NoteLibraries and Scholarly Communication in the United States: The Historical Dimensions.
Edited by Phyllis Dain and John Y. Cole.
Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1990.
(Beta Phi Mu monograph, number 2.)
ISBN 0–3132–6807–x, 148 p. $37.95.
This volume, which grew out of a conference held at the Library of Congress in 1987, is a thoughtful collection of chapters (six in all) delving in the historical dimensions of libraries as repositories of knowledge and as social systems in themselves [1].
In spite of its celebratory origins and the temptation of facile professionalism, the publication stands out as a set of remarkable explorations in social history, history of the organization of knowledge, and of the processes culminating in the American university library as the temple of universal knowledge.
The six research papers probe the nature of scholarly research and its institutional manifestations baring the ideologies and contradictions of these establishments. Questions are asked: should knowledge be in the public interest and available to all? Should specialization overrule the general culture? Within specialization should selectivity prevail over comprehensiveness? What are the limits of library collections in a time of shrinkage of resources? Is the librarian a scholar or a technician?
Phyllis Dain leads the contributions with a paper on the history of higher education in America and looks at research libraries not merely as servants but as components of knowledge formulation influencing and creating paradigms and setting limits to what is available to the scholars.
John Y. Cole examines the role of the Library of Congress in the development of American scholarship as it provided unprecedented coverage and services such as classification, bibliographic apparatuses, and cataloging and as it brought a new partnership to all American libraries.
Neil Harris examines the tangled relationships that bind special collections to academic research. Again the linkages that are found at all levels of the institutional processes are revealing of the values and the choices which determine the direction and substance of research. This is further explored in the paper of Wayne A. Wiegand.
Wiegand identifies the ideological watershed between the old restrictive practices before the civil war and the promotion of new practices by learned societies and the public universities after the War. The burgeoning academic culture spawned the research libraries imposing upon them the weight of expertise and leaving in the hand of the experts the evaluation of what is best.
As the collections grew and the volume of information reached unimagined proportions the problem of preserving a deteriorating patrimony became all important. The art and science of preservation as it intersects with the concepts of cultural property and the universality of culture is discussed by Paul N. Banks.
The last and most sobering of this volume’s contributions is by Mary Niles Maack and deals with the availability and distribution of resources for the study of the third world. Maack concentrates on the case of Africa. She very ably unravels the hidden imbalance that determines and distorts the flow of knowledge from and to Africa. Most of the information resources gathered historically in that continent has accumulated in the vast repositories of the former colonial powers and in North America. In spite of the attempts to establish institutions of higher education on the part of the newly independent African countries, their poverty has left them bereft of all means of knowledge accumulation with the catastrofic consequences that accompany such devastation.
Anyone who might find consolation in the thought that this happens only in the third world had better think again. Budget cutting, skyrocketing prices, savage selectivity, a diminishing reading public, a shift to privately owned databases have begun the slow erosion of libraries everywhere in the first world. Information gaps are actually growing, limited access to materials is a spreading procedure and the hope for a universal electronic exchange of information recedes under the weight of present constraints. Vast funds would have to be made available by governments and foundations in recognition of worldwide interdependence. The only hope is in the creation of cooperative networks and the encouragement of joint ventures.
The lessons drawn from all these essays lead the reader to reflect beyond the library scene in the United States to the wider question of the uses of knowledge and literacy in an increasingly stressed biosphere. Not many books can claim to have the power to affect their readers as deeply.
[1] Note the excellent summary of the conference by Nancy E. Gwinn in the Library of Congress Information Bulletin, volume 47, number 6 (18 April 1988), pp. 164–167.
Hans Panofsky is a renowned specialist in African studies, having developed and directed for 30 years the Africana Library at Northwestern University. He holds degrees from the London School of Economics, Columbia University, and Cornell University. Mr. Panofsky was honored for his extensive professional activities and publications by a festschrift volume in 1989; it is reviewed by Margaret Anderson in this issue of Third World Libraries; see http://www.worlib.org/vol01no1/anderson_v01n1.shtml.
© 1990 Hans Panofsky.