Frances Henne and the development of school library standards

Library Trends, Spring, 2004 by Diane D. Kester, Plummer Alston Jones, Jr.

In August 1947 Henne directed the GLS conference, "Youth, Communication, and Libraries," the papers for which were published by the ALA under the same title. Youth, Communication, and Libraries includes Henne's essay, "The Frontiers of Library Service for Youth," which addressed the issue of where best to locate library services to children and young adults (Henne, 1949b). Henne championed the idea that school libraries, not public libraries, should be the primary source for library service to elementary school children. She urged school librarians, teacher educators, and library educators to continue to evaluate programs in the schools and in the universities and to plan locally, regionally, and nationally to attain the best possible library media programs in schools (Henne, 1949b; Sullivan, 1990; Hannigan, 1993; Frontiers of library service, 1979).

Peggy Sullivan, in her biographical sketch of Henne, speculates that Henne overstated her position in this essay on the centrality of the elementary school library in the provision of library service to children. Sullivan points out that in her zeal to improve school libraries Henne angered public librarians who had their own traditions of providing children's services (Sullivan, 1990). It was indeed evident that Henne was ready for any turf battles for library services to youth that lay ahead when she asserted that "We must provide ... the ideals, the force, the zeal, the spirit, the hard work, and, yes, the toughness, that form the dynamics which turn visions and plans into workable realities" (Henne, 1949b, p. 209; Hannigan, 1993, p. 347).

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF SCHOOL LIBRARIANS (AASL)

The period of the late 1940s and early 1950s was a difficult time organizationally for the American Library Association and the AASL's relationship with it. Henne was an AASL board member from 1945 to 1947 and, in what was a critical period organizationally, vice-chair from 1947 to 1948 and chair from 1948 to 1949. In the early 1940s the AASL was part of the ALA's Division of Libraries for Children and Young People. Henne was a strong proponent of the idea that AASL should have autonomous divisional status within ALA with its own executive secretary (Sullivan, 1990; Hannigan, 1993). Since the 1920s a number of committees had been appointed to determine what the best structure would be for the association. The Fourth Activities Committee was set up in 1945, and among the recommendations of its 1948 report was to keep the Division of Libraries for Children and Young People but to separate the AASL from it as its own separate division. Henne was very active politically in these developments and was a member of the ALA Council when the report of this committee was considered. The long process of review and debate about all of this ended in 1951 when AASL became a separate division of ALA (Woolls, 2003; Lowrie, 1986, p. 734).

In order to help school libraries implement the 1945 school library standards, Henne, along with Ruth Ersted, who was then state supervisor of school libraries in Minnesota, and Alice Lohrer, assistant professor at the Library School of the University of Illinois, wrote A Planning Guide for the High School Library Program. Published by ALA in 1951, this was the first evaluative guide for school library programs (Henne, Ersted, and Lohrer, 1951). The Planning Guide provided a pattern for developing school library evaluation materials, including those used for self-studies for regional accreditation of schools, that continued to be influential in the future. The authors recommended that planning should be an integral part of the school library evaluation process and that school librarians should identify services for students as well as services for teachers that the school library should provide. They emphasized the need for extensive collection analysis, even though it must be done manually, and the need for statistics, facts, and charts to justify budget requests. They asserted that budget rationales were essential if school libraries were to get their share of building-level budgets, not to mention state and local education funding (Henne, Ersted, & Lohrer, 1951; Henne, 1953a, 1953b, 1953c;; Sullivan, 1990).