Professionalizing Library Education, the

Abstract

This article explores the debates among library science educators in the decade prior to the publication of the Williamson Report in 1923. It explores the lives and work of three prominent California library administrators and educational pioneers: Everett Perry at the Los Angeles Public Library, Joseph Daniels at the Riverside Public Library, and James Gillis, California State Librarian. Perry, Daniels, and Gillis developed innovative and distinctive library training programs at their respective institutions, and in the process they engaged in vigorous, often contentious, correspondence over their educational philosophies and goals and how library education should develop in the future. Their debates refl ected current issues in the emerging profession, while their actions prefi gured many of the recommendations of the Williamson Report, most notably the transferal of library training to the university. While none of these pioneering library science programs in California have survived, they represent a critical stage in the professionalization and legitimization of library science as an academic discipline. Between 1914 and 1920, Joseph Daniels corresponded with the Carnegie Corporation to seek funding for his popular, yet impoverished, training program at the Riverside Public Library (RPL). Each time, Carnegie offi cials adamantly refused Daniels’s entreaties, explaining that the corporation “is putting up Library Buildings—not schools and museums”(Unpublished letter from James Bertram to Joseph Daniels, August 19, 1915, RPL). 1 By 1919 the refusals were less pointed, as changes in Carnegie funding initiatives were impending, though Carnegie Corporation executive secretary James Bertram did advise Daniels that the corporation was “not likely to

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