Title: | Keeping Out Of Trouble: Research And Children's Services Of Public Libraries |
Author(s): | Kingsbury, Mary E. |
Subject(s): | Children’s libraries |
Abstract: | The nineteenth-century humorist, Artemus Ward, once said: "It ain't
the things we don't know that get us in trouble. It's the things we know
that ain't so." That pithy statement sums up the value of research to the
library profession. Good research can help to keep us out of trouble; it
brings respectability to a profession. However, as members of a profession
not noted for the quality or even the quantity of its research, librarians
would do well to worry less about achieving respectability and concentrate
more on finding out what they need to know to keep out of trouble.
Twenty years ago Frances Henne called for a systematic program of
research. "Thus far," she wrote, "many, if not most, of the problems in
the area of library work with youth have not been explored objectively,
and many principles, standards and procedures commonly accepted and
practiced have never been tested or evaluated."
If, during the past
twenty years, librarians had systematically and objectively evaluated
what they were doing, would they be in the trouble they are today? |
Issue Date: | 1977 |
Publisher: | Graduate School of Library Science. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. |
Citation Info: | In S.K. Richardson (ed). 1977. Children’s services of public libraries: Papers presented at the 23rd Allerton Park Institute. Urbana, Il: Graduate School of Library Science: 131-147. |
Series/Report: | Allerton Park Institute (23rd : 1977) |
Genre: | Conference Paper / Presentation |
Type: | Text |
Language: | English |
URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1656 |
ISBN: | 0-87845-049-1 |
ISSN: | 0536-4604 |
Publication Status: | published or submitted for publication |
Rights Information: | Copyright owned by Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. 1977. |
Date Available in IDEALS: | 2007-07-23 |