Keeping Out Of Trouble: Research And Children's Services Of Public 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?