Early Visions of Future Leadership

Most Relevant Sentence (even if it's a bit of a vague cop-out on my part): "Society was changing; technology was changing; and along with these changes, the very nature of information was changing" (Sapp, xix).

Yep, things were changing all right. This article more or less sums up the entire course as well as compliments the other readings from this week nice and neatly. Let me take you through a bit of what we already know, (as reaffirmed by this article):

*Melvil Dewey plays a huge role in founding the ALA in 1876. Perhaps, even more importantly than Dewey, the ALA was formed during the first period specified by Greg Sapp. At this early point, Dewey already thinks that women are the future of libraries. It should be noted that Dewey is an enormous fan of women in general. Most libraries also end up adopting the Dewey Decimal System...if not right away, then certainly not too long after that.

*After the turn of the century though World War II, the ALA turns out to be a celebrated organization. The ALA sent about four million books and five million magazines to Europe for soldiers at war. Bully! Buoyed by the euphoria of winning a world war, the ALA creates a bold agenda with all the effectiveness of the Kellogg-Briand Pact that fell at around the same time. That is to say, this agenda was all hype. Librarians helped to keep morale up during the Great Depression. During WWII, the library system devoted much of its time trying to contribute in its own way to the defeat of fascism. Vannevar Bush's "As We May Think" is published.

*The campaign against paper gets underway during the next period. Alarmist bells over book deterioration are ringing in no short supply. For example, "Licklider began by stating that the physicality of printed books makes them intrinsically inefficient means for storing, organizing, and retrieving information" (Sapp, xxviii). MARC and the OCLC also came into play during this period.

This is only a tiny taste of what went on during nineteenth/twentiethy century librarianship (as we all well know).