College and Research Libraries


416 I College & Research Libraries • September 1978 

department, planning of specific functions, 
centralization versus decentralization of in-
formation activities, cost-effectiveness and 
cost-benefit analyses of the services pro-
vided , interactions with users (including 
user surveys) , and standards in control and 
evaluation procedures . .They are certainly as 
useful and timely for the neophyte as for 
the veteran in the profession. 

The presentation is informal and lucid. · 
Nevertheless, the publication is lacking in 
three respects: First, the amount of material 
dealing with the application of computers in 
information processing and dissemination is 
scanty. Second, it is almost unthinkable to 
see a book written on the management of 
an information department with practically 
no reference to the various subject-oriented 
data bases , their availability, use, and man-
agement . This is especially relevant at a 
time when interactive, on-line information 
systems are almost like household items in 
an average-sized research library or infor-
mation department. Third , the half-life of 
the material cited and presented in the text 
is on a steady decline since there are hardly 
any post-197~ references included in the 
end-of-chapter bibliographies. 

Having considered the above. factors, one 
wonders if the manuscript of the book was 
originally completed some years ago and 
then kept in cold storage . There is no doubt 
that any professional who has kept abreast 
of recent developments in the information 
science field will readily notice this serious 
built-in time-lag. Overall, however, this is 
as g od a text as any that covers the 
field -]ata S. Ghosh, Ardmore , Pennsyl-

ouser, Lloyd ] . , and Schrader, Alvin M. 
The Search for a Scientific Profession: 
Library Science Education in th~ U.S. 
and Canada. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 
1978. 180p . $8. LC 77-17563. ISBN 
0-8108-1062-X. 
Surely one of the most interesting recent 

works, this book, through its indictment of 
library education , presents its underlying 
thesis that we need a comprehensive and 
purposeful undertaking to develop a cohe-
rent theory of librarianship based upon 
rigorous research. This outcome, the au-
thors argue passionately, is attainable even 

though previous efforts have been largely 
frustrated. 

To those who have been indoctrinated in 
the folklore of education for librarianship, 
the most startling assertion concerns the in-
stitution known for years without ambiguity 
as "the Graduate Library School, " or, sim-
ply, "GLS. " Veterans of the Chicago doc-
toral wars may be reminded of an exchange 
often heard: 

"GLS isn't like it was in the Good Old 
Days." 

" Yeah, but then it never was. " 
We may have joked in those terms, but 

we knew better. We knew very well that 
GLS , during the golden years of Louis 
Round Wilson's deanship , had introduced a 
new quality to education for librarianship. 
The school, after floundering under the out-
sider, George A. Works, began to examine 
with rigorous logic and precise quantitative 
measurement the fundamental assumptions 
of librariauship. It produced a whole gener-
ation of library leaders. It was a major 
source of borrowing for the shape and con-
tent of the new curriculum introduced 
around 1950. In innumerable ways it raised 
the level of librarianship. 

The accomplishments during the ten 
years of the Wilson deanship are evident , 
and their soundness is secure beyond ques-
tion. It will be unfortunate and wasteful 
if-as seems likely-the attention to this 
book is directed to defending the impreg-
nable or to denouncing the authors and 
elaborating the flaws of their case. For their 
indictment of librarianship is valid. 

The case is partially stated in an 
aphorism: 

Librarianship has been deficient in its Science, 
with the consequence that its Humanity has been 
tainted with sentimentality and its Technology 
with meaningless proliferation, uninformed by 
Theory and unevaluated by Measurement. 

(Though surely a Butlerism, its source has 
escaped me. I shall be grateful for its iden-
tification.) 

This unfortunate condition was somewhat 
ameliorated at GLS under Wilson, but 
Houser and Schrader suggest the advance-
ments were made in spite of Wilson rather 
than because of him. To raise such a charge 
and to countenance it in a review just when 



the dean's centenary has been recently cel-
ebrated is to court accusations of bad taste if 
not, indeed, lese majeste. Yet a decent re-
spect for a man known for his intellectual 
toughness requires that the charge be con-
fronted, especially since it comes with the 
peculiarly ambiguous endorsement of the 
late Douglas Waples in the form of a per-
mitted dedication of the book to him and 
the statement of his "satisfaction" (p. viii) 
with the relevant chapters. 

When one looks into the matter a bit, one 
finds that some of those assumed vaguely 
to have been Wilson proteges (Waples, 
Pierce Butler, William Randall, Leon Car-
novsky) had actually preceded him to GLS. 
It is interesting, considering the skepticism 
and mounting hostility to GLS from practic-
ing librarians, that Wilson had served for six 
years on the Board of Education for Librar-
ianship, the major voice of ALA. 

The authors maintain that he aborted the 
earnest and self-conscious effort that had 
been mounted by Works, the first dean, 
Waples, an interim acting dean, and their 
associates to create a true library science 
based upon systematic research. Instead, 
they say, Wilson made of GLS primarily a 
high-level training school for university li-
brarians, an outcome considerably advanced 
from the past but, in sum, a subversion of 
the goals for which the Carnegie Corpora-
tion had endowed the school and toward 
which the early faculty members had di-
rected their efforts. 

As if these charges were not enough, 
Houser and Schrader analyze Wilson's own 
writings, concluding that none rank as sci-
entific research except for The Geography 
of Reading and even that is "essentially de-
scriptive" (p.65). They say that, even as 
dean, Wilson kept "his first loyalty" to the 
Board of Education for Librarianship (p.58). 
Their criticisms of policies take on an unfor-
tunate tone of personal attack in this hint of 
double-dealing and in their charge of eva-
siveness. 

The history of GLS and of Wilson's place 
and contribution are crucially important is-
sues in librarianship and library education. 
One hopes that John Richardson's Indiana 
dissertation on the history of G LS will settle 
many of the questions. But, regardless of 
the validity of the case against Wilson, the 

Recent Publications I 417 

case against librarianship and library educa-
tion remains, and it is a strong one. 

The case centers upon library school edu-
cation, which, it is asserted, lacks grounding 
in "theory and theoretical knowledge base." 
Why , they ask, does the curriculum not 
teach theory rather than the 

dull menu of "show and tell" sessions , student 
presentations, "how I do it good in my library" 
talks, learning "experiences," and accounts of 
rules, tools , procedures , techniques, routines, 
products and services which apparently were 
available sometimes, in some libraries, for some 
people, under some conditions? (p. vi) 

The description is all too familiar, and it 
reflects more fundamental problems than 
inept teaching. These problems go to the 
root of the profession and its practice as 
well as its training . In their analysis, 
Houser and Schrader go beyond G LS in 
Wilson's days to study and comment upon 
later developments of library education and 
its present state. On the basis of several of 
their studies of library schools, they con-
clude that the overriding characteristic of 
the years since Wilson ' s retirement has 
been 

growing intellectual confusion . . . centered in 
the library science educators [who] prefer per-
sonal experience to any other qualifications for 
teaching, [who] lack any pretense of scientific 
leadership, [whose] literature exhibits no charac-
teristics of scholarship, [who] do not teach re-
search knowledge or even research methods to 
their students, [and who] have little influence at 
all on their students . 

When they teach, they teach non-research, ex-
perience based, non-cumulative (although possi-
bly additive), subjectively selected and relatively 
out-of-date literature (abridged and adapted from 
p.l46-47). 

Houser and Schrader find something to 
anger everyone. They say it awkwardly and 
abrasively. They are pedantic, sententious, 
and contentious. They arrogantly assume 
that their conception of science and scien-
tific research encompasses the only valid 
scholarship. All in all, they make their case 
in terms that are unlikely to persuade. 

Yet, in more measured terms, most of 
their principal case is valid. It is true that 
librarianship and library education are in a 
sad state, arising mostly from the strength 
of the forces of trade-school pragmatism that 



418 I College & Research Libraries • September 1978 

have managed to frustrate every attempt at 
fundamental change, turning graduate re-
search education into a training ground for 
practice and directing research efforts to-
ward management studies designed to in-
crease the efficiency of an agency, the li-
brary, whose fundamental character is taken 
to be fixed as it has been handed down 
from the past. 

Library schools suffer most strongly, for 
they were set on their way by that ultimate 
trade-school promoter, Melvil Dewey, but 
the schools' ills are only a reflection of the 
ills of librarians hip itself. Until the profes-
sion is reformed, library schools will be able 
to do very little . Chicago · was indeed a 
unique opportunity for a group of library 
school educators to chart a new course and, 
in the event, even that supremely inde-
pendent institution was unable to stand 
against the practicing librarian who, as 
Pierce Butler said almost half a century ago, 
"is strangely uninterested in the theoretical 
aspects of his profession ... [who] appar-
ently stands alone in the simplicity of his 
pragmatism: a rationalization of each im-
mediate technical process by itself seems to 
satisfy his intellectual interest" (Introduc-
tion to Library Science , p.xi, xii). 

Houser and Schrader's effort at reform is 
probably doomed by its abrasiveness, its 
awkwardness, and its overstatement, but it 
bears the marks of deep conviction, and it 
makes points of considerable validity. Li-
brarianship would be advanced if the en-
trenched forces that have frustrated every 
effort of this sort in the past were to listen 
carefully to the underlying message and re-
spond to it. Although that outcome is un-
likely, the book will at least have raised 
some stimulating questions. Everyone who 
has a serious interest in the profession 
should read it thoughtfully, with the toler-
ance for its defects that will permit hearing 
the message it seeks to convey.-W. L. 
Williamson, University of Wisconsin-
Madison. 

Grieder, Ted. Acquisitions: Where, What, 
and How. A Guide to Orientation and 
Procedure for Students in Librarianship, 
Librarians, and Academic Faculty. Con-
tributions in Librarianship and Informa-
tion Science, no. 22. Westport, Conn.: 

Greenwood Press, 1978. 277p. $18.95. 
LC 77-84762. ISBN 0-8371-9890-9. ISSN 
0074-9243. 
The lore of the acquisitions librarian 

comes to the fore. Ted Grieder presents us 
with a picture of how to run a university li-
brary acquisitions department good. His 
display is based upon his experiences and 
the lore that has developed in libraries over 
the past half·century. Unlike Ford's The 
Acquisition of Library Materials , with its 
philosophical foundations and theory in the 
open, Grieder shows the practical workings 
involved in daily operations of the univer-
sity library's acquisitions department. His 
emphasis upon bureaucracy, which accom-
plishes the library's mission, distinguishes 
Acquisition: Where, What, and How from 
Melcher on Acquisition. 

Grieder's approach is to give general 
ideas about the nature of acquisitions and 
its various tasks and then to explain by 
example. The first part of the book is a de-
scription of the acquisition task and its loca-
tion within the library structure, specifically 
within the technical services division; this is 
the "where" and "what" of acquisitions. Part 
two gets into specifics by way of a checking 
manual (roughly one-third of the book) and 
chapters on how to set up other important 
manuals and operations, nitty-gritty admin-
istrative procedures, and even "How to 
Choose a Job." 

One is constantly aware · of the experi-
mentially-based and nontheoretical na-
ture of present-day acquisitions work. From 
the small chapter on job descriptions and 
salary considerations for clerical workers, 
we are struck with the value of experience 
vis-a-vis professional education: A senior li-
brary assistant with five or more years of 
experience should receive more salary than 
a neophyte M. L. S. Throughout the book 
Grieder seemingly qualifies all of his state-
ments about procedure by the profession's 
ubiquitous imprecision: "varies from library 
to library." For sure, details do vary from 
library to library; yet, and herein lies the 
value of Grieder, those details serve an 
overarching goal: to acquire materials for 
the users of any given library. 

The student librarian should find this text 
helpful in giving handles on procedures 
within the acquisitions operation, which