Frances Henne and the development of school library standards

ABSTRACT

Frances Henne (1906-85) was the leader in the development of school library standards during her career as a teacher, librarian, and library educator. She was the driving force behind the publication of the 1945, 1960, and 1969 national standards for school libraries. Her imprint is evident in the research and philosophical foundations for the 1975, 1988, and 1998 national standards.

EARLY YEARS AND EDUCATION IN LIBRARIANSHIP

Born in Springfield, Illinois, on October 11, 1906, Henne received her bachelor of arts degree and master of arts degree in English at the University of Illinois in 1929 and 1934 respectively. After completing her undergraduate degree and while she was working on her master's degree, she worked as a library assistant in circulation and reference at the Lincoln Public Library in her hometown of Springfield from 1930 to 1940.

In 1935 Henne went to New York City to pursue a bachelor's degree in librarianship at Columbia University. While engaged in her studies, Henne also briefly worked as a circulation assistant at the New York Public Library in 1935 and then as a reference and circulation assistant at the New York State Teachers College at Albany from 1935 to 1938. She served as an instructor in school librarianship at Albany from 1937 to 1939, when Louis Round Wilson, dean of the Graduate Library School (GLS) at the University of Chicago, invited her to serve as an instructor there and to be responsible for the library in the University High School, a laboratory school for the University of Chicago.

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

Beginning her career as the first woman faculty member at University of Chicago's GLS in 1939, she also began her doctoral studies that same year. She served as librarian from 1939 to 1942. She participated in, and contributed to the proceedings of, the 1940 Conference on Reading, one of several annual conferences sponsored by and held at the University of Chicago throughout the 1940s and 1950s. Her paper, "Function and Activities of Libraries in Promoting Growth in and through Reading" (1940) was the first of approximately thirty articles, essays, chapters, and monographs written throughout her career on reading, school libraries, school library research, school library standards, and print and nonprint media for children and young adults (Henne, 1942, 1943, 1950, 1950/1970; Henne & Lowell, 1942). She was assistant professor at the GLS from 1946 to 1949, served as associate dean and dean of students from 1947 to 1950, and acting dean from 1951 to 1952.

In 1949, while serving as associate dean and dean of students, Henne received her doctorate degree in library science at the University of Chicago. Her dissertation, "Preconditional Factors Affecting the Reading of Young People" (1949a) recommended that high school libraries should reappraise their programs to stress appropriate selection and accessibility of materials and participate in the developmental reading programs and systematic reading guidance programs (Cole, 1955; Sullivan, 1990; Hannigan, 1993).

During her teaching career at the University of Chicago Graduate Library School, which lasted from 1939 to 1954, Henne allied herself with other school library practitioners and state supervisors of school libraries, notably Mary Peacock Douglas of North Carolina, Ruth Ersted of Minnesota, and Margaret Walraven of Texas. Henne established the Center for Children's Books and its Bulletin, a reviewing medium that related books to curriculum and analyzed critically children's and young adults' materials for libraries and schools (Cole, 1955; Sullivan, 1990; Hannigan, 1993; Schlachter and Thomison, 1974, p. 43).

At this time she was a member of an American Association of School Librarians (AASL) committee, chaired by Mary Peacock Douglas, which was hard at work producing standards for school libraries. Leaders like Douglas and Henne recognized that national guidelines were needed to establish best practice through demonstration programs and to encourage nationwide measures of effort and achievement. Since school libraries were part of the evaluation process of regional accrediting associations, it was especially important to have guidelines and standards and to get them adopted by the accrediting agencies (Henne, 1943; Sullivan, 1990). As of 1943, there were two sets of national standards for school libraries, including the first standards for school libraries written by the National Education Association (NEA) Committee on Library Organization and Equipment for senior and junior high schools in 1920, and the 1925 Elementary School Library Standards, published as a joint collaboration of the NEA and the American Library Association (ALA) (Certain, 1920, 1925). In her 1943 article on "The Evaluation of School Libraries," Henne called for new standards for both elementary schools and high schools.

1945 SCHOOL LIBRARY STANDARDS

In 1945 the AASL school library standards committee published the first set of national K-12 school library standards, School Libraries for Today and Tomorrow (Douglas 1945). The 1945 standards established the precedent for modern school library media programs by differentiating between the dudes of the school librarian and those of the public librarian as well as defining the scope of the different services that the school library and the public library provided to schools (Douglas, 1945). Henne advocated collaborating with classroom teachers to include library skills education in the context of subject-based learning. An example of how this collaboration worked was The Librarian and the Teacher of Home Economics, published in 1945 by the ALA. This presented the results of Henne's collaboration with a home economics teacher, Margaret Pritchard, to provide activities and examples to show how planning with teachers could make the library experience more meaningful in the classroom situation (Henne & Pritchard, 1945).