J. I. Wyer, librarian of the University of Nebraska, outlined a course of 16 lectures which are given there during the first semester of every alternate year, embracing national and trade bibliography, reference books, and thorough drill in subject bibliography. The work is primarily given as part of the apprentices' training for the library, but is attended by advanced and graduate students in other departments. Regular university credit is given for the work.
W. Stetson Merrill, of the Newberry Library, read a paper, entitled
A DESIDERATUM FOR LIBRARY SCHOOLS.
As I am desirous that you should apprehend precisely what it is that I am to suggest as a desideratum for the library schools, I will ask to be permitted to lead up to my point, rather than state it at the outset.
We are all of us daily impressed with the rapidity of change and enlargement in the arts, sciences and various achievements of knowledge to-day. In some departments, indeed, such as the natural sciences, we expect the accepted opinions of one decade to give place to others in the next decade. But we perhaps hardly realize that there is a similar progress in the historical, sociological and religious sciences, and in the fine arts. New facts are discovered, verdicts of history are reviewed, new schools of thought and methods of study are established; new men, new theories, new things come up every year, almost every day.
Now, a librarian is expected to bring the stores of knowledge to an inquiring public; to render available the resources of accumulated wisdom which but for him would be like gold hidden in the veins of the rock. To perform this function requires of course primarily a certain amount of educational training. A library assistant should be at least a high school graduate; the librarian of a library of research should be a college bred man, as such collegiate training will be found to his own advantage and to that of his library.
But how after all their training and preparation are librarians, library workers or students of library science to keep abreast of the time? This is really the problem in what may be called the higher education of the library profession. It may be thought that the reading of annual cyclopedias, periodicals and the latest treatises will suffice to keep members of the profession posted upon all subjects of importance. Yet a little consideration will show that by such means much time and labor are sacrificed. A library worker reads in such a case, not for general information, but to ascertain definite and pertinent facts of importance to him in his special field of work. What he wishes to know are indeed the new discoveries, facts and opinions; viewed, however, not in themselves as events in the progress of the sciences, but as bearing upon the classification and nomenclature of the respective sciences which treat of them, and upon the relations which those sciences bear to others. He needs also an up-to-date acquaintance with the great men of the time, not in a personal way, but through the contributions which they have made to knowledge. Otherwise he will not discern the authority upon any given subject from a tyro or an ignoramus. A true knowledge of bibliography does not consist merely in knowing lists of books or in knowing where to find such lists. It implies an acquaintance with the relative values of books as well.
A thoroughly equipped reference attendant or cataloger should also be familiar with the shibboleths and theories of the schools and with the opinions of scholars upon questions of the day. Now how is he to learn all this? He cannot learn it before he begins to study library work, because it is a growing, living thing—this mass of current fact and opinion. Yet he has no time to master each science for himself, and in merely cursory reading he will miss the point which is to be of most use to him in his particular line of work.
I reply that he needs the spoken word of the expert, framed and directed to meet the special requirements of his case. The expert who knows his subject in all its bearings can tell us at once just what we want to know, if we have a chance to ask him.
Let us have then before our library schools and—I may add also—our library clubs and associations, periodical talks by specialists upon their respective subjects, presenting in a concise form the progress of these sciences and arts with special reference to the needs of library workers, as outlined above.