The Impact Of Federal Legislation For Library Education

Monroe, Margaret E.

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/1532 Copy

Description

Title

The Impact Of Federal Legislation For Library Education

Author(s)

Monroe, Margaret E.

Issue Date

1966

Keyword(s)

Federal aid to libraries --United States

Abstract

Almost all discussion of federal legislation for libraries ends, if indeed it does not begin, with the problem of support versus control. If support is desirable, is control inevitable ? Library education has long taken for granted the control which state legislation requiring certification of librarians may impose on the curriculum. As a matter of fact, library educators have frequently been the proposers of such legislation, thus achieving control on their own terms. When professional vision outruns the legislators' insight and is persuasive then the profession is able to prescribe the control which society exercises over the individual librarian. In the academic world of library education, the yang and yin relationship of support and control exists within the context of the scholar's leadership, with the faculty exercising its judgment to use available support to the best advantage of the students, within the limits hopefully, the quite broad limits established by the institution and by society. Ideally, legislation for library education should enable the exercise of the best faculty judgment within the context of society's need and the legislative intent. But faculty judgment varies in competence. Legislation, then, must attempt to embody support for, and control within, the best available faculty judgment. State legislation specifically for library education has tended to limit itself to identification of the curriculum required for proficiency in librarianship; it generally involves setting minimums, and therefore has not been able to embody necessarily the best faculty judgments on the optimum program of library education. On the other hand, federal legislation, which has only begun to be directed toward library education, has tended to look toward optimums; the National Defense Education Act, for example, looks toward the best possible education for school librarians but allows faculty judgment to be determinative as to means.

Publisher

Graduate School of Library Science. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Series/Report Name or Number

Allerton Park Institute (13th : 1966)

ISSN

0536-4604

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1532

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Copyright owned by Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. 1966.

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