms of subject and bibliographicfuncitons so that acquisition, organization, andservice could be subordinate to the subject depart-mental structure. What would seem to be mostneeded is a modification of the area study programsin the university curriculum adapted to the de-partmental structure of the library. Though li-brarians stil l pay lip service to bibliography asbeing central to their profession, it is not reflected

either in their professional preparation or inpractice.

The Pattern of the Future and its Meaning for theLibrarians Professional Education

What, then, are the most conspicuous strands thatcomprise the warp and woof of the library fabricAmerican Scholar. 41:357, Summer 1972.

4 MACLEISH. Archibald. "The Premise of Meaning."



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and which are most likely to set the pattern for thefuture? In the opinion of the present writer themost important would seem to be the growth oflibrary networks, systems in which the total bi-

bliographic resources of an area or region can bebrought to bear at any one point in the whole.For decades librarians have talked about the valuesof cooperation, and now, at long last, they wouldappear to be making some progress toward itsrealization. Libraries can no longer afford the luxuryof unrestrained growth, if indeed they ever could,the burden of acquisition must be shared. At atime when the technology of communication ismaking such impressive advances as it is today, tocontinue to assemble libraries and informationcenters in isolation from the other segments of thelibrary community is both economically wastefuland professionally exhausting.Closely allied to the emergence of networks is thegrowing interest among librarians in generalsystems theory. Admittedly systems concepts havebeen drawn from a diversi ty of disciplines, eachwith its own jargon and emphasis, and it is thenature of organized systems that they present them-selves differently to different observers, yet thesetheories do provide new and fruitful modes of uni-fication, binding together apparently unrelatedareas of discourse of spheres of human activity andthought. To librarianship the value of generalsystems theory would seem to be that it makespossible for the first time the abi lity to study andto provide the tools for that study, the library andits operations from an hollistic frame of reference,

rather than to see it, as has so often been true inthe past, fragmented into a cluster of specificoperations often without relation to each other andlacking the realization that what affects one partmay have serious repercussions in others. The valueof general systems theory to the librarian is yetto be tested, but certainly it promises a profoundrevolution in science and other areas of thought,and it now appears that it can give to the librarianinsights and comprehension that have long beenlacking.Automation and related technologies, together withthe rise of information science, despite disappoint-ments and as yet unfulfilled promises are, in alimited way, already making some significant con-

tributions to the library's operations, especiallythose repetitive tasks that are mechanical ratherthan intellectual. 5Other and far-reaching devel-opments may be expected to follow during thecoming generation, but perhaps most important ofall they signify a shift from the humanities, whichfor so many centuries dominated librarianship tothe physical, biological, and social sciences. Thehumanities still hold an important place in the li-brarian's arsenal of capabilit ies, but we are be-ginning to get a much more balanced intellectual

attack upon library problems than has previouslyexisted.Stimulated perhaps by growing unemployment inother academic and professional areas of intellectual

endeavor, increasingly recruits to librarianship arebringing with them advanced study in the academicdisciplines, and from this "invasion" librarianshipshould profit. This situation recapitulates in largemeasure that of the depression of the 1930s, whenlibrarianship was greatly strengthened by the addi-tion to its ranks of young scholars, well trainedin a substantive field, turned to librarianship toescape the economic stringency that beset theiroriginal career choices. But librarianship is alreadyfeeling the pinch of depression, too, so how longthe present situation will continue is problem-atical. For the moment, at least, the library worldshould be the beneficiary of the "ill wind" of others.Finally, in this brief catalogue of current trends inlibrarianship there is the growing awareness thatthe library, especially the public library, does havean obligation to be relevant to today's social needs,to use the jargon of the young activists, and toextend its services to the disadvantaged, the de-prived, and the rejected minori ties. We are con-cerned when the librarian tries to play social worker,but certainly he, or she, should cooperate withthe social worker in bringing the power of therecorded word to bear upon the serious social pro-blems by which our communities are beset. Ac-tually, though the clientele may be markedlydifferent from the past, the nature of the librarian'stask may not be so drastically changed. As John

Gardner has said in The Recovery of Confidence:Young idealists who profess utter emancipationfrom the past pour out torrents of words aboutthe values they wish to live by, and to, they turnout to be, for the most part, updated versions ofvery old values. True, the values have been ignored,traduced, lied about, manipulated, and falsified.But that only says that they need rescuing.6

To change an agency created by and for the schol-arship of an elite to one that serves the informa-

5 Nevertheless , despite the promise of the computer,

even for repetitive tasks, it is only fair to report thatin one situation at least replacement of the computerby human beings has proved prof itable. The WallStreet Journal for February 15, 1972 announced thatat the California Commission for Teacher Preparationand Licensing elimination of the computer in favorof human skills enabled the agency to reduce its stafffrom 240 to 106 and pare the time for processingcredentials from 95 days to 10. As one agency officialexpressed it, "The computer was a good worker, butit just couldn't compete with people."

6 Quoted in the Christian Science Monitor, June 29,1972.



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tional needs of the masses will present some pro-blems, but the transformation is not impossible,and in part the survival of democracy may dependon just such a change.Even this brief listing of the more conspicuouschanges that are now taking place in librarianshipshould be sufficient to emphasize the need forcomplete renovation of the librarian's professionaleducation. Despite the progress that has beenmade in the training of the librarian since the endof the second World War, and there have beenimpressive gains, the overwhelming reaction of thepresent wri ter, after a quarter of a century oflibrary school teaching and administration is a greatlack of enthusiasm for it. This is probably a terribleconfession for us to make, especially after ourhaving just published a five-hundred page book onthe subject, but it is not easy to react otherwiseand retain one's intellectual integrity. It is difficultto escape the conclusion that library educationrepresents what is, perhaps, least important in thelibrarian's professional equipment., and that whatmakes a good librarian good is his mastery andunderstanding of the substantive knowledge rep-resented by the materials over which he presides.The library should be the "crowning glory" of oureducational system, and not, as the sixth presidentof the United States said, merely "a nest in whichto hatch scholars." The needs of the scholar arecertainly not to be minimized, but the library shouldalso be a place to which the good citizen can turnto make himself a better, more enlightened, citizen.Therefore the first need of the librarian is a good

general or liberal, education. For if there is anyprofession the practitioners of which should "seelife steady and see it whole" is certainly librarian-ship. The conclusion would seem to be so obviousits to make argument unnecessary, yet one of thegreat problems that confronts the libary schooltoday is the numbers of students who come to itsdoors who lack just such secondary and undergrad-uate preparation.Beyond general education there is subject specializa-tion in a respectable academic discipline whichshould be pursued by the student to at leastthe level or the Master's degree, and preferablybeyond. The library recrui t should bring to thelibrary school a thorough education in the literature

of his chosen field, the structure of that literature,its "lan mark" contributions, its schools of thought,the problems by which it is beset and the advancestoward their solution. Thus equipped he shouldbe able to communicate with and even anticipatethe needs of the scholar while not damaging hiscapacity to present to the intelligent layman, orthe layman with little formal education, the rele-vance of that field to the needs of the citizen. Thusequipped the student should be ready to pursuehis professional training which should emphasize

the bibliographic aspects of his specialty, adminis-trativo and management theory, and communica-tion theory and information science as they allrelate to library functions and practices. There will

be those, of course, who wil l argue that such aprogram will be so expensive that it will place thelibrarian economically beyond the reach of thesmall to medium-sized communities. But a doctorin a small town does not need to know less med-icine than his colleagues in the city. Moreover, thegrowth of library systems should bring thesehuman resources within the budgetary limits of thesmaller urban centers. The question is not, canwe afford such librarians as are here envisaged, butcan we afford not to have them? The farmer isas important a part of the democratic system as thecity dweller, and he has as much of a right tothe best library resources as his brother on FifthAvenue. Realistically, of course, the opportunitiespossessed by the two can never be complete lyequal, but certainly the differential does not needto be as great as it is today. In the language ofthe market-place, librarianship has not "sold itself"to the community in the way it should, but onthe other hand, let us face it, it has not had toomuch to sell.In the past the education of the librarian has, byimplication at least, been predicated on the pos-sibility of attaining an encyclopedic goal of themastery of all knowledge. But the objective wasnever quite possible of realization, and attempts toachieve it end in either pedantry or dilettantism.A truly educated man is not one who knows

"everything," but one who is constantly learning. Inurging that the librarian prepare himself to qualifyas a subject specialist, we are not suggesting thathe be what is often described as a "narrow special-ist." He who is narrowly expert is often onlybroadly ignorant, and his broad ignorance will makehim an inadequate specialist. What gives depthand meaning to specialized knowledge is the gen-eral education upon which it is based and fromwhich it is intelectually derived.A word, and for present purposes no more thanthat, should be added about research in librarian-ship, the state of which distresses us even morethan that of library education itself; so much timeand effort is wasted on matters that are trivial.

The most important single fact about research inlibrarianship is that much of it cannot be doneby librarians. The librarian's scholarship is deriva-tive, it must wait upon the results of inquiry insuch fields as linguistics, anthropology, the socialand physical sciences generally, on physiology,medicine, systems analysis, communication theory,the science, if there be one, of administration andmanagement, education, learning theory, and a hostof other disciplines. Many of these branches ofknowledge have given librarians tools with which



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JESSE H. SHERA

they can cultivate their own fields of inquiry, butthe librarians must either learn to use these unfa-miliar tools or call upon the assistance of thoseskilled in their use. But librarians must stop toying

with these tools in the pretense that they arepushing back the frontiers of knowledge. A con-tinuing dialogue between the librarians and theappropriate scholars in relevant fields there mustbe, but it must not stop with the exchange ofwords. The librarian who desires to engage in honestresearch must become so knowledgeable aboutthe fields related to his inquiries that he can selectfrom them and apply them to his own researchin valid and fruitful ways. Form, method, and tech-nique, much less imitation, are not the essenceof inquiry. One does not produce valid research byplaying the sedulous ape to the Methodists intheir white aprons in the hope that form will yieldsubstance.

The Burden of the Library

There are, for the human mind, but two sources,broadly speaking, of knowledge, wisdom, and truth experience and record, typified in our cultureby the laboratory and the l ibrary. The pur ist wil largue, of course, and quite rightly that both areexperience only one is direct and the other vicarious,but i t will not serve our purposes here to debatesemantics. The point is that the library as the mainrepository for record is a major source of vicariousexperience. Yet few agencies in our society, in-cluding the educational system, have suffered such

neglect and are so confused about what they aresupposed to do. The founding fathers of theRepublic were right in insisting that the success ofa democracy depends upon an enlightened elec-torate, and that man must learn to act so that itcan truthfully be said that "the voice of the peopleis the voice of God." Yet today the problems ofour nation have become so complex that rationalaction, even for the most enlightened, becomesalmost an impossibility,Underlyng all our problems, in this writer's view,is that of uncontrolled population growth; to italmost all our other ills can be traced. Even withthe remedies now available it seems entirely pos-sible that the will to use them may be coming

too late, especially in those parts of the world inwhich remedial measures are most needed. TheRev. Thomas Malthus may be proved right afterall, and that population even in Western Europeand on the American continent, does increase morerapidly than the means of subsistance. But prob-ably uppermost in the minds of the majority isthe folly of the brutal and absurd war in Vietnamwhich has not only shamefully wasted our physicaland human resources, both ours and theirs, butalso, even worse, has eroded our national character

to a point unequalled since the moral decay ofthe Athenians that followed the Peloponnesian war,and from which Athens never recovered. Hardupon the heels of these catastrophies come such

concerns as the destruction of the environment;the rising tide of crime; the increase in drug trafficand addiction; the problem of race relations inall its subtlety and ugliness; inflation and, for ourown country particularly, the international monetarysituation. But there are many other social problemsthat are much less conspicuous than those justmentioned: the increasing mobility of our popula-tion which destroys man's roots in the soil andmakes all life transitory and a series of episodes;the loosening of ties that once bound so securelyfamily and friends; an economy so heavily de-pendent on the automobile that all else must besacrificed to it; the problem of readjustment toautomation, the profitable use of leisure timeresulting therefrom and the need for retrainingpersonnel for service, rather than productiveoccupations that are directed toward the makingof "things;" the proper use of automation, itself,i. e. where and where not it is app ropriate, inlibraries particularly premature enthusiasm forautomation has frequently drained away resourcesthat might better have been invested in the ac-quisition of materials or the improvement of thebibliographic competence of the staff; distrust ofall governmental institutions together with theapathetic acceptance of corruption as a part of"politics;" the wresting of power from Congress bythe Executive which seems to suggest a potential

for dictatorship that is greater than this writer hasever seen; the growth of censorship and therestrictions being imposed by government on thenews media; the artificial stimulation of "wants"beyond the economic abil ity of many to fulfill thatis the curse that uncontrolled salesmanship hasplaced upon us; and the decay of standards of moralconduct which is by no means confined to theyoung. The list is impressive and bewildering, smallwonder that youth is in revolt.We would not, of course, maintain that the libraryhas the key to unlock the solutions to all of theseproblems, but certainly its resources when properlyused can provide badly needed insights into thecharacter of the problems, the solutions that have

been attempted in the past , and possible alt-ernative courses of action. But a book that is neverread, no matter how potentially valuable ,is worth-less. The library cannot force its services uponan unwilling or unprepared body politick. It mustdepend upon the school to create an intellectualclimate in which youth and adult will voluntarilyseek the benefits that the library can provide,and the schools are not doing so. If the end ofeducation is to develop the capacity to propoundalternatives, then the educational system in its



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entirity, meaning the school, the library, and theagencies of adult education must work togetherin the creation of an enlightened electorate capableof rational choice if democracy is to survive. Yet

not in the memory of this writer has the public beenso sheep-like, and democracy so trembled on thebrink of disaster. We would not "cry havoc" orsurrender to despair, but we have never forgottenfrom our undergraduate years, a sentence withwhich that distinguished sociologist, E.A. Ross,concluded one of the chapters of his introductor"text in sociology: "Humanity," he wrote, "has aperilous knife-edge to travel, and humanity mayfail." These words were written, mark you, just afterwe had concluded a war of which it was saidthat "we stood at Armageddon and we battled forthe Lord," and in so doing the world had beenmade "safe for democracy." Yet little more than adecade later an unknown Austrian house-painterwould "let slip the dogs of war," and after thatKorea and Vietnam and terror of the Bomb allfrom a country that boasts of the finest publiclibrary system in the world.

ABSTRACT

Functions of librarianship broadened through theages reflecting the attitudes, values and goals ofthe societies that supported it. Its social mission didnot change, and librarians, however, have animperfect understanding of the book as an in-tellectual entity. They must know the cognitivesystem of the individual and the communicationnetwork of society, as well as the importance ofthat knowledge to both the individual and tosociety, Social epistemology would be a new di-scipline with a focus upon the production, flow,integration and consuption of all forms of com-municated thought throughout the entire social

fabric. Librarianship, fundamentally a behavioristicscience, is considered by the Russians as a branchof the social sciences. Our culture, deeply rootedin Science, is discovering that the latter can destroyas well as create, and the problems of the "seven-ties" are much apt to be in the social, rather thanthe pbysical sciences. As to the present trends,perhaps no aspect of librarianship has aroused somuch interest as mechanized information retrieval,and none has been so unproductivc, since emphasiswas given to machines and not to human, logical,linguistic, etc., aspects; bibliography, the librarian'scentral activity meaning all activities that arerequired to bring book and user together hasnot taken subject specialization into account; onthe other hand, there is nowadays an interest incooperation stimulated by the technology of com-munication, general systems theory, automation

and related technologies, which signifies a shift fromthe humanities to the physical, biological, andsocial sciences. For several reasons people fromother areas are recruiting to librarianship, but fromthis "invasion" librarianship should profit; as forthe public library, librariam are trying to play socialworker. All these trends imply in changes in thelibrarian's professional education. The first need ofthe librarian is a good, general, or liberal, educa-tion, with a level of Master's degree in a subjectspecialization, which only will have a meaning ifbased upon that general education. Research inlibrarianship must receive the participation of spe-cialists from other arcas because librarians do not

have the correct education which could make themcapable of carrying out research projects. If theend of education is to develop the capacity topropound alternatives, then educational system inits entirity must work together in the creation ofan enlightened electorate capable of rational choiceit democracy is to survive.



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BNUS DA UNESCOFACILITAM A IMPORTAO DE:

REVISTAS-LIVROS-MATERIAIS CIENTFICOS-AUDIOVISUAIS E VIAGENS DE ESTUDO

SEM SADA DE DIVISAS.IBECC

AGNCIAS:RIO-PRAIA DE BOTAFOGO, 186-S. 101SO PAULO - AV. 9 DE JULHO, 2029BRASLIA - S.Q. 104 BLOCO A LOJA 11

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Toward a Theory of Librarianship and Information Science

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