Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: sources and methodologies for the history of libraries in the modern era
- 1 Libraries and the modern world
- Part One Enlightening the Masses: the Public Library as Concept and Reality
- Part Two The Voluntary Ethic: Libraries of our Own
- Part Three Libraries for National Needs: Library Provision in the Public Sphere in the Countries of the British Isles
- Part Four The Nation's Treasury: Britain's National Library as Concept and Reality
- Part Five The Spirit of Enquiry: Higher Education and Libraries
- Part Six The Rise of Professional Society: Libraries for Specialist Areas
- Part Seven The Trade and its Tools: Librarians and Libraries in Action
- 39 Introduction: librarians and libraries in action
- 40 The interpretation of professional development in librarianship since 1850
- 41 Education for librarianship
- 42 Women and Libraries
- 43 The feminisation of librarianship: the writings of Margaret Reed
- 44 Sharing the load: libraries in co-operation
- 45 Organising knowledge: cataloguing, classification and indexing in the modern library
- 46 Storehouses of knowledge: the free library movement and the birth of modern library architecture
- Part Eight Automation Pasts, Electronic Futures: the Digital Revolution
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
40 - The interpretation of professional development in librarianship since 1850
from Part Seven - The Trade and its Tools: Librarians and Libraries in Action
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: sources and methodologies for the history of libraries in the modern era
- 1 Libraries and the modern world
- Part One Enlightening the Masses: the Public Library as Concept and Reality
- Part Two The Voluntary Ethic: Libraries of our Own
- Part Three Libraries for National Needs: Library Provision in the Public Sphere in the Countries of the British Isles
- Part Four The Nation's Treasury: Britain's National Library as Concept and Reality
- Part Five The Spirit of Enquiry: Higher Education and Libraries
- Part Six The Rise of Professional Society: Libraries for Specialist Areas
- Part Seven The Trade and its Tools: Librarians and Libraries in Action
- 39 Introduction: librarians and libraries in action
- 40 The interpretation of professional development in librarianship since 1850
- 41 Education for librarianship
- 42 Women and Libraries
- 43 The feminisation of librarianship: the writings of Margaret Reed
- 44 Sharing the load: libraries in co-operation
- 45 Organising knowledge: cataloguing, classification and indexing in the modern library
- 46 Storehouses of knowledge: the free library movement and the birth of modern library architecture
- Part Eight Automation Pasts, Electronic Futures: the Digital Revolution
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
‘Development’ suggests both change and progress.Change is inevitable, but for progress to be measured we must determine what would constitute progress. Is the working experience of any practitioner better than that of a librarian in the 1850s? Are we now a different set of people, doing different things in a different world from that of our predecessors? Do we do them any better? Is the abstract entity of ‘the profession’ now improved or facing a more secure or more hopeful future? Do we have means of answering such questions?
There are three interpretations of the professional condition. First, the tension and fusion of idealism and utilitarianism that Black claims informed British public librarianship between 1850 and 1914. Second, Winter's claims about models of professional life. Third, the role Stehr identifies for experts, counsellors and advisers in the information age. These offer incomplete images of the professional, so fourthly I use as models of the practitioner the icons of character of the modern age identified by MacIntyre, of aesthete, therapist or manager. These are set in the context of claims about the change from one conception of a practice to another.
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- The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland , pp. 525 - 533Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006