"M LIBRARIANSHIP: "• li i iv v P u u &"" JS R *•* Sk - m «/> UJ to 01 O o UJ on O o u. o z o I- D CD o; i- to Q c • I— I X3 CP i— i O CP ■*-> c o U (1) u rH CP s CQ CP CO .5 u u CD •i—i -i-> CO o Sh 0) 3 1—1 O W U T3 CO CP Sh CO CP < -i-J o a> 5" a o o CM o o co CO O "^ "* o o OS oo o 00 C7J o "St< t- o o Lf5 LO X! a nJ rH o co o LT5 Tf O l-H T3 nJ cp o c CD CD 0J M-l -t-> CP CTJ « U T3 C ccj p o 3 o o o a> 1—1

, - m ?h ■8-1 o CM CM cm CM CO ^ rH ^ CO CM CM CO >> C X. CD rt C a d o S +J cp 8 ■ CO CO •r-l ■s c co co CM CO CO o x XJ o rH rt CP CO CP K CO CP 'rH rH C Rj CO r« O o X! rH O CQ o CM CM co CO oo CO tH CO CP a rH rO o CO 00 ^ CO CO c CP rH H-" T3 Rj CO CP CO CO T3 e c o •l-l o i -s § O cp LIBRARY SCHOOLS TODAY 31 Quite possibly other schools will experiment in these or in other ways in order to retain flexibility of programming at the same time that they face an increase in the number of subjects to be taught. CURRICULUM DESIGN In programs leading to the first professional degree, each of the fifty schools has a core of introductory professional courses based upon knowledge it considers to be common to all librarians. It also offers courses which afford opportunity for specialization in the various types of library service and in the functions within these services. About one-fourth of the schools require from six to twelve semes- ter hours of prerequisite preparation; another one-fourth make courses available to undergraduates. The range in the number of required courses is from zero to eleven, with a median of six. The number of elective courses varies from fourteen to sixty-four, with a median of thirty-seven. Only nine schools actually require students to register for courses in outside fields, but twice that number urge their students to do so, particu- larly when a student has an undergraduate minor in library science. Most schools follow the system of ''required electives" in regard to courses dealing with the bibliography and literature of the fields of knowledge and with types of library administration. Seven schools require field work, at least for students with no li- brary experience; another nine offer it as an elective. Most schools include some form of practicum in their school library specialization programs for those students who have never worked in a school library. Six schools offer an orientation program; twenty- one schedule weekly colloquia intended to extend students' knowledge of librarian- ship and related fields and to hear and meet distinguished leaders from these fields. Other schools schedule weekly lectures which are an integral part of the curriculum. During its first term, British Columbia, for example, uses this means of introducing the subject of automation and libraries. A number of other schools have well es- tablished annual lecture series. Some have regular coffee hours at which time visitors to the school are introduced. According to the chart on the verso of the Committee on Accredi- tation's most recent listing of "Graduate Library School Programs Accredited by the American Library Association," February 1970, seventeen schools offer doctoral programs. A perusal of bulletins indicates that fourteen list advanced sixth-year certificate programs, sixteen offer other special programs, e.g., Case Western Reserve's program in medical librarianship and health science information, Chicago's joint program with the Graduate School of Business, North 32 LIBRARY SCHOOLS TODAY Carolina's rare books specialization, and Wisconsin's master's de- gree in library science combined with area studies. CANADA'S TWO-YEAR MASTER'S PROGRAM Brian Land of Toronto recently reviewed the pattern of library education in Canada where the academic structure is two years of study for the master's degree in fields in which there is no substan- tial undergraduate base. In 1964 McGill instituted a two-year M.L.S. as its first professional degree. In 1967 the University of Western Ontario began a three- semester program leading to the M.L.S. de- gree. "By the spring of 1968, there were seven library schools in Canada with four distinct degree structures." 30 At a meeting of library school deans and directors sponsored by Toronto in 1968, a resolution, endorsing the principle of a four- term graduate program leading to a master's degree in library science as the first professional degree, was passed and is to be implemented by 1973. After many soul-searching sessions using both historical analysis and "analysis of performance capabilities of librarians," the Toronto faculty evolved a curriculum designed to achieve the following aim: The ultimate goal of education for librarianship should be to educate students who are able to think and act upon the issues pre- sented to them as administrators, planners or practitioners. The emphasis of the education should be intellectual and theoretical so that librarians can think creatively about whatever area of librar- ianship they may be concerned with. Because of the continual change in the nature of libraries and librarianship, it is not pos- sible for library educators to foresee all the needs of the future. Therefore, they should endeavour to educate librarians who can analyse problems and then work out their own solutions. Library education should provide a methodology which will enable librar- ians to function effectively in any professional situation." 30 Toronto's five required courses are "The Social Environment and Libraries," "Information Resources and Library Collections," "Or- ganization of Information," "Library Administration," and "Re- search Methods." Sixty elective courses provide ample opportunity for specialization. An orientation period and a non- credit exercise in writing a computer program round out the program. The University of Western Ontario's experimental curriculum utilizing the seminar method of instruction has required and elective courses in five major areas: foundation studies; professional theory and methodology, e.g., humanities; administrative theory and prac- tice; research principles and practice; and communication studies. In addition, there are two groups of elective courses, special topics, e.g., literature of French Canada; and special services, e.g., art libraries and information. LIBRARY SCHOOLS TODAY 33 COURSES REQUIRED FOR FIRST PROFESSIONAL DEGREE REFERENCE AND BIBLIOGRAPHY As shown in Table 1, forty-two out of the fifty schools require all students to take one or more reference courses. Three use an inte- grated approach for reference and bibliography; five schools which do not list specific course requirements probably treat it as a required elective. Some schools combine national and trade bibliography and bib- liographic organization with reference. Others include it with selec- tion of materials. Albany, California, UCLA, and Rutgers require separate bibliographic courses designed to convey the principles con- cerning the construction, use, and evaluation of catalogs, bibliog- raphies, and indexes and the role of the librarian as bibliographer. UCLA is the only school which requires two courses in the biblio- graphic functions central to librarianship. In other schools, however, there is evidence of the use of the bibliographic approach in teaching the organization of materials. Frances Neel Cheney recently collected information concerning the relationship between cataloging and bibliography in the intro- ductory courses. Her forthcoming article will provide additional information concerning the place of bibliography in the total program. , CATALOGING AND CLASSIFICATION Cataloging and classification enjoy the same position in the pro- fessional core as reference except that Columbia, McGill, and Syra- cuse require ''Technical Services in Libraries" as a second course in the organization of materials. Catholic University requires only the course "Technical Services in Libraries." North Carolina re- quires the latter course, and in addition requires a course entitled "Organization and Operation of Library Services," which involves "a study of the procedures involved in the acquisition, preparation for use, circulation and storage, and servicing of library materials." The Rutgers course in this area is entitled "Bibliographic Organ- ization and Description"- "an analysis of the means by which the availability and content of graphic materials are recorded." California and UCLA each have two required courses: "Class- ification and Subject Cataloging" and "Descriptive Cataloging." Schools which require advanced cataloging and classification in addi- tion to the basic course include Denver, Emory, Oregon, and the University of Southern California. SELECTION AND ACQUISITION Thirty-two (64 percent of the total) of the schools require a course in the general area of the selection and acquisition of materials. Such courses generally include criteria for evaluating and selecting 34 LIBRARY SCHOOLS TODAY library materials in various media, operation of acquisition pro- grams, the book trade, selection aids, and major national and trade bibliographies. However, the scope, approach, and emphasis vary greatly between a course entitled "Principles of Book Selection ,, and such courses as Indiana's "Library Services and Collections" and Columbia's "Technical Services in Libraries." At Indiana the prin- ciples of selecting materials and selection aids are studied; in addi- tion, major attention is given to services to meet the users' needs in all types of libraries. The Columbia course is one of five required courses (two in reference and bibliography, one in organization of materials, and a fourth combining the administration, history, and sociology of libraries). This technical services course is a critical survey of the methods of acquiring, cataloging, conserving, and cir- culating materials. INTRODUCTION TO LIBRARIANSHIP; LIBRARY IN SOCIETY Twenty-six (52 percent of the total) of the schools have a catch-all course commonly entitled "Introduction to Librarianship," or they have a course called "Library in Society." The variety in titles of courses grouped here is in keeping with their heterogeneity in con- tent. Western Michigan, for example, offers "Foundations of Librar- ianship," which includes the history, function, and status of libraries and deals with current library literature as well. Chicago's "Library and Society," granddaddy of many of the courses by this title, is said to focus on "the characteristics, organization, and functions of li- braries as social agencies." "The Social Environment and Li- braries," Toronto's new course in this area, is a consideration of the environments— sociological, political, economic, technological, pro- fessional, and educational— affecting information services and the process of communication, the role of communication agencies, and the characteristics of the various media. Schools which use alternative means of conveying the information usually included in the above two courses assign appropriate units to such courses as "History of Books and Libraries," "Communica- tions and Libraries," "Current Issues in Librarianship," or to weekly colloquia. ADMINISTRATION, MANAGEMENT, AND SYSTEMS ANALYSIS Of the twenty-four schools (48 percent of the total) requiring an introductory course in administration or systems analysis, Chicago and Kansas specify systems analysis. Chicago's course, however, is primarily concerned with the processing of data and with computer applications. Thirteen other schools offer at least one elective course in systems analysis. Rutgers influence is evident in the required courses in library op- erations and management offered by Hawaii and Wisconsin. Rutgers LIBRARY SCHOOLS TODAY 35 has three required courses in these areas: 1) "Systems Analysis in Library Management," 2) "Administration: Theory and Practice," and 3) "Planning Library Services." Hawaii requires the first two of the above courses; Wisconsin, only the first. The three schools which do not offer a basic administration course probably include the con- tent of such a course in their type- of- library courses in administra- tion and management, although this is not the kind of information that is obvious from course descriptions. RESEARCH METHODS With the relaxation of the thesis requirement in most schools, it is understandable that only fourteen (28 percent of the total) require courses in research methods. Twenty-nine others (42 percent of the total) list it as an elective. In the seven schools which do not offer such a course, there are opportunities for directed individual study. It is important that all schools make provision for the development of the essential skills of reading critically and using effectively the re- sults of study and research. HISTORY OF BOOKS AND LIBRARIES Although all but two schools make provision for instruction in the history of books and libraries, it is nonetheless startling to note that only nine (18 percent of the total) require it. New media, new forms of organization, and new technology must be integrated into the cur- riculum, but one dares to hope that the perspective which an under- standing of library history can bring will still be achieved. This is difficult to attain via a brief unit in the "Introduction to Librarian- ship" course. INFORMATION SCIENCE While only eight (16 percent of the total) require students to regis- ter for a course providing an introduction to information science, it is the only subject other than reference, cataloging and classification, and administration, which every school includes in its curriculum. The six schools which do not list it as a required or elective course include it as an area of study within such courses as "Automation and Libraries" and "Systems Analysis." COMMUNICATION AND LIBRARIES Indiana, McGill, Maryland, and University of Western Ontario (8 percent of the total) list their courses in "Communication and Li- braries" as required. Eighteen others list it as an elective. No estimate was made as to the number of schools which include part of this content within other courses. 36 LIBRARY SCHOOLS TODAY SEMINAR: ISSUES AND TRENDS Although only Denver, Kansas, and Simmons (6 percent of the total) list as required a seminar in issues and trends in librarian- ship, it should not be overlooked that another thirty schools list it as an elective course. This is the only course that University of Alberta students of this past year requested be incorporated into what the faculty felt was already too full a schedule. This request came for- ward despite the fact that at their weekly colloquia they were dis- cussing such topics as new library legislation, serving the unserved, and library association programming. ELECTIVE COURSES In Table 2, which shows the distribution of elective courses, re- quired electives are tabulated as electives. Descriptive and ana- lytical bibliography are listed in the "Technical Services" category; courses primarily concerned with enumerative bibliography and with bibliographic control of knowledge from the user's point of view are listed under "Resources." BACKGROUND Out of 179 electives in background courses, 91 (51 percent of the total) deal with the history of books, libraries, etc.; 26 (15 percent) with communications; 25 (14 percent) with comparative librarianship and international relations; 17 (9 percent) with publishers and pub- lishing; 15 (8 percent) with the library in society; and 5 (3 percent) with introduction to librarianship. In historical courses California is out in front with eight, Colum- bia is second with five, Chicago and Denver tie for third place with four each. Two unique courses in this area are Denver's "Major Figures in American Librarianship" and UCLA's "History of Li- brary Technology." A number of schools also use the historical approach in such courses as "Historical Development of Literature for Children," "History and Theory of Cataloging," and "Education for Librarian- ship." Then there is the regional approach represented by UCLA's course, "Libraries and Literature of the Southwest," and Peabody's "Southern Libraries." ADMINISTRATION Of the 525 elective courses offered in the area of administration and management, 136 (26 percent of the total) pertain to special librarianship; 116 (22 percent) to school librarianship; 61 (12 per- cent) to academic librarianship; 58 (11 percent) to general adminis- tration and/or management; 55 (10 percent) to work with children and young people in school and public libraries; 52 (10 percent) to public LIBRARY SCHOOLS TODAY 37 librarianship; and the remaining 47 (9 percent) to systems analysis, buildings and equipment, automation and libraries, and library sys- tems. Nine of the schools, which follow the Rutgers pattern of approach- ing administration and management on the basis of general principles and practices rather than type of library administration and manage- ment, have succeeded in retaining this approach insofar as academic and public librarianship are concerned, but only Rutgers has resisted the development of courses in the administration of special libraries. Only niinois in the United States and McGill in Canada do not offer school library administration courses. About half of the fifty-five courses in work with children and young people are concerned with public library materials and programming; the rest deal with both school and public library situations. Fourteen schools are offering separate courses in systems analy- sis. Five offer courses in the library and the legal process. Several of the other new courses in this area are "Genealogical Research Library Work" (Brigham Young), "Administration of Libraries in Asia" (Hawaii), and "Librarianship and Bibliography of Africa South of the Sahara" (Indiana). In the courses dealing with administration and management there is evidence of the impact upon library school curricula of the devel- opment of library systems, of the automation of library processes, of the use of multi-media approaches, and of staff specialization. REFERENCE Of the 340 elective courses in the field of reference and bibliog- raphy, it is not surprising that 59 percent fall into the areas of the bibliography and literature of the subject fields. It is worthy of note that forty-three out of the fifty schools offer separate courses in government publications. In several schools, documents are com- bined with other areas, e.g., Simmons offers a course on "Biblio- graphical Methods and Government Publications," and Albany has one on "Serials and Documents." Another course of some interest deals with audiovisual materials. Thirty-one schools find it more satisfactory, for one reason or another, to offer a course geared to the needs of librarians respon- sible for the selection, organization and use of these materials rather than to rely upon service courses offered elsewhere on campus. MATERIALS AND SERVICES Of 186 elective courses in the areas of library materials and ser- vices for the various age groups, about three-fourths deal with mate- rials and services for children and young people. Kansas and McGill are two of the schools which combine materials 38 LIBRARY SCHOOLS TODAY O z < 10 a. O lu z !5 ^ UJ >- w CO Qj 1 = tJ UJ Qi U. uj u. m O D UJ Z S >- D CD O U to Ul QJ > > Ul QJ Ul Ul z>o m a: — UJ to 5 Ih CD J5 CO fl o &P c o c Q .13 a> co < 3 2 ^ o (D m " -i cq a ^ .£ ^ 2.^ 43 cr 43 -d £ "S 0) W CO > •r-l H-> o a> 1— 1 W c CD O 0) CM o a> < H-> o a> CO T3 C 3 O u bC 44 o a CO "* C- t- CO CM tH CM i-< o 00 -^ cq co co tjh i-l tH i-H tJ4 "* O Tt* tH CO O i-< 1-1 i-i O O t- CO LO i-t CM i-H i-H CM O i-H LT> Oi CO CO O lO i—l OS Tf< o o N CO OJ H N CO CO 1-4 i-H 1-4 T|4 H CM CO IN (N CM cd t- in m IT5 in CO CO Tf M CO H CM rH tH CM CM lO 1— ( i-H i-H CO T3 CD C a oi of hfi CD C DD •1— 1 43 CO Oh •rH CO c H-J books, librari ations, includi a T3 G • rH 43 CO •r-l r— 1 •r-l rC CO c OS •rH CO CD •rH ment ship cd CD 3 (3 o> •rH CO rH X5 •P-l O c 0j rH rD •rH —H > rH ai (3 O •rH a CO rH CO a H-> CO CO •rH CO >» r— 1 oS r-( X2 •rH n CT rH > oS CO a CD H-> CO c OS r-l >> 3 5 1 cd >— 1 r— 1 G 43 CO • l—l 3 >> rl ■r-l -l-> O O rH •rH "ci rH CO rH O r- CO >> rH OS rH •I-H H-l a rS % "gSS £rt -S=-= £ H I -li g 8 8 g 2 8 3 2 £-3.2 .2 g> cu iS 3 40 LIBRARY SCHOOLS TODAY U CD •H -i bX) C3 Pj .3 o> ^ o id m " I S ° o 3 o O O w ^5 o o w cr X3 -g o •i-i CO LO CO ^ CD LO CO CO 1-1 CM CM CO s £ 0) cm tH CM ■>* 1—1 T-H ■^ • i— i cu o OS io CO LO CD LO H 1—1 o O CM CD CM o CD o l-H cm "tf o tH O i-H CM CM LO -4-> P< U CD 1—1 W • to t- CD LO CO o c- LO CO LO LO os LO l-H o CM CM i-H CM CO CM tH CO CM t- co -* OS fc CO 1-1 i-( CJ H § o ."3 73 co to a; a> 3 TO -i-i & 7a > O « ^ f! TO -rH h 5 co CD Co > T3 S a OD c •1-1 -(-1 CO CD rt ° CO O U •r-l CD 3 ^ . CO PQ Jl ■§ ' 5 CD d 2* H O U o a bX> o M a CD t— I I— I Ph o • r-l -t-> o 73 CD >> CTJ u XI o u a CD CO CD U d T3 -t-> CO CQ & T3 £ to - W ^ m rf fl f) -> "> Organize Course Content Organize Course Content Organize Course Content Figure 1. Traditional Course-by-Course Curriculum Design Process Let us take a closer look at step one: defining the content. Figure 2 shows the traditional input sources. Historically, education for special librarianship has experienced input from all of the sources shown. PREPARATION FOR SPECIAL LIBRARIANSHIP 149 Demands of Profession Task Analysis Certification Experience of Faculty Available Textbook or Materials Other Courses Figure 2. Traditional Definition of Content (Input) The profession has made its demands known through its associa- tions. The Special Libraries Association, for example, has had committees at work on the problem of defining course content almost since its beginning. One historical study identified twenty- eight rele- vant committees between 1923 and 1958. 3 These committees have, over the years, made recommendations based on the professional judgment of practitioners and on task analyses of actual jobs in special libraries. The Medical Library Association formalized its thinking some years ago in a plan for the certification of medical librarians. 4 Since then the statement of educational requirement for certification has become, naturally, a most important input for those schools that desire to graduate certified medical librarians. Other specialized associations, for example, the American Association of Law Libraries, are following the same general pattern. In addition to the official committee reports and the statements of standards and certification requirements, the literature of these associations of special librarians contains many statements from individual practitioners about desirable curriculum content. In many instances courses have been built on the experience and judgment of teachers of special librarianship. 6 Very few textbooks or teaching materials in special librarianship are available, but these few have, in some instances, determined the content of courses. 7 150 PREPARATION FOR SPECIAL LIBRARIANSHIP Some teachers have examined the bodies of knowledge in other courses in their library schools and have fashioned courses from what, in their opinions, was not otherwise available to students. 8 Recently, and very tentatively, students have been consulted in some library schools. Perhaps this has been done on an individual basis for a long time and the recent expression is merely formalization through appointment of student members to curriculum committees. Student preference is included as input in the definition of content, but with a broken line to symbolize what I believe to be its traditional tenuous influence. Figure 3 shows the traditional constraints on the organization of the content thus defined into a course structure. These are con- straints inherent in the local situation in which the course is to be taught. Recently, in some schools, student preference has been added to the other local constraints. For all practical purposes constraints from outside the individual school have been inoperative in the organ- ization of course content, with the possible exception of certification. Available Textbooks or Materials Faculty Preference Content Organization 7JT Administrative Requirements Other Courses Time Restrictions Student Preference Figure 3. Traditional Constraints on Organization of Course Content It is implicit in figures 1, 2 and 3 that, in the traditional design of curricula in library science, the curriculum planner has been the individual who would teach the course. In virtually every instance, each teacher has gathered his own input to define the course content (usually subject to faculty approval as the only real control), and then the prospective teacher has organized that content to suit himself. PREPARATION FOR SPECIAL LIBRARIANSHIP 151 This generalization is especially true in the preparation of special librarians. The characteristics of this traditional approach to curriculum design in library science have not been essentially different from curriculum design in other professional fields, in graduate schools or in collegiate teaching generally. Then came Sputnik; in its wake, unhappily assuming guilt in what propaganda dubbed our "second rank" position in scientific achievement, American education began to try harder. First primary and secondary school educators, chal- lenged by the harsh force of public scrutiny, sought and found new and better ways to design meaningful curricula and to implement them in classrooms. Soon collegiate educators, and those responsible for education in some professions, were adapting the new methods to the needs of their students. 9 This revolution against academic tradition has not yet exhibited itself in education for librarianship generally, or in education for any one of the library science specializations. A NEW MODE FOR CURRICULUM DESIGN The new mode for curriculum design is one of systems approach. It is based on several interrelated assumptions, of which only two are mentioned in an effort to simplify the description: 1) The purpose of education is to change behavior, to provide the learner with different behavioral capabilities at the conclusion of the learning experience than he had at its beginning; and 2) When one component in a system is affected, other components and the total system are also affected. These assumptions lead educators to believe that if they provide a learner with new capabilities, they change a subsystem in the total social system (or, in the case of library science, in the total pro- fessional system); and, in consequence, the total system will be affected to some extent. Therefore, before library educators begin the educational process they must determine what capabilities they want in the human subsystem and must express these desired capa- bilities as the behavioral objectives of the educational process. The purpose of using a systems approach to curriculum design is to determine scientifically what these terminal behaviors shall be and then to plan learning experiences that will result in the desired be- havioral capabilities. A curriculum design process to achieve this end has been pro- jected in a general way, and in relation to certain professions, 10 but no such systems analysis has been carried out in library or informa- tion science. 11 By combining the ideas of several curriculum design theoreticians, it is possible to project a contemporary model for the curriculum design process. 12 Before we project the complete model, however, let us note that both the input for content and the constraints 152 PREPARATION FOR SPECIAL LIBRARIANSHIP on course organization will be different than in the traditional process. Figure 4 shows the input sources utilized in the contemporary definition of content. In this model changes in the profession provide a new and significant kind of input, justified by a recent study of education for the professions in the United States. 13 The author, Frederick Mosher, concluded that "the history of professional devel- opment [has been] generally a progress away from the rules of ex- perience, the rules of thumb, to rules from the laboratory and other systematic research." 14 Few people will argue that library science is not involved in the throes of just such a transition; an argument could be made that the involvement for special librarianship is a matter of life or death. Changes in Profession Content A Studies of Need IV. Expert Consensus Studies of Need III. System Analysis Studies of Need I. Learner Self-Perceptions Studies of Need II. Task Analysis Figure 4. Contemporary Definition of Content (Input) Mosher identified some of the problems stemming from the rapid evolution of a profession: 1) the need and difficulty of keeping up with new developments, 2) the requirement of a different knowledge base as the profession tends to become interdisciplinary, 3) the difficulty of locating relevant research carried out by researchers who are not specifically oriented to the profession, 4) the problem of translating and integrating new professional knowledge into codes of professional practice, and 5) the seeming impossibility of keeping within shooting distance of what the profession perceives to be its own frontiers of knowledge. 14 There is already a body of research knowledge relating to the impact of these problems on special li- brarianship. 15 PREPARATION FOR SPECIAL LIBRARIANSHIP 153 Each of the other sources of input shown in Figure 4 is an aspect of need— to be defined by objective study rather than, as in the tradi- tional input, by subjective opinion. Education for special librarian- ship is beginning to build a body of data suitable for input into curriculum design in regard to the self-perceived needs of practi- tioners. One recent example of such a study was concerned with the continuing educational needs of federal librarians. 16 Another, though not limited to special librarians, specifically included them in an eight- state regional study of continuing educational needs. 17 The studies of the Special Libraries Association (SLA) Education Com- mittee also contain data of self-perceived needs. 18 Such studies can result in significant input. The contemporary curriculum design process requires that more studies such as those described above be carried out, and that they include other subsystems of learners than those in need of continuing education. There must be special emphasis on students at the mas- ter's level and on those in training for paraprofessional positions. It is true, to counter an expected opposition, that the inexperienced student often has a very muddled idea of just what he does need. On the other hand, he brings to the library school a set of interests and concerns that gives focus to his expectations of professional educa- tion. In the interest of increasing motivation— that priceless in- gredient in the classroom— if for no other reason, the beginning student's expectations should be one element of input in curriculum design. 19 There is, however, another reason: student power. Stu- dents everywhere (library schools are no exception) are feeling their power and learning to influence. 20 This flexing of the fledgling muscles must be put to the advantage of the educational process. Task analysis is also needed. Not enough has ever been done, and not enough has been done recently. As early as 1940 the Professional Standards Committee of SLA carried out a reasonable task analysis, 21 the results of which could have provided valuable input for library school courses. As recently as 1968 a research team studying med- ical librarianship, and using much more sophisticated methods, produced even more valuable results. 22 In between there was a small, but potentially useful, body of serious study. Most of these studies in the special libraries field, however, were devised to provide infor- mation for administrative planning in a work situation. Their value as input in the curriculum design process has been generally ignored. The analysis of present tasks should never constitute the total input into curriculum design for a profession that is changing as rapidly as librarianship, for to thus limit the design would further shrink the short half- life of professional education. Nevertheless, the practi- calities of the master's level preparation as initial professional training require that attention be paid to the jobs at hand as well as to those envisioned for the future. 154 PREPARATION FOR SPECIAL LIBRARIANSHIP Inclusion of a body of knowledge from an analysis of the total library/information system assures us that the results of task anal- yses will not dominate the input. Any such analysis of the system would recognize the role of change and its direction in the foresee- able future, thereby injecting into the planning a factor for determin- ing the proportions of "present" and "future" in the curriculum content. Because the changes are actually coming faster than the needed analyses can be made, there is still reason to use expert opinion as an input source. Such opinion should continue to be supplied by associations speaking for a consensus of their members, as well as by knowledgeable individuals, both teachers and prac- titioners. Just as the input for defining the curriculum content is differently constituted in a systems approach to curriculum design than in the traditional approach, so the constraints on the organization of content are different. Figure 5 shows that the important constraints in the new mode stem primarily from the learner. The learner's entrance behaviors and his self-perceptions of the significance of content organization may result in a considerable need for individual instruc- tion. To provide such individualized instruction is a primary re- quirement of contemporary educational philosophy and therefore a constraint on the organizational pattern. Faculty preference, so important traditionally, gives way in contemporary curriculum design to learner needs; and the constraints of other courses are taken into account in order to arrive at the optimum course sequence. Learner's Entrance Behaviors Administrative Requirements Course Organization Total Curriculum Pattern Learner's Self-Perceptions Need for Individualized Instruction Figure 5. Contemporary Constraints on Organization of Course Content PREPARATION FOR SPECIAL LIBRARIANSHIP 155 SYSTEMS APPROACH TO PLANNING CURRICULA Figure 6 shows the steps in a systems approach to planning cur- ricula. Step one is to establish the objectives. 23 In the first stages of planning a new curriculum it is often possible to establish objectives only in broad terms of desired consequences. As the input continues, however, such ultimate goals should be restated more and more pre- cisely until, finally, specific behavioral objectives can be stated. The desired consequence of education for special librarianship might be broadly stated: to render the working members of our society more productive through the utilization of information. This is an acceptable beginning, but by the time we arrive at the end of the design process and have considered all the input, we must be able to state more precise objectives, and we must be able to state them in behavioral terms. To achieve this goal we will have to refine and refine and refine, using every scrap of input that comes our way. Especially for the conceptual aspects of education for librarianship, 7. Postulate Curriculum 1. Establish Objectives 2. Identify Components 6. Consider Resources and Constraints 4. Specify Performance Criteria 5. Reexamine Performance Environment Figure 6. Contemporary Curriculum Design Process 156 PREPARATION FOR SPECIAL LIBRARIANSHIP the writing of behavioral objectives is not easy, as anyone who has tried knows. In terms of improving learning, however— of improving our chances to change the behavior of learners— it is essential that we do state our objectives in a formal way. Step two of the curriculum design process is to identify the com- ponents of the library/information system. Human and nonhuman components must be identified and described separately because, in curriculum design, we are concerned only with the human components and the necessary interface. Other planners are at work on the de- sign for the nonhuman components, primarily the materials and the machines. For special librarians the interface is extremely impor- tant. They must learn how to utilize machines to the greatest benefit of special library users, how to work with the specialized humans who plan and control the machine components of the information system, and how to incorporate a wide variety of traditional and con- temporary materials into that system. The human jobs that are identified in step two are, in step three, subjected to complete job analysis. This step is necessary so that new tasks added to traditional positions may be included in the cur- riculum and former ones, no longer actually performed, may be excluded. For example, virtually all special library administrators nowadays must be able to prepare budget justifications and program proposals. As another example, in the last SLA personnel survey over 80 percent of the respondents reported having supervisory re- sponsibilities. 24 Are the planning and supervisory responsibilities of special librarians stressed sufficiently in the courses required of them? If not, provision must be made for adequate inclusion of these topics. Other examples come quickly to mind. To reduce the ele- ments of subjectivity in planning our curriculum, however, an inte- grated sequence of formal analyses must be undertaken. At the conclusion of these three steps the planner would have before him three definite statements to assist him in the remainder of the process: 1) the statement of overall objectives, 2) the iden- tification of the components of the library/information system, and 3) the analyses of the human tasks required by the system. At this point the planner will probably be able to state the behavioral objec- tives of the curriculum with more precision than he could at the beginning of the process. Some jockeying back and forth among these first three steps will probably be necessary before it is possible, or desirable, to proceed. In time, however, the planner will have a precise body of knowledge on which to proceed. Step four is that of specifying the criteria for the acceptable per- formance of each component of the human job. Such criteria have sometimes been referred to as "performance standards" or "work standards." Few such performance criteria exist for special librar- ianship, and fewer still are the instruments to test performance in PREPARATION FOR SPECIAL LIBRARIAN SHIP 157 relation to criteria. Yet the benefits of having both criteria and tests should be obvious. Given such performance criteria, and valid testing instruments, the curriculum designer has precise terminal behaviors at which to aim his instruction. If the criteria/testing instrument combination is used as a pretest, those students who already possess the desired behavior at the desired level of skill may avoid repetition in their professional education and substitute courses whose content they have not previously mastered, thus utilizing their time in school to the best advantage. This point is extremely important to the present generation of students who label as "mickey mouse" inflex- ible requirements of course attendance that fail to take into account the students' demonstrable entrance skills. In step five, the curriculum planner returns to the actual work situation with objectives, task analyses and performance criteria in hand. His purpose is validation. He reexamines the total environ- ment to be certain that the task definition represents the optimum utilization of available human capabilities. This is especially im- portant in librarianship where we have traditionally assigned to an all-purpose librarian tasks ranging from clerical routines to man- agement skills. This does not refer to the old argument of "general- ist" versus "specialist," but to situations in which, for example, a reference librarian answers simple reference questions one hour and designs the library's interface with an information network the next hour. The economics of business apply to special librarianship, making it essential to know what skills need to be hired for each of the library's positions. The special librarian has a wide range of support skills to draw on, including those of technician, subject specialist, information scientist, translator, as well as those of the professional librarian. The goal we are considering here is that of a curriculum that will produce professional special librarians; in this step of the design process the planner must make certain where the professional special librarian fits uniquely into the performance environment and how he is complemented by support personnel. (Ideally, of course, curriculum planning for support personnel follows the same steps and, at this point, produces a closer mesh between support and professional personnel than we have at the present time. The problem of meshing library technicians and professional librar- ians may well be even now approaching the critical stage.) Thus the reexamination of the performance environment, step five, is necessary in order to adjust the job definitions that resulted from step three and the performance criteria specified in step four. Step five is, in short, a built-in quality control. Without such planned re- examination there is a distinct possibility that the curriculum design process will result only in "reshuffling the same old pack of cards," as Geis expresses it. "Making the symbols on those cards clearer and brighter does not change the basic constraints of the pack. To 158 PREPARATION FOR SPECIAL LIBRARIAN SHIP generate new and useful curricula one must move outside, to a new source, to the terminal activities or performances themselves. " 25 Step six allows for the practicalities of human and material re- sources and the traditional academic constraints as well as those imposed by the new educational philosophies. In contemporary think- ing the most significant resource, as well as the most significant constraint, is the learner himself. Some facts about the learner's entrance behaviors and his self-perceptions can be available to the curriculum planner during the planning stage. For example, observa- tion tells us that there are at least two distinct and mutually exclu- sive groups of students in our master's degree classrooms, those without prior library experience and those with it. In effect, we persist in trying to carry out initial professional education and what is for many students continuing professional education, with the same curriculum, the same materials, and the same instruction. It is characteristic of special librarians that they work in libraries for some years on the basis of their subject knowledge (and quite often they work as professional librarians on this basis) before appearing in library science classrooms. Only research can tell us exactly to what extent this phenomenon occurs. The fact should be a significant constraint on the curriculum, but traditionally it is ignored. Step six in the contemporary curriculum design process would require planners to face up to it. Step seven is the culmination of the process, the postulation of the curriculum, but it is not the end of the process; in contemporary cur- riculum design, planners do not assume their curricula will be suc- cessful (i.e., fulfill the objectives) simply because a document is in hand. Step eight requires a test of the curriculum in vivo, i.e., with actual students. This test should be as stringent, in relation to the stated objectives, as possible, and will almost inevitably result in the need for step nine, some amount of redesign. Especially in initiating this kind of curriculum planning in library science education, it can be assumed that significant amounts and kinds of redesign will be necessary. As Figure 6 shows, this is a spiraling configuration, repeating as necessary any or all of the steps. Eventually a refined (though probably never perfect) curricu- lum results. There is, however, no end point, because the input is changing constantly as the profession changes, as the definition of needs becomes more precise, as the learners, teachers and other components of the educational process itself change. Also the con- straints will change from time to time. This is why, in the contem- porary educational philosophy, the role of curriculum planner is one of the most challenging roles in the pedagogical pantheon. So it should be in library science education. PREPARATION FOR SPECIAL LIBRARIANSHIP 159 IMPLEMENTATION OF THE NEW CURRICULA I began by saying that education for special librarianship needs modern curriculum planning implemented by new classroom tech- niques, and in the general educational revolution of the last t^ree decades, innovation in the classroom has accompanied innovation in curricula. Library science has, therefore, a wide range of model techniques which can be applied: programmed learning, instructional television, single concept films, slide-tape presentations, computer- assisted instruction, and the games and simulations which I person- ally am finding of significant value in teaching special librarians. Certainly, there have been individual experiments in library science education with some of these techniques. 26 What is needed is an intensive effort, integrated with the new curriculum design, to develop, not isolated examples of new teaching materials, but com- prehensive instructional strategies designed to complement the cur- riculum. Such an effort should concentrate on modular instructional activities which could be used in a variety of combinations as needed in classrooms and in individual instruction. More significant in the long run, however, may be the new class- room attitudes generated in the wake of recent learning theories that have emphasized individual differences. 27 Theorists such as N. E. Miller, B. F. Skinner, Robert Gagne and D. P. Ausubel have also shown how to translate theory into instructional designs character- ized by new concepts of the role of the learner in his own education. The learner contributes through his self -perceptions, through par- ticipation in testing to determine his entrance skills, through participation in planning the learning experiences, through his inde- pendent, rather than traditionally dependent, attitude toward learning, and through self- evaluation. Concomitant with the new role for the learner is a new role for the teacher. Instead of being cast as the possessor of a body of knowl- edge, including all the answers to soon-to-be-asked questions, the teacher becomes the designer of instructional strategies by which the learner is led to find his own answers. Instead of being cast as the authority in the limited sphere of the classroom, the teacher becomes the facilitator in the unlimited sphere of shared learning. As facili- tator, the teacher sets the climate for the group experience, clarifies the purposes of individuals and of the group, and makes available a wide range of learning resources, including himself as a resource. Relevance, freedom and learning result. "Relevance," as Jerome Bruner puts it, "depends upon what you know that permits you to move toward goals you care about." 29 The desire to provide students with the freedom to thus move on the basis of personal motivation is the heart of the new attitude in classrooms from kindergarten to graduate school. It is long overdue in library science classrooms. 160 PREPARATION FOR SPECIAL LIBRARIANSHIP REFERENCES 1. Jackson, Eugene. "Critique on Special Library Education," Drexel Library Quarterly, 3:211, April 1967. 2. Many of the time-honored views were expressed in "The Second Forum on Education for Special Librarianship at Minneapolis: Papers," Special Libraries, 58:22-48, Jan. 1967. 3. Zachert, Martha Jane K. "An Association in Search of Standards." Unpublished seminar paper, Columbia University School of Library Service, 1958. 4. Medical Library Association. "Code for the Training and Certification of Medical Librarians," Medical Library Association Bulletin, 52:784-89, Oct. 1964. 5. A bibliography of ninety-one relevant articles published in Special Libraries between 1910 and 1958 illustrates the point. Zachert, op. cit.\ and for one such personal statement, published recently, see: Bromberg, Erik. "Education for Special Librarianship, A Curriculum Proposal," Special Libraries, 59:646-47, Oct. 1968. 6. Bromberg, Erik. "Quick Look at Courses on Special Libraries," Special Libraries, 58:22-23, Jan. 1967. 7. For example, Strauss, Lucille J., et al. Scientific and Technical Libraries: Their Organization and Administration (Library Science and Docu- mentation; a series of texts and monographs, Vol. 4). New York, Interscience, 1964; and Medical Library Association. Handbook of Medical Library Prac- tice. 2d ed. Janet Doe and Mary Louise Marshall, eds. Chicago, ALA, 1956. Both have been widely used as texts. 8. Zachert, Martha Jane K. "Special Libraries Instruction: The Separate Course," Special Libraries, 58:37-40, Jan. 1967. 9. The bibliography to document and rationalize this criticism fully is too lengthy to include here. For those who wish to read the continuing criti- cism and reaction, the following will serve as starting points: Abt, Clark C. The Free School: A Laboratory for Experiments in Education. Cambridge, Mass., Abt Associates, 1967; Gross, Ronald, and Murphy, Judith, eds. The Revolution in the Schools (A Harbinger book). New York, Harcourt, Brace and World, 1964; Holt, John. The Underachieving School. New York, Pitman Publishing Co., 1969; Leonard, George B. Education and Ecstasy. New York, Delacorte Press, 1968; and McNeil, John D. "Forces Influencing Curricu- lum," Review of Educational Research, 39:293-318, June 1969. 10. See the symposium: "Designing Curriculum in a Changing Society: Part I," Educational Technology, 10:9-64, April 1970; and "Designing Cur- riculum in a Changing Society: Part II," Educational Technology, 10:38-57, May 1970. 11. A beginning has been suggested in a general way in: Invitational Con- ference on Education for Health Sciences Librarianship, 1967. Education for Health Sciences Librarianship; Proceedings of an Invitational Conference, Sept. 10-12, 1967. Irving Lieberman, ed. Seattle, School of Librarianship, University of Washington, 1968; and Schur, H., and Saunders, W. L. Education and Training for Scientific and Technological Library and Information Work. London, H.M.S.O., 1968. 12. Throughout the discussion of the contemporary curriculum design process I am indebted to: Geis, George L. "Premature Instruction," Educa- tional Technology, 10:24-30, April 1970; and Mager, Robert F. Preparing PREPARATION FOR SPECIAL LIBRARIANSMP 161 Instructional Objectives. Palo Alto, Calif., Fearon Publishers, 1962. The model, however, is my interpretation of their ideas, and those of others, and should not be ascribed to them, especially wherein it may be weak or in error. 13. Mosher, Frederick C. Professional Education and the Public Service (Final Report OEC-6-10-106. ED 025 220). Berkeley, Center for Research and Development in Higher Education, University of California, 1968. 14. Ibid., p. 28. 15. See, for example: Annual Review of Information Science and Tech- nology. Vol. 1- . New York, 1966- 16. Kortendick, James J., and Stone, Elizabeth. Post-Master's Education for Middle and Upper-Level Personnel in Libraries and Information Centers (Final Report, Phase I, I OEG-0-8-080731-46-4(095)). Washington, D.C., Catholic University of America, Department of Library Science, 1970. 17. Lee, Robert, et al. A Plan for Developing a Regional Program of Continuing Education for Library Personnel in the Western States. Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, 1969, p. 5. 18. Zachert, Martha Jane K. , and Stursa, Mary Lou. "Continuing Educa- tion for Librarianship: Evaluation of SLA's 1969 Seminars," Special Librar- ies, 60:616-17, Nov. 1969. Studies of the 1970 seminars and of seminar avoidance behavior are in process. 19. Kapfer, Philip G. "Behavioral Objectives and the Curriculum Pro- cessor," Educational Technology , 10:15, May 1970. 20. Wasserman, Paul. "Professional Adaptation: Library Education Man- date," Library Journal, 95:1283-86, April 1, 1970. 21. "Report of Professional Standards Committee," Special Libraries, 31:215-17, July-Aug. 1940. 22. Orr, Richard H. , et al. "Development of Methodologic Tools for Planning and Managing Library Services," Medical Library Association Bulletin, 56:235-67, July 1968. 23. To explain this step in detail would make this paper overlong, yet a detailed understanding of the process is essential. Fortunately, an easy- to-read manual is available. See: Mager, op. cit. Beyond Mager, see: Gagne, Robert M. "The Analysis of Instructional Objectives for the Design of Instruction," Teaching Machines and Programmed Learning II. Washing- ton, D.C., National Education Association, 1965, pp. 21-65; and Popham, James. "Objectives and Instruction," Instructional Objectives (Rand McNally Education Series). In American Educational Research Association. Mono- graph Series on Curriculum Evaluation (No. 3). Chicago, 1969, pp. 40-43. 24. "A Study of 1967 Annual Salaries of Members of the Special Libraries Association," Special Libraries, 58:234, April 1967. 25. Geis, op. cit., p. 28. 26. To mention only a few: Perreault, Jean M. An Introduction to UDC (Programmed Texts in Library and Information Science). Hamden, Conn., Archon Books, 1969; Ramsy, James W. "Simulation in Library Administra- tion," Journal of Education for Librarianship, 8:85-93, Fall 1967; Sager, Donald J. Reference , a Programmed Instruction Prepared for the Ohio Li- brary Association State Library of Ohio Reference Workshops for Library Personnel without Library Degrees. Columbus, 1968; Slavens, Thomas P. "Computer-Assisted Instruction for Reference Librarians," Journal of Edu- cation for Librarianship, 10:116-19, Fall 1969; Zachert, Martha Jane K. "Simulation as a Technique for Teaching Library Administration." (In Press.); and Zachert, Martha Jane K., and Pantelidis, Veronica. "A Com- puter-Assisted Sequential In-Basket Technique." (In Press.) 162 PREPARATION FOR SPECIAL LIBRARIAN SHIP 27. Gagne, Robert M. "Learning Theory, Educational Media and Indi- vidual Instruction." Unpublished paper presented at the Faculty Seminar on Educational Media, Bucknell University, November 16, 1967. For an intro- duction to current thinking, see: Bruner, Jerome S. Toward a Theory of Instruction. Cambridge, Mass., Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1966; Gagne', Robert M. , ed. Learning and Individual Differences; A Symposium of the Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh (Merrill's International Psychology Series). Columbus, Ohio, E. Merrill, 1967; and Siegel, Laurence, ed. Instruction, Some Contemporary Viewpoints (Chandler Publications in Educational Psychology). San Francisco, Chandler Pub. Co., 1967. 28. Rogers, Carl R. Freedom to Learn; A View of What Education Might Become (Studies of the Person). Columbus, Ohio, E. Merrill, 1969. See especially parts I, II and III. Also see summary, pp. 164-66. 29. Bruner, Jerome. "The Skills of Relevance or the Relevance of Skills," Saturday Review, 53:68, April 18, 1970. Andrew D. Osborn Former Dean School of Library and Information Science University of Western Ontario THE DESIGN OF THE CURRICULUM FOR THE THIRD ERA OF EDUCATION FOR LIBRARIANSHIP Formal education for librarianship, as expressed in terms of North American library schools and their professional contributions, is now eighty-three years old; and in that period of their history the schools have gone through three distinct phases. The first was very much that of the training class. It lasted for some forty years, that is until 1927 or thereabouts when, under the influence of the William- son report, a general change took place in undergraduate methods of instruction. Accordingly the quarter century or so of the Bachelor of Library Science represents the second era. Following World War II American library schools abandoned the undergraduate course of study in favor of a graduate program, rather nominally in a number important respects. We are now functioning in the third era even though the graduate character of our work may still leave a great deal to be desired in all too many ways. But the third era, like the first, exists at a time when radical changes are taking place in our administrative thinking and in our technology. The change in administrative thinking is being forced on our libraries by the onset of problems of a dimension never before faced: the daily number of readers, population shifts and growth, the literature explosion, as well as the vast quantity of materials added to our resources and circulated to readers. The change in technology comes about in a timely way; timely, that is, in relation to the mass methods which we must from now on exploit, because in the computer and other pieces of equipment there are devices which can revolu- tionize our methods if we learn how to master them in terms of the extremely difficult intellectual problems which must be solved before they can really do what we must have them do. This paper, then, is primarily concerned with the impact on the library school curriculum of these two powerful thrusts. It suggests some of the new ways of thinking that are necessary if our schools, in this period of challenge and opportunity in the library world, are to rise to the occasion and to make contributions to support the library movement of the last part of the twentieth century. 1 63 164 CURRICULUM DESIGN FOR THE THIRD ERA THE TRANSITION TO THE THIRD ERA CURRICULUM The characteristic of the course of studies in library schools which today calls for the most investigation and review is conserva- tism, in fact, extreme conservatism. It is a characteristic which has grown more and more pronounced in the last half century; and unless measures are taken to counteract it, undoubtedly it will continue to have a numbing effect on education for librarianship. Until recently it did not do too much harm to the profession, but it will in the decades ahead as the conduct of library affairs becomes more arduous and more complex. Thus, the first task in designing a cur- riculum is to rid it of as many elements of conservatism as possible. One might argue that there was no possible room for conservatism in the earliest schools simply because of their newness. But that argument would not hold water since what starts out nowadays as a fine progressive school, within a year or two of its foundation (as a rule), becomes as conservative as though it had been in existence for many years. For some reason or other our schools, after careful faculty planning, make great forward strides; but then they steadily regress as though they were defying, and yet really waiting for, another forward impulse. So the reason why the first library schools were not hotbeds of conservatism must be looked for elsewhere than in their newness. The fact that they were naturally progressive came about because they constituted an intrinsic part of the revolutionary movement which swept across North American libraries at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. The schools themselves contributed in important ways to that movement. They laid the foundations for a true profession of librarianship, and they widened its scope when they admitted women as well as men to the upsurging profession. They promoted and advanced the ideals for which the new movement stood: open access, the dictionary card catalog, subject cataloging, and an organized reference collection and services, among others. That is, the schools had a sense of purpose; they stood for something they believed in intensely; they created enthusiasm for the ideals for which they stood. To further their ends, those associated with the schools pioneered in producing a number of significant works, not the least of them being the guide to reference books whose first edition appeared in 1901 as the contribution of a Drexel library school faculty member. Certainly by the time of the Williamson report conservatism had quite generally become firmly established. This state of affairs can be observed from the very fact that Williamson was able to give categorically the usual library school curriculum of the day. 1 The courses are listed in descending order according to the number of classroom hours of instruction a year. They were: 60 Trade bibliography 10 50 Binding and repair 10 48 Printing and publishing 8 34 Order work 7 32 School libraries 5 18 Library buildings 5 15 Filing 4 14 Community relations 4 14 Shelf work 4 13 Languages 4 12 Accessioning 3 12 Indexing 2 11 Inventory 1 CURRICULUM DESIGN FOR THE THIRD ERA 165 Cataloging Book selection Reference work Classification Administration ""Children's work Current events Public documents Subject headings Subject bibliography History of libraries Fiction Lending systems Apart from computer studies, there is very little in the usual library school curriculum today that was not covered to some extent or another by these twenty- six topics. There have been major shifts in emphasis as can be seen from the fact that no schools in Canada or the United States today devote a good fourth of their class time to descriptive and subject cataloging, whereas Williamson could report 108 hours for that topic out of a total of 400. But apart from that, there is many a library school dean who year by year goes through the catalogs of other schools looking hopefully for topics which others have introduced, only to end the search with the feeling that apart from variations in the names of courses and in course descriptions, everyone is doing very much the same thing when it comes to sub- stantive coverage. There is a great deal that is fine in this situation, so much so that it can be stated that library schools are conscien- tious in seeing that students receive the basic preparation they ought to have; it is stimulating to find that the earliest schools too covered the groundwork systematically, even if it was in a way which we would not want to follow at the present time. One reason why the conservatism which developed in the later years of the first library schools became embedded in the bachelor's programs was that a number of faculty members carried the tradition from the first era into the second. The Columbia library school, for example, took staff members from both the Albany and the New York Public Library schools. It would have been surprising if these people had not brought with them the essentials of the work they had been carrying out successfully, even though they responded to a consider- able extent to the leadership of Williamson and made many adjust- ments out of loyalty to him. In the third era of education for librarianship, in the transition from the B.L.S. to the M.L.S. , the staff carry-over was very great, almost total. Quite naturally then bachelor's studies and methods were almost inevitably transmitted to far too great an extent, even when careful faculty review of the 166 CURRICULUM DESIGN FOR THE THIRD ERA curriculum had preceded the change. Substantively there was little, if any, advance. Yet there was a general desire for it as can be gathered from the interested and concerned saying that prevailed in the profession at large for nearly a generation— that the library schools were in a period of transition from which they could confi- dently be expected to pull out one day. To some extent, and quite justifiably, regard for one's former teachers has been a factor in the conservatism. In the mid-1980s, when a new school was established in Los Angeles by a graduate of the Michigan library school, what was more natural for him than to follow the pattern he held in high regard in Ann Arbor ? It would have been presumptuous not to follow very closely in the footsteps of esteemed instructors such as Bishop and Mann. Thirty years later, when Ralph Shaw established a school in Hawaii, he paid tribute to the Rutgers library school, from which he had just come, by recreating its program there. Is it not natural to teach very much as we our- selves were taught, all the more so when we, as teachers, were recruited from the field and lacked prior teaching experience? How long does it take for us to mature and to make advances beyond the work of our honored professors? There are many other causes for the conservative approach to the curriculum, for example, job security: as long as one covers the ground faithfully, according to established patterns, there can be no criticism of the teaching job that is being done and therefore the job is secure. But a far more cogent reason is that we conscientiously give the student too much work to do with the consequence that we dull our imaginations by the heavy routine of preparing the assign- ments and going through the flood of paper work that ensues. We undertake the load cheerfully; we carry out the program excellently; and then we have misgivings because we know that we are no longer in the state of mind that will enable us to think about what we really ought to be doing. We are caught up in the lockstep of a system, and the system works because we ourselves make it work. Yet all the while a precious ingredient is being lost-the opportunity to think on the part of both the student and the teacher. Here then we have isolated a fundamental problem which confronts library schools: How can we clear away the routine assignments, the mass of detailed work, in order to allow ample time for investigation and reflection? The problem of conservatism takes on a special form when it is expressed in terms of graduate versus undergraduate methods of instruction. In 1929 the Graduate Library School at the University of Chicago deliberately included the word "graduate" in its name in order to distinguish its activities from those elsewhere, even though there were contemporaneously several schools which had the M.L.S. as a second professional degree. But Chicago, by its very name, was to be concerned exclusively with graduate aspects of our substantive CURRICULUM DESIGN FOR THE THIRD ERA 167 field, something that no other school was able to say. In the past twenty-five years an appreciable number of library schools have in- cluded the word in their designation as though the word alone had some power to lift undergraduate studies onto a higher level, or perhaps in the hope that the day would come when the faculty would find a way to make the entire academic program truly graduate in character. On the other hand, there are those who deny that our work has anything to do with undergraduate or graduate standing, even though Williamson made a classic case for a shift upwards to under- graduate standards. It is true that we do not need to add the word ' 'graduate" to the name of our school in order to achieve our objec- tives. But no one can deny that there are elements of our library school curriculum which are high school or undergraduate in char- acter, which therefore should not receive graduate credit. The latest course work of this below graduate -level kind is in the field of computer science. We clearly have no business giving graduate credit to an introductory course in computer work, and more particularly in the fundamentals of programming, when high school students readily acquire that knowledge and skill; and when we look forward to the day in which all of our degree candidates will have had their basic training in computer work in their high school days so that we can build on the knowledge gained in the secondary school and apply it to our special problem field. In a few library schools an attempt is made to cover elementary aspects of computer and other studies in sessions which precede the regular program and which carry no academic credit. In many instances some work experience in a library is listed in the catalog as a desideratum even though that experience may have been extremely narrow and routine; but it is desired presumably because it may have inculcated some of the elementary knowledge that can hopefully ease the problem of what should or should not be offered for credit. Of somewhat greater importance for us to come to grips with is the fact that library schools are generally held in low estate in uni- versities, less so in colleges. We know that Abraham Flexner's criticisms in his Universities: American, English, German contained too much truth for comfort. The chairman of the committee which led to the creation of the new school at the University of Western Ontario made this devastating comment: "If you get books for the University Library, everyone will eat out of your hands; but if you set up the finest library school, nobody will pay any attention." In his mind's eye he thought of the routine of handling books over the counter as the role of the librarian; he had no concept of what the professional librarian can contribute to the academic program of a university through his creative activities. So we do have to be con- cerned about the standing of our schools in the university as a whole. We should be respected as the old established disciplines are, and 168 CURRICULUM DESIGN FOR THE THIRD ERA there is no reason in the world why our studies should not command just as much respect. Some of the most difficult intellectual prob- lems to be found anywhere lie in our field of knowledge; and every other discipline depends to a profound extent on our ability to deal with situations which become increasingly complex, which call for insightful knowledge of a higher and higher order. The factor which makes the problem of discerning what is graduate in character, what is undergraduate, and what is high school, is that nowadays there is a pronounced trend for matters which were formerly at a higher level to be covered at a lower level. Matrix algebra, for example, which once was an advanced topic in mathematics, is now taught successfully to undergraduates and even to students in good high schools. Quite properly a topic such as American history is taught to high school, undergraduate, and gradu- ate students; evidently it is not the topic which counts so much at any of the three stages. Is it not rather the degree of maturity which can be anticipated at each level? Characteristically, for example, the high school student will take most of his American history from secondary sources although increasingly he is learning how to use and manipulate simpler primary resources such as the speeches of political leaders of the day. The contemporary undergraduate stu- dent, relying less on textbooks than formerly, finds himself in a position to do first-class work, especially in honors programs, by going to primary historical sources more than to the writings of historians. As a consequence of the competence of really good under- graduates to work with primary sources, there is the feeling at Har- vard University that the best honors undergraduates do better work than the typical master's student. But quite generally it is at the graduate level, and more particularly in doctoral studies, that the full play of the mature ability to handle resources of all kinds comes to the fore. Since librarians are constantly concerned with the activities of scholars and junior scholars, they should in their professional preparation be introduced forthwith to scholarly methods and appara- tus. Without a doubt they should gain considerable insight into the ways of the scholar and the researcher in the course of their first professional degree program. All librarians are, in one way or another, to a greater or lesser degree, constantly concerned with the rudiments to the full range of scholarship; gathering, sifting, and organizing data to serve known purposes or to create new knowledge, all of this hopefully in a completely dependable, authoritative, and exhaustive manner to the extent that circumstances dictate. When we say such things, we are beginning to come to the heart of the matter: the maturity of the methods and the substances are what really should and must count in education for librarianship, regardless of whether CURRICULUM DESIGN FOR THE THIRD ERA 169 we are preparing a public, school, special, or university librarian. We can properly call this ideal graduate study. When matrix algebra was mentioned, it was to illustrate a trend in contemporary education. There are other trends of various kinds which are of great importance to us, yet which tend to be obscured by the conservative approach to our substantive field. A very far- reaching one is that we are entering squarely an age of mass use: we handle large numbers of readers a day, and large quantities of ma- terial. In a week we can cater to more readers than would have come through a library's doors in a year a century ago. In a year we can process a hundred thousand to a quarter of a million volumes, more items than there were in all but a few libraries a hundred years ago. Yet we are still basing our library school instruction on the situ- ations that prevailed in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth, when the medium-sized library was our ideal and when the large library was just beginning to emerge. In any university with 10,000 or more students we should expect, as a minimum, ten to twenty thousand readers a day; and we have been learning the slow and hard way how to handle these numbers success- fully. In public libraries in metropolitan areas the problem of mass use is a daily phenomenon involving school students, college students, and the general public. It is accordingly of great importance for library schools to focus attention on the consequences of rapid growth. There are now university libraries which are racing through the stage of medium size and which will have a million or more volumes within a decade of their foundation. Downs and Heussman have given figures for fifty university libraries in Canada and the United States for 1968-69 which support the statements made above. 2 Expenditures for books, periodicals, and binding Average Median High Library budget Book budget Total enrollment (FTE) Total volumes (June 30, 1968) Annual acquisitions (3-year average) Current periodicals received Number of microforms Professional staff Nonprofessional staff Number of seats for readers General and reserve circulation Studies of growth and large size are not just the concern of the big libraries. It is important for the medium-sized library to look ahead 2,949,293 2,529,461 8,500,000 953,716 835,357 2,175,961 19,895 16,775 48,285 1,989,188 1,456,684 7,920,387 103,645 79,867 254,311 14,735 11,050 50,055 339,523 349,423 924,704 89 73 227 154 119 426 3,308 3,000 7,808 852,458 760,779 2,517,704 170 CURRICULUM DESIGN FOR THE THIRD ERA and to know that one day it will be facing the kind of situation which now confronts the bigger institutions. Library surveys are common when mass methods should have begun to take hold, when a medium- sized library begins to labor to keep up with its old-fashioned prac- tice as it approaches the million-volume mark. Basically what the survey does is to point out the simplifications in method which be- come essential as a consequence of size, and these are matters with which students in library schools should become acquainted. In 1966, at Stanley House on the Gaspe, there was a week-long conference attended by the librarians of the metropolitan public libraries of Canada and by the heads of a number of Canadian library schools. A major theme of the conference was the necessity for re- search into the ongoing problems which metropolitan public libraries must face and the importance of having library schools grapple with all aspects of those problems. Both sides agreed on the contribution the library school can make in such ways; and, although nothing has been done in the intervening years, there can be no doubt about the service which library schools can provide when they are ready to accept the challenges implied in current developments of this kind. When we assume the responsibility that goes with this type of investi- gation, we will be putting ourselves in the forefront of the con- temporary library movement in very much the same way that the first library schools served the library causes of their day. Allied to the questions of mass use, mass handling of materials, and size, there is the baffling problem which goes by the name of the literature explosion— or the avalanche of literature as the Germans call it. For twenty-five years top scientists have called us "inept," "incompetent," and a string of similar adjectives because we have not come to grips with the difficulties which are inherent in the liter- ature explosion, because we have done so little toward resolving the difficulties. Vannevar Bush paved the way for this kind of criticism in his epoch-making article in the Atlantic Monthly in 1945. 3 To an almost total extent we have taken these upbraidings lying down. In many ways the Library of Congress has been the worst offender in this respect because it had on its staff in the 1940s a man who could have led the breakthrough for us. This was Mortimer Taube, at the time chief of the Science and Technology Project at LC. He made it abundantly clear that the conventional methods of handling the litera- ture of science would no longer serve. On the author side he stated, quite properly, that no scientist would dream of asking for the "Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lincoln Laboratory" report on any topic, which is the heading the Library of Congress employs; instead, he said, the common approach is for the Lincoln Laboratory report. This finding was fortunately embodied in the Lubetzky con- tributions to the new cataloging code and later in the 1967 code itself, CURRICULUM DESIGN FOR THE THIRD ERA 171 although because of inertia that clause in the 1967 code is still for the most part inoperative. Vastly more significant than the heading revision was Taube's finding that research workers rarely ask for simple topics; almost invariably their request is for a topic in relation to another one or in relation to others. The consequence of his findings is that we can no longer rely on the simple subject control of literature as represented by LC and Sears subject headings and by the Dewey and LC classifi- cation schemes. Those simple approaches must henceforth be com- plemented, and eventually replaced, by systems which are not inert in the way that cards in a catalog drawer are. Our creative thinking must be put to work to enable us to develop systems which will per- mit readers and staff to link mechanically and at random any two or more topics, preferably by means of the computer and with limiting and other devices of various kinds. So the challenge to library schools is, first, to take a firm stand and to characterize as outmoded any precomputer scheme, and second, to carry out a series of in- vestigations which will eventually lead to the type of control system which will adequately serve the purpose of today and tomorrow. What has been said in the preceding paragraphs is another way of saying that we are living in a revolutionary age similar to the one that existed when the first library schools came into being. And, just as they were among the leaders of the new movement, so the library schools of today have an opportunity to be among the leaders of the revolutionary movement of our day and to share in the enthusiasm that goes with so high a sense of purpose. The methods which stood us in good stead for three-quarters of a century will no longer serve, a statement which we can make on the evidence provided by top- ranking scientists of the caliber of Vannevar Bush. And those of us who do not contribute to the development of new methods, who are content with matters as they stand, must surely be like the librarians at the end of last century and the beginning of this who saw nothing but catastrophe in changing from closed to open access. Even if there were no great changes in prospect as the computer age takes greater and greater hold, we must be concerned with the fact that library school faculty members for too long have tended to be followers, not leaders. When we were in the field making pro- fessional contributions, we were leaders; when we began teaching and reporting what those in the field were doing, we became followers. It is true that we could be leaders in education for librarianship; we could be highly successful teachers. But in our teaching field those qualities carry no significant research component with them for the most part; and it is imperative that library science, like every other discipline in the university, carry its full research complement. Problems of the order of mass use, metropolitan public libraries, and the literature explosion can present research material for 172 CURRICULUM DESIGN FOR THE THIRD ERA innumerable investigations of high quality; they can increase the dignity of our teaching responsibilities to the point to which we can feel satisfied that we are doing what we ought to be, that we are doing what commands respect in the eyes of scholars and research workers. Allied to these matters is the question of just what it is that we are trying to accomplish in our library schools. We cannot reshape our curriculum unless we know the ends which we are to serve. There are many in the field and some in library schools who believe that we should be preparing people to fill the ranks. They argue that we should leave alone the preparation of the colonels and generals; somehow or other they will graduate from the ranks like a Napoleon. Just the same there are rumblings over this do-nothing policy. Eldred Smith, for example, says that "for a number of years, in the mistaken belief that libraries require a vast herd of additional personnel, the schools have produced a large number of poorly edu- cated graduates." He goes on to say that "the old fifty-year pro- grams should be abandoned or drastically revised for academic librarians. Certainly, the generalist approach is no longer appli- cable to the education of the sophisticated specialists that research libraries require." He calls the problem "an old bugbear of library education: quality vs. quantity." 4 I do not believe that a new type of library school is required for the first professional degree to make the kind of contribution that is called for here. But I do believe that Eldred Smith is saying very much the same kind of thing that has been said above, namely that our libraries are beginning to operate in a new and revolutionary age and that our curriculum must be adjusted so that the library schools can join the ranks of the leaders in this new and exciting age. If we succeed in doing this, we will be just as successful in providing the insights for the future colonels and generals, regardless of whether they are staff or line officers, as we will be for the privates and the sergeants. We must never lose sight of this dual responsibility. One reason for saying this is that, as the computer age comes into full swing, we may well see the disappearance of the small isolated college, public, school, and special library in its present form. The staff in small remote institutions may easily find itself called on to master the intricacies of the full range of knowledge as it becomes available over electronic networks. Accordingly the day of the un- sophisticated librarian may well be coming to an end. It can very well be that we shall need to substitute the specialist, the experts who among other skills "can step into the collection-development, sub- stantial-reference, and bibliographical- consultant positions that are now largely unfilled." 4 CURRICULUM DESIGN FOR THE THIRD ERA 173 A CRITIQUE OF SOME BASIC COURSES Traditionally we have looked on administration, book selection, cataloging, and reference as the core courses in our curriculum. The four were singled out for this mark of distinction because they repre- sent the greater part of the librarians' work day techniques. When the four have been mastered, then one can operate a library or a library function with a modicum of efficiency at any rate. Only in limited ways or with the exceptional instructor do the four in reality give insight into what it was that our predecessors had in mind when they established or developed our libraries; and somehow or other, except in library architecture, we do not seem to concern ourselves with the specialized problems encountered in starting a new library. Nor do the four courses represent the basic preparation which a librarian should have in this increasingly complex era. Actually of the eight courses discussed below, seven should be regarded as core courses, and all eight of them should be designed or redesigned to serve adequately the stage of library history in which we find our- selves in the last part of the twentieth century. ACQUISITION Most library schools have a course called "Book Selection" or some variation on that theme. There used to be a course in "Order Work" but that as such has disappeared and the content has been ab- sorbed elsewhere, quite often in "Administration." In the early days of library schools, when the library profession was in its formative stages, a course in book selection was highly desirable. It made important contributions toward an understanding of how, for the day, library resources should be developed. At least one fine book was published during the period of book selection courses, namely Living with Books by Helen Haines. Under the im- petus of specialists in book selection, standard lists of books were prepared, especially for public and school libraries, and latterly for college and junior college libraries. Public library systems set up book selection committees which operated enthusiastically by means of reports made by staff members who read the books which were to be discussed at committee meetings. Contemporaneously, of course, the very term "book selection" is a misnomer. Every type of library is concerned today with a wide variety of media: books, manuscripts, microcopies, pamphlets, periodicals, recordings, sheet maps and music, and a host of other forms. Be that as it may, it is truly distressing to look back over the past eighty-three years, the library school span, and to realize the inefficacy of courses in book selection because on the one hand the great library collectors have rarely been the products of such courses— Harry Lydenberg of the New York Public Library and Archibald Cary Coolidge at Harvard, for example— and on the other 174 CURRICULUM DESIGN FOR THE THIRD ERA hand library collectors have missed the boat on one important area after another so that today there is in the whole of North America, for instance, not even one notable collection of the works of Gandhi, the best probably being the one collected by a private individual, John Haynes Holmes, and presented by him to Harvard. It was because of the serious failure of our selection system that the Farmington Plan had to be instituted, the primary cause being that no library in the whole of North America had gathered together an extensive array of materials relating to Japan— China, yes; but Japan, no. The reason for these shortcomings is that book selection is like the blinders on a horse which make him look steadfastly in a given direction and pre- vent him from taking in the world at large. Historically, too, there is the difference that even as recently as 1940 North American libraries collected almost exclusively publica- tions in English, French, German, Italian, Latin and Greek, the Scandinavian languages, and Spanish, with a mere scattering, for the most part, of other languages. The 800's in Dewey to this day repre- sent this restricted viewpoint: Chinese literature has a tenth of a number, 895.1, as does Russian, 891.7, just because we were not expected to collect anything much beyond translations or histories of Chinese and Russian literature. There were, of course, a few, just a few, Chinese and Russian collections in North America prior to World War II; for the most part they were not integrated with the main bookstock and they were always in the keeping of natives of China and Russia. It was even difficult for administrators to know precisely what the native-born staff was doing. So, for instance, it came as something of a shock at the Library of Congress in 1940 to discover that the Oriental Division had concentrated on Chinese pub- lications to the virtual exclusion of Japanese and that the Slavic Divi- sion was deliberately putting all its book funds into the acquisition of pre- 1918 publications to avoid the acquisition of any Soviet material. From the time of the Farmington Plan in 1942 there could be no limitation by language or country; our collecting has been and will continue to be on a global basis. Even if a library operates on the restricted plan of earlier times, publications in English appear in so very many countries that we must watch the book production of the world to catch, for example, an American work on mathematics issued in Holland or an American art book published in Switzerland. While it is sad to look back and acknowledge how the great collec- tions in American libraries were generally gathered— not by librar- ians, not by those who took courses in book selection, but by private collectors— in certain respects it is encouraging to be able to say that the situation is changing today. In college and university libraries it used to be that faculty members did most of the building up of re- sources. Were they to undertake the responsibility today, and to do the job as it ought to be done, they would be working full time for the CURRICULUM DESIGN FOR THE THIRD ERA 175 university libraries; thus there is a pronounced trend away from the professor as the individual who decides what items should be ac- quired. Increasingly library staff members and other subject spe- cialists are taking over from the professors. In most cases this is desirable because of the speed needed to operate in the highly com- petitive book market of today and because all the skill available must be employed to build up resources by gift and exchange, two methods which faculty members seldom exploited to any extent. What all this amounts to is that book selection, with its platitudes and limited outlook, is seriously inadequate for contemporary needs, even in the school and small public library. The librarian of the present and the future ought to be acquisitive through and through; he ought to be a bookman in the best sense of that word, namely, one who is well informed on books and book production. He must be able to compete with the very best library book collectors in the world, to hold his own regardless of whether the tactics are fair or foul. Accordingly acquisition studies should be substituted for the out- moded book selection course. We shall then be preoccupied with giving insight into the current state of the book market, into the use of national bibliographies and other sources for systematic collecting from what is available throughout the world, into the not-in-the-trade market, into the remainder business which so often comes into play within months of the original publication date, and into gift and ex- change procedures. We shall be concerned with the serious de- ficiencies of lists of books which are alleged to be in print even though 10,000 items will go out of print during the lifetime of this year's American Books in Print at the same time that even more are published which will not be listed until next year. We will examine the strengths and weaknesses of the Farmington Plan and most other blanket-order schemes. The art of making the library dollar repre- sent two dollars rather than fifty cents must be learned. Studies of the antiquarian and secondhand booktrade around the world should be carried out. And above all, the knowledge which first-rate acquisi- tion librarians carry in their heads should be made available to all. In the past we have had comparatively few really first-rate acqui- sition librarians. Now we have need of them. Is it not a responsi- bility of library schools to prepare such specialists for their arduous tasks ? If so, then the old-fashioned book selection course should be a thing of the past. We must move with the times; in acquisitions the times are moving very fast. ADMINISTRATION Margaret Mann used to give her students in the Michigan library school a superb demonstration of how, in the Armour Institute to which she went and in which she taught, a dignified bearded gentleman would demonstrate in front of the class with a broom how library 176 CURRICULUM DESIGN FOR THE THIRD ERA floors ought to be swept. That incident gives an inkling of how ad- ministration was taught in the first era of library schools. In the second era the broom disappeared, but in the Columbia library school syllabus for the bachelor's work in administration the topic of clean- ing materials for library floors was listed for class discussion. The syllabus made the following statement: "A librarian may be at a loss unless he is conversant with many homely facts and conditions, and unless he has acquired some knowledge, for example, of roofs, fur- naces, fuels, floors, and mops." 5 How far have we progressed in the third era? Is the course on administration a catch-all for odds and ends, even "homely facts and conditions," that do not fit snugly into other courses, or is it genuinely similar to courses in graduate schools of business administration in which students gain insight into the art of planning a course of action and making decisions? Again I believe that we must move strongly away from the former pattern and come much closer to the business school type of approach. And by this I do not mean a changeover to the case method because the production of proper case studies is a really expensive undertaking. But two elements in the new approach are clear. First, we should have studies in the theory of administration and very much along the lines of Elton Mayo's investigations of team work, the sense of belonging, and so on. These studies do not have to be as extensive or as systematic as they are in a business school, but they are essential preparation for those who will work in the ranks just as they are for those who will become section or department heads or chief librarians. Second, since most librarians feel helpless when it comes to planning a new building or remodeling or rearranging an old one, we have reached the stage at which every library school student should gain insight into the design and creation of library buildings. All too many of our structures, including most multimillion-dollar buildings, are not what they could have been had there been the proper professional thinking in their planning. Excellent library buildings are something of a rarity. They come about only when there is com- plete teamwork between the architect and the librarian, the complete sharing of the two sets of insights. And the library consultant, sub- stantial help that he can be, is no substitute for the architect-librar- ian combination. Very definitely library schools can play a part in raising the quality of the home of the library, the library building. We need not be deterred because there is very little in print on the design aspect of libraries and that most of the printed matter relates to details and norms. Colored slides of new and historical buildings afford the student an opportunity to figure out the elements of design for himself, to observe what is good and effective, and to avoid what is bad. Slides of this kind help to train the student's powers of ob- servation in general, a skill that will find room for play in various aspects of our daily work, but above all in administrative duties. CURRICULUM DESIGN FOR THE THIRD ERA 177 These two matters are clear, but when it comes to the hodge podge which quite generally covers the rest of a course in administration, it is far from easy to see the daylight. It could be that there should be no further studies beyond the theory of administration and library architecture. Could we cover the rest of the ground by means of demonstrations, both good and bad, and by reading and discussing annual reports of libraries? For one thing, the library school library in itself can offer a wonderful opportunity for the demonstration of sound methods, whereas in the past it has all too often represented outmoded practice or practice dictated by lack of funds or by lack of interest on the part of a general university/library administration. It could be that we should comb what we are now covering and select a handful of topics that could be combined with the studies in the theory of administration. The solution to the problem, whatever it may be, will be difficult to contrive. Just the same we must "front that difficulty," as Carlyle said when he demanded a catalog at the British Museum, and stop lingering in the second era of library school history. 6 CATALOGING Few parts of the curriculum have been so ruggedly conservative as the course in cataloging, which in many of its aspects still repre- sents the thinking of the first era of our schools. In rethinking the course in cataloging we should begin with a statement of objectives. Eighty years ago, in the first era of library school history, there were relatively few open-access libraries anywhere. Naturally then descriptive cataloging was of greater practical value than subject cataloging which was just in its infancy. In present-day North Amer- ica over 99 percent of all libraries are open access; yet the emphasis in our courses on cataloging still continues to be on descriptive cata- loging even though the catalog is of secondary importance in an open- access library. The problem is compounded because the Library of Congress follows closed-access principles of cataloging. When we are teaching Library of Congress cataloging we should be punctilious in pointing out to the students that its policies and practices differ in important respects from those which we ought to be following in open-access collections. We could repair some of the damage if on every appropriate occasion we made the distinction abundantly clear to our students; but how many of us, for instance, point out that the technical heading that we choose, very often for no other reason than that it is on an LC card, may make it difficult to find the book in the course of direct consultation of the shelves? It is fine, for example, to have a rule which states that an abridgment goes under the same heading as the original; but when it comes to putting the Shorter Oxford Dictionary under Murray and shelving it under his name-just because he was editor of the Oxford English Dictionary and so his 178 CURRICULUM DESIGN FOR THE THIRD ERA name, according to the rule, must constitute the heading for an abridgment that does not even mention his name— then we are guilty of making it difficult for the work to be found when we go to the shelves directly, a matter which is of serious import in an open- access library. We are fond of quoting Cutter's statement about the convenience of the reader, but on many occasions we seem to over- look his convenience when it comes to the open shelves. Accordingly in overhauling studies in cataloging, a first require- ment is to give the arrangement of material on the shelves, that is the classification, the priority in treatment and emphasis over descrip- tive cataloging. In an open-access library most of us, readers and staff alike, go as a rule to the shelves in the first instance and have recourse to the catalog only when we do not find on the shelves what we are looking for. In a closed-access library we have no option in the matter; except for the books on the reference shelves we simply must consult the catalog for all our needs. And so for the great ma- jority of our libraries, of all kinds and sizes, the most valuable part of a cataloging course should relate to the classification scheme, that is, to the truly effective organization and display of the bookstock for reader and staff use. When the New York Public Library began to think about the new reference and circulation library to be opened in the fall of 1970 in the Arnold Constable Building almost opposite the reference depart- ment, the interesting idea was advanced by John Cory that no catalog would really be necessary because completeness was the goal for the collection, at least for current output. The point of theory involved can shed much light on what is being discussed. The idea was an excellent one, what it required to make it a success was a classifica- tion scheme which almost unerringly would make it possible for readers and staff members to know where to look on the shelves or in the shelflist for any given item. Unfortunately the ideal was not pursued. The new library will have a conventional catalog and the collection will be classified by Dewey; between Dewey and the ideal there is an immense gulf. In classification as it is generally taught, the student attempts to answer this question: Where does this item fit in the system of knowledge ? That type of approach succeeds all too often in burying an item: putting a work on symbolic logic with mathematics in Dewey or LC instead of in philosophy when it is for the use of students and faculty in the philosophy department, putting a work on constitutional history with law or political science when in a school library it is intended for history courses, and so on. Fundamentally we are or- ganizing our library resources for use, are we not? If so, the ques- tion should be: Where can I class this item to make it readily accessible on the shelves of my particular type and size of institu- tion? Or, where on the shelves is the reader or staff member most CURRICULUM DESIGN FOR THE THIRD ERA 179 likely to look for the item? When a working philosophy of this kind is followed over the years, the works on the shelves become a resource that can be consulted readily and conveniently, and without the neces- sity of looking in two or more places for items on one and the same subject as so frequently is the case today. The problem is not at all serious when we are required in the first instance to work from the catalog as we must do in closed-access systems. We become inured to finding our books in a wide variety of classes. In fact, we would be surprised if ever we found them consolidated, and a study under almost any heading in the Library of Congress book catalog for sub- jects will show how widespread the dispersal is, both for LC and for Dewey classification numbers. In an open-access library though, have we any business giving readers and staff members the run- around to find like materials ? It is equally important for us as teachers to be making clear today the innate deficiencies of all precomputer classification schemes. The future surely cannot lie with them; and yet we do not point out to our students the folly of reclassifying from one precomputer scheme to another, as quite a number of libraries are doing at the very time when they should be looking forward to the computer scheme that will in the not-too-distant future be serving them both for the arrange- ment of books on the shelves and for information retrieval. A straw in the wind is the Library of Congress practice of utilizing simple Dewey numbers for the machine manipulation of the entries in the acquisition edition of New Serial Titles for the simple reason that such numbers are more readily machine -usable than LC classifica- tion numbers are. We should be pointing out too the harm that MARC is doing on the subject side, an area which the computer can be made to serve in a supreme way, by suggesting that all we need for machine control is a single LC or Dewey classification number or else the LC subject headings which were not devised for computer applications, which have not even benefited by Mortimer Taube's penetrating criti- cisms, and which are quite generally so ambiguous that they succeed in generating a vast quantity of "noise." The paucity and deficiencies in the literature on subject cataloging have undoubtedly been a factor in the subordination of classification studies to descriptive cataloging, a topic which has been extensively written up so that we can be sure of what we are saying when we dis- cuss that phase of the cataloging course. Most of the knowledge about classification, certainly about the extremely important aspects of the policies and practices which are followed in applying a system, is carried in the heads of those who are working in the field or is deter- mined by daily searches of the subject cards or the shelflist to determine what the unrecorded practice has been. This is the way in which we operate in libraries; why is it not the way we use in our 180 CURRICULUM DESIGN FOR THE THIRD ERA teaching? After all we can use the LC book subject catalog as the tool for the students to consult in seeking their precedents. Such writings as there are on classification systems tend to be descriptive; they tend to conceal far more than they disclose. Do any of them, for instance, tell one what to do in Dewey for the law or sta- tistics of a subject when there is no form number for these important aspects ? Do they tell one that the subject headings must be made to eke out the deficiencies of the classification schemes? And what of the poor reader or staff member who wants to find the law or the sta- tistics on a subject through direct consultation of the shelves? Does any writing on the LC classification say how that library arranges its rare books, what to do when one finds a priority 4 number on the card in place of the regular classification number, or that the base of the system which once was praised as being so broad has become so narrow in numerous classes that a bottleneck has developed in the assigning of the book numbers? Speaking of book numbers, why do our library schools have stu- dents work with Cutter tables when they assign book numbers? That is not the way we operate on the job. There we devise the numbers from the evidence we find in the shelflist. I have never worked in a catalog department which used Cutter tables; maybe they did not even own a copy of them. Only the shelflist can say whether there are one or two or a thousand or more books on a subject; and quantity de- termines the length and complexity of any book number. Only the shelflist can disclose conveniently that there are other editions or works of an author in the same class so that title letters and other adjustments become necessary. And yet, quite distressingly, there are libraries which consistently employ a three-figure Cutter number in all classes, regardless of the number of titles in a class, just be- cause three-figure Cutter numbers were the order of the day in their library school year. In teaching the problem arises quite naturally because library schools lack general shelflists which students can consult as they assign book numbers in their practice work; but is it not wooden to suggest a method which few libraries follow? Similar comments can be made on the subject headings which in their day were a notable contribution to the reader and staff use of our bookstock. However, the warning signals were already flying in the 1940s when Taube was engaged in rethinking the subject control of scientific literature. From that time on it has been clear that the old-fashioned subject heading serves all too limited a purpose, that it must be complemented by a relational system that will enable us, among other things, to link any two or more headings by computer or other means, and that the terms must be as unambiguous and precise as possible— indeed that they may have to be given up in favor of a classified approach since that gives evidence of being a superior sys- tem. For our present thinking the introduction to the list of headings CURRICULUM DESIGN FOR THE THIRD ERA 181 prepared under Taube's direction for the Science and Technology Project at the Library of Congress 7 is of even greater significance for the thinking of our students than is the introduction to Sears's or Haykin's book on subject headings. The Taube list is for us, as it was to him, a transition piece of work, but it points in the direction in which we must go in the years ahead. In how many of our schools, though, do the students study it and its theory? When it is consulted, how much time is devoted to it by comparison with the time given to Sears which, after all, from a current standpoint, is a baby list? Am I alone among library school instructors in having a most uneasy feeling every time a student is required to work with Sears, even with the LC list of subject headings? Both of them symbolize the delight- fully simple days of the past, when no one thought of calling us inept, when no one could think it was a complete waste of time to call for a subject card "1. American literature-Hist. & crit." or "1. Phi- losophy." I trust that I am not alone in wanting to get our students preoccupied with the problems of 1) quantity: the existence in a cata- log of many thousands of cards on a single subject and 2) complexity: the only solution to which will be found in a system which permits the manipulation of entries so that one heading can be related to another, or to others, quickly and conveniently. There is genuine intellectual content in occupying the time of students with problems of this mag- nitude and difficulty, problems which will be harder to solve if we delay until the literature explosion has made its effects even more felt. Turning to descriptive cataloging, I cannot recall when as a practicing cataloger I last had occasion to consult the catalog code on any point. Why do we emphasize and overemphasize cataloging codes? On the job, when we have a case in point, we do not turn to the code for a solution. Instead we check our catalog to see what our particular library has already done in similar situations. We must operate within the unity of our catalogs; even though this is the way in which so many ad hoc decisions have been made at the Library of Congress and elsewhere, for example for the so-called anonymous classics, still this is the manner in which we proceed in work situa- tions, and this is the way people are apt to act in future years. That is, on the job we must of necessity follow the style and precedents which are found in our individual catalogs. This does not imply any rigidity because very sensibly, particularly of late, we have been ready to insert catalog cards made according to a variety of rules and styles, and notably, of course, when we Xerox our catalog cards. I believe it is more important to prepare future catalogers with this kind of a working philosophy than it is to try to indicate to them that there is anything whatsoever that even approximates a national standard of cataloging. Who would have the temerity to define such a standard? For most of the time since the Library of Congress began 182 CURRICULUM DESIGN FOR THE THIRD ERA its modern cataloging in 1898 it has followed a wide variety of styles and practices. Seventy-two years ago it began with its own version of a half card. The style of the LC card as we know it today went through a process of evolution. For the first forty or more years the various cataloging sections in the Library of Congress followed their own rulings, not, to quite an extent, those of the library as a whole. We had evidence of this diversity when cooperative cataloging was organized in 1931. In the ensuing years catalogers from around the country often wrote to the cooperative cataloging section for the clar- ification of differing practices as found on LC cards. Very commonly the response was a statement of what the cooperative cataloging sec- tion called "the preferred policy," by which was meant that the section preferred the particular ruling as against one or more rulings followed elsewhere in the cataloging division. Nowadays LC is following the practices of many of the national bibliographies of the world as it does its Title H cataloging. On reflection we cannot find fault with these divergent practices and policies. As a matter of fact, there is a saying in the profession which states that the only consis- tent catalog would be one made by a single cataloger in one day- tomorrow he might change his mind. The enormous advantage we enjoy today in teaching cataloging is the availability of numerous book catalogs produced in the past two decades which show what individual libraries are actually doing and how widespread is experimentation. The advantage is so great that we can give up teaching from codes and follow inductive methods by means of which students discover from the catalogs what the rules are and the extent to which any ruling is followed or varied. After having taught cataloging by both methods I can say that it is much sounder in theory and more lasting in its effect to have students ex- plore the descriptive and subject details in book catalogs than it is to teach in our long-standing ways. Students can learn about forms of name to great advantage when they examine practices in book cata- logs, whereas it is quite misleading when we give them the statement in the code and create the impression that there is only one form of name to be preferred or one degree of fullness for a personal or cor- porate name. When they are taught by the inductive method, students are already well along the way toward being prepared for the individ- ualistic styles and practices which many good libraries follow. They are then in a position to appreciate an augmented ■ heading such as "Plato. Republic. English. Jowett. 1899" which simplifies the filing of cards and at the same time makes it easier to consult a very large file such as the one in the New York Public Library from which the augmented heading was taken. They can begin to grasp the value of the file in the Harvard Library which uses the date of publication but no subheading under "Catholic Church," a practice which makes an otherwise extremely difficult file comparatively easy to consult. CURRICULUM DESIGN FOR THE THIRD ERA 183 As if all this were not enough, it is necessary to continue and to say that our courses disclose an almost complete failure to cover cataloging methods. How many of us go into topics such as pre- liminary cataloging, searching, and sorting? And this at a time when valuable class time is for the most part wasted on work with authority cards which are used in not even 1 percent of our libraries and which since 1949, with the onset of no-conflict cataloging, are at least 90 percent worthless. It really is very serious that our gradu- ates go out into the field without any idea of the method they should follow when they sit down to catalog. Most students somehow develop a hazy idea that they should take a single item and complete the cata- loging on it before taking up another one. Naturally cataloging pro- duction is low when that system, or lack of system, is followed on the job. Students should learn the advantages of first arranging books alphabetically by author to enable systematic work to be done on the totality. They should learn to do all the preliminary investigations for a morning's or an afternoon's work before they begin to do the actual cataloging. Only when all the preliminaries have been checked and every point has been determined should the synthetic process start, whether this be original cataloging or the editing of preliminary cataloging. All teachers of cataloging are aware of the unsatiated demand in the profession for head catalogers and chiefs of processing depart- ments. There is no reason why we should not provide the kind of preparation that is required for those who will later assume such responsibilities. To a high degree we must attribute the neglect to our preoccupation with the rules and details of descriptive cataloging to the virtual exclusion of these and other pressing matters. The fact that there is very little in print on these matters is no excuse. In universities we are working constantly on the frontiers of knowledge where ideas and information must be generated. The insights which a head cataloger or a chief of technical services must have today are partly on the frontiers of knowledge, especially as they are faced with problems of a dimension not dreamed of before; but to quite an extent they represent everyday situations, knowledge of which can be de- rived from those who fill the positions of head cataloger and chief of the processing department contemporaneously. I do not believe that more time is required for the cataloging course so it can absorb the wider responsibilities. Rather it is a case of reducing or sloughing off much of what has concerned us in the past. COMPUTER STUDIES At the outset it should be reiterated that we should not offer for credit work in the elements of computer operations. They belong at the high school level and quite definitely graduate credit should not be given for studies of that order. If for a number of years to come we 184 CURRICULUM DESIGN FOR THE THIRD ERA must still teach the rudiments to some or all of our students, then it should be on a noncredit basis. Next it should be said that, as such, individual courses in computer studies are nothing more than a stopgap in library schools. They should not exist as discrete units in our curriculum. This desidera- tum has nothing to do with the fact that computer studies must and will bulk larger and larger in our total course offerings. What it means is that the work should be redistributed throughout the cur- riculum so that computer topics fit in naturally whenever and wherever they belong. For example, the computer in relation to acquisition belongs with acquisition studies. When this day comes, we will no longer have two instructors speaking at variance on what is essentially a unitary subject as so often happens today when there is no opportunity for the first of the instructors to contribute to the later discussion. There will have to be much retooling before most instructors can absorb computer studies in their courses to the extent that they can direct the discussion adequately. Nevertheless the complete integration of computer and noncomputer aspects of all topics is the goal to which we must all look forward. Computer studies can go far toward providing the research com- ponent which library schools have generally lacked for so long. No one anywhere has the answers to library computer needs. Systems have been set up empirically so that they operate up to a certain point and are not likely to go further until basic research studies are made. Where better for those studies to be made that in the frame- work of our curriculum? We can illustrate what is meant by the following: A recent survey indicated that some three hundred li- braries in North America are employing the computer as the device for checking in the current issues of serial publications. The most common pattern was set by the University of California at San Diego and involves arrival cards which leave much to be desired and re- strict the system to no more than 20,000 entries. Some people talk of the necessity of developing four distinct systems according to the number of serials which there are in a small, medium- sized, large, or very large collection, whereas surely a single system would suffice if only we could work out the theoretical foundations. At the same time there are countless libraries which are awaiting the day when a satisfactory computer system for the control of serial re- ceipts will appear. Accordingly we must not be content with having the students examine the San Diego pattern or any variation on it. Over and above this we must carry library school studies to the point at which we will be able to devise satisfactory programs based on the evidence created in our research investigations. CURRICULUM DESIGN FOR THE THIRD ERA 185 HISTORY OF BOOKS AND LIBRARIES I remember from my own library school days that the course began with clay tablets, required us to identify examples of medieval illuminated manuscripts in the final examination, and went on to the American Indian quipu; but it never did get down to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries which might have had some real value for us in the course of our professional careers. In fifty years of professional activity I have never had anything to do with clay tablets, the identi- fication of medieval manuscripts, or the quipu, although I have collected the publications of the Merrymount Press advantageously. What concerns me is not who was the librarian of the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris in the year 1700, but what took place in the British Museum in the 1820s when there came the first insistent demands for the means by which readers could help themselves instead of having to operate through the aid of the librarian as a living catalog. There- in lies the foundation of our present library organization, and it is the living past with which we should be concerned in our historical studies, not facts for the sake of facts. Quite naturally then the folio volumes of the British Museum inquiries which recount the story of those days, and which contain the significant contributions of Panizzi and Carlyle in particular, have always constituted my favorite pro- fessional reading. 8 Fortunately the Irish Universities Press has brought one of the inquiries back into print, and hopefully the other will be reproduced before too long. These volumes are a gold mine for our students because in them they will find the historical reasons for much that we do today, in them they will find the origins of the library movement in which we are caught up today. I believe that in our curriculum the historical studies should be divided into two. First should come old world studies since they pro- vide the base on which we built the new world. But second should come new world studies to provide insight into the practical turn which knowledge took in the American colonies and elsewhere and to show what we have been able to achieve in relation to the old world. Quite disturbingly we can learn one thing, and that is that books and libraries to an enormous extent are the prerogative of the northern hemisphere and not of the southern. Louis Wright's Culture on the Moving Frontier, the work of the former head of the Folger Library, represents the kind of study which we should be undertaking for the new world. Studies of that kind should be complemented by the inter- actions of old world and new world cultures, and quite especially, of course, by the far-reaching influence of the University of Gottingen Library, for example, on the Astor and the Boston Public Libraries, and negatively on the Harvard Library. Library science is one of the few professions which lacks a formulated philosophy. There are writings on the subject, but they do not get us very far. It will take considerable thought and depth of 186 CURRICULUM DESIGN FOR THE THIRD ERA understanding before a philosophy of librarianship can be fully de- veloped. In the meantime the best philosophy we can provide for our students is to be found in the elements of the history of books and libraries which have an important bearing on present-day thought and activity. LANGUAGES FOR LIBRARIANS Most library schools have a language entrance requirement which may or may not mean anything of professional value. That require- ment served its purpose prior to World War II, but with global collecting in the postwar period it is no longer the answer to the problem. By comparison with graduates of library schools on the continent of Europe, North American students are ill equipped to do their work, for example, to gather information from major reference tools in languages other than English. We should, therefore, in our curriculum be teaching the art of reading, not individual languages, but families of languages. Librar- ians belong to one of the professions to which a reading knowledge of languages is in general a prime need, and the need will become greater in the days of the electronic networks when even school li- brarians or the librarians of small rural public libraries will be able to tap the service to the enormous advantage of their institutions or communities, that is, provided they have the competence to do so. There is a vast published literature on the teaching of spoken languages. Very little has been done with the teaching of a reading knowledge of languages. This is an area, then, in which our profes- sion can undertake pioneer investigations and make important contri- butions. REFERENCE WORK The pattern for teaching reference work was established in the first library schools, and we are still operating on the basis of the methods of those days. Kroeger, the predecessor to Mudge and Winchell, appeared in 1901, and the three of them have dictated the pattern of reference studies from that day to this. As a consequence we have never approached the reference collection directly. Instead the objective has been obscured because we have set the students to search for a piece of information, usually pointless, which can be derived as a rule from one work only and which therefore becomes known to the student in this indirect manner. Another weakness in the approach is that the students tend to form teams and to apportion the questions to members of the team who then share the answers one with another. It is common for students to ask their fellows if anyone has found the answer to a particularly out-of-the-way question. The same procedure applies in other courses too, but nowhere is it as rampant as with reference assignments. CURRICULUM DESIGN FOR THE THIRD ERA 187 Cannot better ways of preparing reference librarians for their professional life be devised in the third era of library school educa- tion? Undoubtedly they can. For one thing, Winchell is always behind the times, is clumsy to consult as the supplements multiply, is at best an imperfect record when compared with Malcles, Totok, and others, and is prepared in a university library and yet employed by many 'students who will never work in a university library. One answer to the problem is that we should eliminate from the daily work of our students every reading list or syllabus and instead make the students seek out their own sources of information; in this way they will learn firsthand much of the art of the reference librarian by the process of selecting an item because it is authoritative while re- jecting another because it is not. Until they receive such continued training, the citations and quotations made by library school students will continue to be poor to a marked extent; all too often a student will quote as an authority a totally unreliable author or will fail to reflect on the quotation to test its validity. If, then, we require our students to seek their own sources of information throughout their library school days, and teach them how to go first to primary sources and to be doubtful of secondary sources until they can in one way or another authenticate the information, we shall to an appre- ciable extent be removing the need to teach this aspect of reference work, just as at the same time we shall be making reference librar- ians out of our students from their very first assignment. I do not believe in the efficacy of any survey course in the litera- ture of a field even though we have in some schools courses in what is considered to be the literature of the social sciences or the liter- ature of science. The fields are too enormous to be treated in that way; they are fast- moving fields of knowledge and the best we can do in such courses is list a selection from the noncurrent publications of a limited kind. No one can benefit from this type of an approach; an occasional item here and there along the way can be discovered and remembered, but certainly not the vast array of items even in the major languages of the world. And a course in reference books tends to be essentially another survey course, this time a survey of a list- ing of reference books, but by no means a complete or a current listing. What more can this method accomplish? Once more the way we teach is not the way we operate on the job. At a reference desk there are occasional consultations of Winchell, it is true, particularly when we have an annotated and interleaved edition that is kept up-to-date. But our work pattern is with the card catalog, with the quick reference books and the vertical file close to the reference desk, with the reference books in the narrow sense (that is, the R collection which is invariably more up-to-date than Win- chell) and finally with the total resources of the library which consti- tute the reference collection in the broad sense. 188 CURRICULUM DESIGN FOR THE THIRD ERA Beyond that aspect of reference work, much of the success of the reference librarian consists in the ability to handle readers not only in person but also on the telephone. There is the sizing-up of a per- son to determine the level or degree of information he should have. There is the rapid attempt to work out how long it will take to help a person. There is the art of engaging a person in conversation while one strives to think how his problem is to be tackled, and so on. These are the everyday realities of work at a reference desk, so these are the arts which we should be inculcating vastly more than acquainting the students with numbers of reference books which he may never consult during the course of his professional career. Actually what would help our teaching tremendously would be video tapes which show outstanding reference librarians in action. Students would then be able to observe how readers are handled expertly and to follow the varied situations which the reference li- brarian experiences daily. The video tapes would not be easy to make because it is difficult to tell in good time when a situation that is worth studying will arise. From the comments which the reference librarians would add, the students would become aware of the ways in which reference patterns differ from one institution to another, at times quite markedly because one city specializes in insurance, another in manufacturing of one kind or another, the third is a college town, and so on. They would learn too that fashions in reference questions change from year to year, and here we must record it as a teaching loss that the New York Public Library no longer publishes annual reports of a kind that it once did when there was a record of the annual changes in reference patterns, not only in general, but in the subject divisions as well. MASTER'S SEMINARS When Williamson was dean of the Columbia library school, he gave a second-term seminar for the twelve students who ranked highest at the end of the first term. Those twelve students were envied by their colleagues and rightly so. The seminar experience is a most desir- able one which should, however, be available to all students. A curriculum carefully plans for an extended series of analyses of our professional activities. Therefore, if we are to round the curriculum out, there must be at the end a device for drawing the threads to- gether and for providing a picture of the library as a whole before the graduate begins to work in some area of a library in which he may have difficulty in trying to create a picture of the institution as a whole. So here is the theoretical foundation for a series of master's seminars in each of which, from term to term, there can be the possibility of uniting all the scattered threads with which a student is concerned. CURRICULUM DESIGN FOR THE THIRD ERA 189 In the first term the master's seminar might take the form of an unstructured program in which the beginners raise their problems and express their doubts. Thereby there might be a desirable alter- native to the orientation plan which many schools follow to some degree or another. In the second term it might be more of a reading course in which students report on the professional reading which they have done on their own, particularly from new periodicals and monographs. But in the final term the real master's seminar would attempt to put the finishing touches on each student's professional education. In anticipation of this seminar every student should be asked to record in writing the principles which he can recall from the major courses he has taken. Much remedial work can be done on the basis of that assignment; many wrong impressions, some of them flagrantly wrong, can be corrected in good time; and ideas for the improvement of the school's instructional program can begin to emerge. It is astonishing to find how few principles the students think that they have absorbed in the course of their studies. Some even deny that they have learned any principles whatsoever or they question whether, in the light of what they have studied, there is any difference in our field between a fact and a principle. It takes a wise instructor to deal with the situations that develop in the master's seminar; but the problems are real, and we should take advantage of the rich opportunity that exists to put the finishing touches on a student's pro- fessional preparation so that he will be well prepared for his first position and so that he will have some comprehension of what may lie ahead for him as he works his way up the administrative ladder. One aspect of the concluding master's seminar is so important that it could well be made into a course in its own right. That is the topic of the library of the future. Most of our studies look back or discuss the present; we need to go out of our way to encourage stu- dents to think along sound lines about what the profession will develop into during their professional career. They should study earlier projections to see how sound they were, and with that salutory ex- perience they should move cautiously in dealing with projections such as the oft-heard one about there being no more books in libraries by the end of the century. They need the guidance of the soundest train- ing we can give them for their work which will of necessity be in the library of the future: the problems that go with its size and com- plexity; the relative ease with which a vast resource can be consulted if we can devise and apply the right methods; administrative diffi- culties and costs, including the fact that an administrator must be better prepared than ever before because a mistake in the future can have far more serious consequences than a mistake in the past could; and so on. 190 CURRICULUM DESIGN FOR THE THIRD ERA Clearly there is much to be done in rethinking and then redesign- ing the library school curriculum in this third era of education for librarianship. And when the curriculum has been redesigned, it should not be thought that the task has been done for all time. The redesigning must be a continuous undertaking, a process of constant review and development. Like the three-year or five-year economic plans in various parts of the world, we should think very much in terms of a curriculum which undergoes periodic reexamination and reformulation. Beyond that, there are three overriding responsi- bilities which must be accepted. First, if we are to make our curriculum effective, we must do everything within our power to remove the structure from the indi- vidual courses. I am sure from actual experience that the best results come from almost completely unstructured courses which yet somehow manage in one way or another to cover the groundwork systematically. Should we ever succeed in effectively combining the lack of structure with systematic coverage we will have developed the finest possible learning situation for our students who, after all, are our future colleagues. We should be making studies of the ways in which we can achieve this objective. Second, we must make a tremendous effort to remove from the curriculum the enormous amount of detail that we demand of the stu- dents. Is it not better to find one's way through the forest rather than tag every single tree in it? I am sure that overdevotion to details has had the harmful effect of obscuring principles, just as I am sure that our objective is not to impart a superficial acquaintance with innumerable details. There are surely other better ways of gaining our professional ends than swamping the students with detail; there must be. Accordingly every unit in the curriculum should be scruti- nized closely to throw out detail after detail that can only be standing in the way of our overall objectives. Third, because the literature of our profession in general is so poor, and because so much of great import is carried in people's heads or is available only in restricted or confidential documents, it is essential that library schools jointly undertake a program for the creation of videotapes which will do much to fill the gaps in our pro- fessional literature and provide students with firsthand resources which they should have in order to carry out their assignments. By means of high-quality audiovisual devices of this kind we can provide a vivid awareness of libraries, procedures, and people, in place of the present shadowy awareness of something or someone out there in some vague spot. An illustration from the work of the Fry Associates will point up the potential. They made fifty films of circulation systems in operation in representative libraries. Unfortunately the films were destroyed when the book was published, but there survived an CURRICULUM DESIGN FOR THE THIRD ERA 191 eieht-minute film which can be borrowed from ALA headquarters By means of split-film technique, it compares and contrasts three manual circulation systems as they are operated by the same per- sonnel in the charging and discharging of books. When this film is shown to students they grasp the realities of the situation far m-re readily than if they had done all the reading in the world. They are then in a position to record their observations profitably and they can discuss the three systems meaningfully in class. We ought to have many more teaching aids of this kind, only much more sophisticated. For circulation systems there is an alternative procedure which we could follow: we could acquire the equipment and supplies for each of the major charging systems and have our students operate them with stop watches in hand so they could make the actual comparisons for themselves, but in many other situations there is no alternative. If we want to create a vivid awareness of the work of the card division in the Library of Congress, of the work of the Lenin Library, and so on for most of us the video tape is clearly the only or the best way in which we can bring these agencies and their activities to life for the students. And the same holds true for skillfully organized interviews with key librarians who are much too busy to write, whose publica- tions are usually ghost written, yet who are the people who are shaping the library world of today and tomorrow. As a teaching pro- fession we should not allow the leaders of the profession to disappear before recording them and their ideas in a superior way, co- operatively, for future generations of students. In this third era of education for librarianship we must all keep our sense of historical perspective clearly in mind so that there is no risk of our continuing to follow, more or less blindly, in the footsteps of our predecessors, regardless of how distinguished they were. We must be fully aware that the library problems of the revolutionary period on which we are entering are in important respects different and more difficult than those of the former revolutionary period when the library schools came into existence; and because of that aware- ness we can put ourselves into a position to redesign the curriculum so that it will more precisely serve the emerging needs of our gradu- ates We have problems of size, of mass use, of population, and so on of a dimension which we have not had to face before; and problems of 'this order will dominate the library scene during the lifetime of our students. There is a clear call for better and better professional education for those who are entering the field now and in the years ahead because the situations that they will meet are bound to be more complex and more perplexing than any met so far. Is it not the wis- dom of our profession, rather than the knowledge or the techniques of it that we should concentrate on conveying to our students so that they will not make our mistakes over again, and so that they will be 1 92 CURRICULUM DESIGN FOR THE THIRD ERA enabled to accept the greater responsibilities which go with the greater opportunities of today and tomorrow? One last word: The expression "old fashioned" has been used several times in the course of this paper and it has been necessary to suggest that much, very much, of what we have been doing so well and so conscientiously should now be jettisoned. One does not look back on fifty years of professional life and say such things lightly or with- out feelings of compunction. This is far from the first time in library history that someone looked forward and saw a very different road ^nf/ ha ,\ thG ° ne he had been travelin g- Cutter, for example, in 1904 found himself in a similar position. The years that have inter- vened since his day have been prosperous ones for our libraries we have contributed a great deal, and we have learned much. But 'one thing we must not do or attempt to do, and that is to hold back in the slightest the changes that are beginning to take place and at a more rapid pace than we ever knew. The spirit of the library school in- structor has always been, and must always be, that we are in business 1°^ 1 S , ° Ur students > our graduates, who are the ones who hold the keys to the future in their hands. The reward of teaching consists in the satisfaction we derive from seeing former students succeed. So it is from that point of view that we can review what we have been doing and redesign the curriculum to make it a more perfect medium for the workers and leaders of the future. REFERENCES p ^'^ C t rnegie Cor P° ration of N ew York. Training for Library Service; A c2T 7tZ ed f0T tke Carne & e Corporation of New York. Prepared by Charles C. Williamson. New York, 1923, p. 22. 2. Downs, Robert B., and Heussman, John W. ''Standards for University Libraries, College ^Research Libraries, 31:28-33, Jan 1970 Julyl945 Sh ' VanneVar - " AS We May Think '" Atlanti c Monthly, 176:101-08, 4. Smith, Eldred. "Academic Status for College and University Librar- ians-Problems and Prospects," College & Research Libraries, 31:11, Jan. «. « ^° 1UI ! lbia Univ ersity. School of Library Service. . . . Syllabus for the Study of Principles of Library Organization and Administration, for Use in Connection with Library Service 222. 4th ed. John S. Cleavinger and ^c n e! S i943fp! C i e 7: ^ ^ ^^ Unive ^' Sch ° o1 <* ^ibrafy Ser- tiJ'Jl e r Britain - Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into the Constitu- IZoMed Tn er r ^ 5 ritlSh MuSeUm " Re P° rt °f the Commissioners Appointed to Inquire tnto the Constitution and Government of the British Museum; WUh Minutes of Evidence. London, W. Clowes and Sons. 1850, p 283 7. Gull C D., and Taube, Mortimer. "Introduction." /„ U.S. Library of ingto g n r !D.C. m and TeChn0l °^ Reject. List of Subject Headings. Wa'sh- 8. Great Britain. Commissioners Appointed to Inquire . . . , op. cit. INDEX Acquisition and selection, as required course, 33-34; redesign of course, 173-75. Administration or systems analysis, as elective course, 36-37; as required course, 34-35, 65, 69; redesign of course, 176-77. Adult services curriculum, 126. ALA library curriculum studies, 23. American Society for Information Sci- ence, 2. Asheim, Lester. "New Trends in the Curriculum of Library Schools," 59- 79. Association of American Universities, 99-102. Automation of library operations, 71-73. B Bibliography and reference, as elective course, 37; as required course, 33; redesign of, 186-88. Board of Education for Librarianship, establishment of, 99; reports of, 23- 24, 25, 100, 101, 102. Canada, library education in, 32, 167, 170. Carnegie Corporation, funding of Chi- cago Graduate Library School, 24; survey of library schools, 22. Cataloging and classification, as re- quired course, 33, 68; redesign of, 177-83. Charters, W. W., 23. Columbia College School of Library Economy, 20. Columbia, experimental program in li- brarianship, 26-27. "Communication and Libraries," as re- quired course, 35. Computer studies, 183-84. "Curricular Change in the Profes- sions," Lewis B. Mayhew, 46-58. Curricular reform, areas of, 46-47, 53, 54; difficulties of, 54-58, 70-79, 138- 42, 143, 152, 159, 190-92; innovations and experiments in, 49-54, 93-95, 108-19, 138-39, 151-55. Curriculum Committee on Education in Information Science, 131. "Curriculum for the Preparation of Public Librarians," Margaret E. Monroe, 120-29. Curriculum of library schools, argu- ments for change, 14-16, 43-44, 70- 79, 105-06, 110, 121, 126-27, 171-72; elective courses, 36-42, 65; for spe- cial librarianship, 146-59; history of development, 19-28, 98-102, 164-71; objectives of, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9, 103-05, 120, 123-24, 155, 190-92; organization of, 6, 7-9, 31, 125-26, 146-51; re- quired courses, 33-36; revision of, ix, 10-11, 43, 127-28, 138-42, 151- 59, 173-89; theory versus practice, 13-14; trends in, 9-10, 19-28, 29-31, 60-70. "The Curriculum of Library Schools Today: A Historical Overview," Sarah R. Reed, 19-45. D Deanships, responsibilities of, 60-61. "The Design of the Curriculum for the Third Era of Education for Librarian- ship," Andrew D. Osborn, 163-92. "Designs on the Curriculum," Neal Harlow, 1-18. Dewey, Melvil, 1, 2, 19, 20-21. Doctoral programs in library science, 13, 29, 31, 67, 94, 125. Drexel Institute of Technology, revision of library school curriculum, 93-95. Elective courses in library school cur- ricula, 36-42. 193 194 Evans, G. Edward. "Training for Aca- demic Librarianship: Past, Present and Future," 98-119. Faculty, trends in appointments of, 62- 63, 106. Farmington Plan, 174, 175. Field theory, relationship to librarian- ship, 12-13. Flexner report, 49, 125, 143, 167. "General Principles of Curriculum Construction," James W. Ramey, 80- 97. Goldhor, Herbert. "Introduction," vii- ix. Grazier, Margaret Hayes. "Preparation of the School Librarian," 130-45. H Harlow, Neal. "Designs on the Curric- ulum," 1-18. High John experiment, 66. History of books and libraries, as elec- tive course, 36, 68, 71; as required course, 35; redesign of course, 185- 86. Hostetter, Anita M., 23, 25, 27. Information science, as required course, 35, 65, 69, 71-72, 131. Information services, 123-24. Instructional technology, physical sci- ence concept versus behavioral sci- ence concept, 131-32. "Introduction to Librarianship," as required course, 34. JIMS Project, 135-36. K Knapp Manpower Project, 132-34, 135 136. Librarian, difficulties of, 102-03, 106- 08; professional versus nonprofes- sional, 126-27; responsibilities of, 11, 13, 106-08, 120-21, 122-23 124- 25. "Library Education and Manpower " 68, 75, 122, 134. "Library in Society," as required course, 34, 68. Library management, as elective course, 36-37; as required course 34-35. Library materials and services, as elective course, 37, 41. Library schools, administrative organ- ization of, 60-61, 73, 142; admission requirements, 63-64, 77; curriculum of, 9-10, 33-42, 61-62, 64-70, 148-51; faculty appointments in, 62-63; his- tory of development, 23, 19-28, 98- 102, 163, 164-71; responsibilities of, 11, 70-79, 110, 123-24, 190-92; re- vising curriculum of, ix, 14-16, 43, 103-08, 127-28, 138-42, 151-59, 173- 89; role of in 1970s, 3-4, 70, 163; student participation in, 64, 74-75 150, 153. M Mayhew, Lewis B. "Curricular Change in the Professions," 46-58. Media Guidelines Project, 136. Monroe, Margaret E. "Curriculum for the Preparation of Public Librar- ians," 120-29. N National Advisory Commission on Li- braries, 3, 123. "New Trends in the Curriculum of Library Schools," Lester Asheim, 59-79. O Osborn, Andrew D. "The Design of the Curriculum for the Third Era of Education for Librarianship," 163-92. Languages, redesign of courses, 186. Learning, theories of, 5-6, 8. Leigh, Robert D., study of library education, 27, 120. Personnel structure in libraries, changes in, 121-22. "Preparation for Special Librarian- ship," Martha Jane K. Zachert, 146- 62. 195 "Preparation of the School Librarian," Margaret Hayes Grazier, 130-45. Professional education, areas of curric- ulum reform, 46-47, 53, 54; attempts at curricular reform, 49-54; curricu- lum of, 9; difficulties of curricular reform, 54-58, 70, 74-79; history of, 9; liberal versus special, 11-12. Public librarianship, changes in per- sonnel structure, 121-22; changes in task structure, 122-25; community role of librarian, 30, 33-36, 42, 124- 25; current educational pattern, 125- 27; recommendations for curriculum revisions, 127-28; responsibilities of curriculum, 123-24; role of, 120-21. Public Library Inquiry, 27. Public school curriculum, difficulties in redesigning, 81-92; effect of teach- ers, 88-90; evaluation of, 80, 81-83, 90-92; history of, 81; goals of, 81, 83, 85-86, 90; problems of learner, 83-84, 86-88. R Ramey, James W. "General Principles of Curriculum Construction," 80-97. Reece, Ernest J., 25-26. Reed, Sarah R. "The Curriculum of Library Schools Today: A Historical Overview," 19-45. Reference and bibliography, as elective course, 37; as required course, 33; redesign of, 186-88. Required courses in library school cur- ricula, 30, 33-36, 42. Research methods, as elective course, 41; as required course, 35, 105. School Library Manpower Project, 132- 33, 135, 136. School library-media program, adoption of ALA "Library Education and Man- power" policy, 134; comparison of projects, 136-37; JIMS Project, 135- 36; Media Guidelines Project, 136; problems of designing new curricu- lum, 138-42; relevance of studies to curriculum design, 137-38; School Library Manpower Project, 132-34, 135, 136; studies and policies related to, 132-36, 138; trends in educating librarians, 130-32. Selection and acquisition, as required course, 33-34; redesign of , 173-75. Seminar in issues and trends, as elec- tive course, 41; as required course, 36; redesign of, 188-89. Special librarianship, implementation of new curriculum, 159; need to revise curriculum, 146-48; new mode of cur- riculum design, 151-55; objectives of curriculum, 155; planning of new cur- riculum, 155-58; traditional curricu- lum design, 148-51. Special Libraries Association, 146, 153. Standards for Accreditation, 60, 61, 68. Standards for School Media Programs, 130, 132, 134-35, 138, 139. Study and research, provision for, 41- 42. Systems analysis or administration, as elective course, 36-37; as required course, 34-35, 65, 69. Taube, Mortimer, 170-71, 179, 180-81. Technical services, courses offered as electives, 41; redesign of, 183-84. "Training for Academic Librarianship: Past, Present and Future," G. Ed- ward Evans, 98-119. U University of California at Los Angeles Library School, organization of new program, 108-10, 111-19. University of Chicago Graduate Library School, establishment of, 24-25, 166; experimental programs in, 26, 62; workshop on core curriculum, 27-28. University of Denver School of Librar- ianship, experimental programs, 26, 62. W Wayne State University, revision of cur- riculum, 138-39, 140. Williamson, Charles C, 22, 99, 163, 164-65, 188. Z Zachert, Martha Jane K. "Preparation for Special Librarianship," 146-62. mm •< i . ,p|, m m ■liiW gggBHH ^^^R ■ UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA 020I29M C001 MONOGRAPH URBANA, IL 11 1971