Emerging Patterns of Community Service

Abstract

LIKEALL PROFESSIONS, librarianship has made itself up as it has gone along, a product of its unique functions, its clientele, the social context, the available technology and resources, and the creative imagination of its leadership. The historical growth of patterns of library services document well the introduction of new, evolutionary service concepts. Samuel Swett Green’s famous paper of a hundred years ago on the desirableness of “personal intercourse between librarians and readers”1 is the classic monument to the evolutionary style, where the simple, camel’s-nose insight opened the way to forms of librarianship that have taken over the tent. Samuel Rothstein’s record of the development of reference services (1955) and this author’s similar tracing of the evolution of adult services (1963) document scores of instances of emerging patterns of service. These historical reviews provided a perspective that allowed the service functions to emerge into clear view. Rothstein identified information,

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