Professionalizing library education, the California connection: James Gillis, Everett Perry, and Joseph Daniels

Library Trends, Spring, 2004 by Debra Gold Hansen

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 reflected current issues in the emerging profession, while their actions prefigured 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.

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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 officials 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Daniels's entreaties, explaining that the corporation "is putting up Library Buildings--not schools and museums" (Unpublished letter from James Bertram to Joseph Daniels, August 19, 1915, RPL).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 consider the case of any individual school until it has first investigated the subject of library schools throughout the country." However, added Bertram, the corporation currently "has in view such an inquiry" (Unpublished letter from Bertram to Daniels, January 17, 1919, RPL). This inquiry, of course, became the comprehensive evaluation of American library schools by Charles C. Williamson conducted for the Carnegie Corporation between 1919 and 1921, now generally referred to as the "Williamson Report."

In compiling his data, Williamson had very carefully scrutinized RPL's school. As he noted in his report Training for Library Work (1921/1971), since Daniels was already seeking a Carnegie endowment, "a special effort [was made] ... to understand the significance of the Riverside School well enough to make recommendations" (p. 207). Williamson not only personally interviewed trustees, faculty, townspeople, and alumni, he also consulted with prominent California librarians and educators nationwide. Tragically, on September 16, 1921, while Williamson was readying his report for submission, Daniels died of a stroke. Upon hearing of Daniels's unexpected death, Williamson rewrote his recommendations, devoting an entire chapter to library education in California.

Initially, admitted Williamson, he had considered a temporary endowment for the Riverside Library Service School: "I visited Riverside and, in common with everyone else who crosses Mr. Daniels' threshold, I was captivated by his genius and struck with admiration for the large place he had made for himself and his library in the community and in the affection of a host of friends in Riverside" (1921/1971, pp. 207-208). On the other hand, Williamson had little positive to say about the library school, dismissing it as "not much more than apprentice, or a 'learn by doing' method." Nevertheless, declared Williamson, "I left Riverside feeling that a year spent in that environment, no matter what the character of the formal instruction, would be excellent preparation for service in small town and rural libraries" (p. 208).

Williamson allowed that he had been mindful that his recommendation of a temporary Carnegie endowment for RPL would be controversial and also feared that it would have "sharpened the antagonism within the state and done little to promote the best interests of the library movement in California or elsewhere" (p. 211). And yet, confessed Williamson, Daniels's "inspiration and genius" had caused him to deviate from "what I consider the proper principles to be followed for all library schools" (p. 207). Daniels's death had obviously permitted Williamson to see the situation in an enlarged and more prudent perspective. "Mr. Daniels," reflected Williamson,

   was an insurgent, always spectacular and always flouting every,
   suggestion of professional or educational standards. To most
   forward-looking librarians an endowment for Mr. Daniels' school
   would have seemed like approval of his attacks on certification of
   librarians and his studied disregard of the aims and purposes of the
   Association of American Library Schools.... With Mr. Daniels removed
   from the Riverside situation I can see no reason whatever for even
   the temporary subsidy. No one can take his place. (1921/1971,
   pp. 211-212)