When and why is a pioneer: history and heritage in library and information science

Library Trends, Spring, 2004 by W. Boyd Rayward

Each contribution to this issue of Library Trends studies some aspect of the body of work of an individual who can be argued to have played an important role in the development of LIS. The individuals dealt with in these articles may be considered to be important in part because

* they were influential in their time in establishing a direction of development; or, not quite the same thing, they epitomize something about the status and direction of development in their time;

* although overlooked at the time, their ideas can now be seen as having captured something valuable to the definition or development of the field;

* their ideas are of continuing importance in helping us understand and perhaps shape current developments;

* though some of their ideas may have achieved "iconic" status and are often referred to in passing, they are in need of reevaluation in the light of current trends.

The contributions of pioneers as revealed in the articles in this issue of Library Trends can take a variety of forms, such as

* a literature important for theory, practice, and research--for example, the articles by Beghtol on James Duff Brown, Furner and Zandonade on Egan and Shera's ideas about social epistemology, Kester and Jones on Frances Henne and the evolution of school library standards, Black on Lionel McColvin's ideas about national planning of library service in the United Kingdom, and La Barre on Richmond's work for classification;

* innovations in information systems and services--such as (at one emerging information science extreme) Dubin on Gerard Salton's vector space model of information retrieval and (at the other library service extreme) Kimball, Jenkins, and Hearne on Effie Power's work for children's library service and literature;

* important institutional developments in the organization and provision of library and information services--such as Gunselman on the work of Marvin and Isom in Oregan, Jumonville on Essae Culver in Louisiana, Hansen on the ultimately competing early attempts at the provision of library education in California, and Cragin on Forster Mohrhardt's work as LIS diplomat;

* a combination of the above--to be especially noted here are Marcia Bates's memoir on early information science education and Mary Niles Maack's article on Briet.

In preparing this issue of Library Trends, we looked for studies of pioneering figures from both librarianship and information science. We also hoped to generalize its contents beyond the United States, though in the final analysis we had room for only three articles not dealing with American figures. They are included because of the contrast they provide and the unexpected light they throw on developments in the United States. Beghtol argues for a reexamination of James Duff Brown's classificationist ideas in the context of modern approaches to the organization of knowledge, and her article can be read in conjunction with La Barre's account of Richmond's later ideas about classification. Alistair Black provides a fascinating account of the tension between local provision and national planning of library services in the United Kingdom in his study of Lionel McColvin, which offers a counterpoint to Jumonville's article on the provision of statewide services in Louisiana by Essae Culver, and Gunselman's study of the work of Marvin and Isom in Oregon. Maack's article on Briet introduces a series of contributions in France, which is related conceptually to the work on documentation by Shera, Egan, and others in the United States in the 1950s to which so much of the early history of information science is linked.