C&RL News, January 2000
Vol. 61 No. 1
The library profession enjoys a rich history and has many milestones that it can celebrate. In looking over the history of librarianship, it is clear that developments were systematic in their presentation; thoroughly discussed within the community; and often, but not always, built upon existing foundations.
As librarianship developed during the 20th century, academic libraries played key roles in leading new initiatives and acted as major change agents. In many instances, it was the academic library that served as a test bed for new innovations, new services, and research projects.
ACRL Executive Director, Althea Jenkins, and ACRL Program Officer, Michael Godow, made a thorough review of the literature to search out key milestones that had a major impact on the development, organization, and delivery of resources and services in academic libraries in the United States. A special thanks goes to Laverna Saunders for her input to this article. Items listed in this article are not intended to be inclusive, but were listed according to their widespread impact.
We invite our academic colleagues to join us over the next 12 months as we identify milestones in these seven categories: technology and library automation, collections and collection development, reference and information services, resource sharing and access services, information literacy and instruction, preservation, and library buildings.
C&RL News will publish six articles in its series on major events for academic libraries in the last century, beginning in March. Please contact Mary Ellen Davis, editor and let her know the category you want to write about and negotiate a publication date.
1876
• American Library Association founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Among its founders were three major figures in American librarianship: Justin Winsor, William Frederick Poole, and Melvil Dewey.
• The publication of a pamphlet entitled A Classification and Subject Index for Cataloguing and Arranging the Books and Pamphlets of a Library heralded the beginning of the Dewey Decimal Classification System (DDC).
1884
• Melvil Dewey appoints the first two reference librarians (George Baker and William G. Baker) at Columbia University.
1887
• The first library school was founded by Melvil Dewey at Columbia College. Prior to this “library employees” learned their jobs through apprenticeships.
1889
• The ALA College and Library Section was established to serve as a discussion group of academic library administrators.
1890
• First meeting of the College Library Section at the 1890 ALA Annual Conference. In 1897 the section changed its name to College and Reference Library Section to accommodate reference librarians.
1891–93
• Charles Ammi Cutter’s Expansive Classification system is published. It was first designed for use in the Boston Atheneum.
1895
• General Printing Act of 1895 consolidated laws governing the printing, finding, and distribution of government publications. It initiated the Superintendent of Documents in the Government Printing Office and his duties as distributor of documents to depository libraries.
• The first standard list for subject headings, List of Subject Headings for Use in Dictionary Catalogs, appeared. This work was based on Cutter’s principles and was produced by an ALA committee of which Cutter was a member.
1897–98
• J. C. M. Hanson and Charles Martel begin work on what was to become the Library of Congress Classification system, which borrowed heavily from Cutter’s Rules for a Printed Dictionary Catalogue.
1901
• Dewey calls for subject specialization in academic library service in his article “The Library.”
• The National Union Catalog was established. The Library of Congress begins selling galley proofs and copies of its printed catalog cards.
• Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature was published by Wilson.
1907
• Land grant colleges become depositories for government documents.
1908
• First Anglo-American cataloguing rules published as Catalog Rules: Author and Title Entries .
1914
• Library of Congress begins publishing its subject headings list.
1917
• ALA Committee on Coordination of College Libraries establishes an interlibrary lending code.
1919
• Interlibrary Loan Code of 1919 fosters cooperated external borrowing agreements among academic libraries.
1920
• James T. Gerould, who had presented a paper on comparative statistics to the College and Reference Library Section, started an annual compilation of Statistics for Academic Libraries. Known in the ’20s as “Princeton Statistics,” the compilation later became ARL Statistics.
1921
• Ernst J. Reece and his library school students began a series of articles, “College Library News,” in the Library Journal. C&RL began publishing the series in 1943 but dropped it in 1945.
1923
• Sear’s List of Subject Headings for Small Libraries is first published.
1927
• First edition of Union List of Serials.
• Founding of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA).
1928
• The Carnegie Corporation funds college libraries to further the integration of the library into the instruction in liberal arts colleges (Vol. 50 no.7 p. 563 Jones).
1932
• ARL was founded “by cooperative effort, to develop and increase the resources and usefulness of the research collections in American Libraries.”
1938
• The College and Reference Library Section becomes the Association of College and Reference Libraries.
1939
• College and Research Libraries was established to be a news bulletin, scholarly journal, and forum for the academic/research librarian. A. F. Kuhlman was the first editor of the journal
1940
• The Association of College and Reference Libraries becomes ALA’s first division in May 1940
1948
• The Farmington Plan was initiated to increase the nation’s total resources for research. Collection responsibility for new foreign research materials was distributed among 60 libraries (50 of them university libraries).
1949
• The Midwest Interlibrary Center (later known as the Center for Research Libraries) was founded by ten Midwestern universities to deposit infrequently used material; cooperative purchase and centralized housing of rarely used material; centralized acquisition and cataloging of materials required by member libraries; and coordination of acquisitions to avoid unnecessary duplication.
1952
• ACRL recognizes the Philadelphia Area Chapter as its first local chapter.
• ACRL began the ACRL Monographs series in 1952 to provide a venue to publish works of scholarship on academic librarianship that are too long for inclusion in the C&RL journal.
1956
• The Council on Library Resources. In 1954 the Ford Foundation instituted an inquiry into the needs of libraries and the relation of those needs to society. The findings recommended that a planning body, independent of other organizations, be created that could devote itself to a solution to various library problems.
• The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) advanced the move towards faculty status for librarians when they voted to admit librarians as members
1957
• The Association of College and Reference Libraries’ name was changed to the present day Association of College and Research Libraries
1959
• In 1957, the ACRL Board of Directors appointed a Committee on Standards chaired by Felix E. Hirsch, of Trenton State College, The committee labored for two years and produced in 1959 the first set of “Standards for College Libraries.” In 1975, the standards were broadened to include staff and space as well as collections.
1960
• “Standards for Junior College Libraries” were published by ALA. These standards were superceded in 1972 by the “Guidelines for Two-Year College Learning Resources Programs.”
1962
• Depository Library Act of 1962 consolidated existing statutes and increased the potential number of depository libraries
1963
• Choice magazine, a publication of ACRL, was launched on the campus of Wesleyan College with the assistance of a $150,000 grant from the Council of Library Resources. Choice’s mission was to select and review titles of greatest interest to college libraries, faculty, and students. Richard Gardner was Choice’s first editor and the first issue appeared in 1964.
• The Academic Facilities Act of 1963 funded construction of academic library buildings, including libraries, at both public and private institutions of higher education.
• The Vocational Education Act of 1963 funded acquisition of vocational and technical material for colleges to encourage vocational education.
1964
• Title III of the Library Services and Construction Act of 1964 was created to “establish and maintain local, regional, state, or interstate cooperative networks and for the coordination of informational services of school, public academic, and special libraries and information centers, permitting the user of any one type of library to draw on all types of information centers.”
1965
• The Higher Education Act of 1965. Two federal programs of this Act provided assistance to libraries: Title II-A, aimed at college libraries, granted funds for acquisitions and networking; Title II-B, trained of all types of librarians and research and demonstration projects, including the development of new ways of processing, storing, and distributing information; and Title II-C, granted funds for collection development in subject areas of national importance and was targeted for research libraries. (Jones)
• Keyes D. Metcalf produced his seminal work Planning Academic and Research Library Buildings.
1966
• The initiation of the MARC (Machine Readable Cataloging) Project at the Library of Congress was to provide cataloging information in a machine-readable form.
• First automated circulation system installed at the Illinois State Library.
1967
• OCLC founded this year by Frederick Ralph Kilgour as a consortium of 49 academic libraries in the state of Ohio. Its primary objectives were resource sharing and reduction in per unit library costs.
• Stanford begins development of the Bibliographic Automation of Large Library Operations Using a Time-Sharing Unit System. This system was to provide a flexible and reliable on-line system for bibliographic control.
• Introduction of Standard Book Number (SBN), now ISBN.
• Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR) in two versions: the North American text and the British text. AACR2 (2nd edition) helped to advance international cooperation by encouraging the extension of “shared cataloguing” whereby librarians of one country can use the output of another without significant alteration.
1968
• MARC II magnetic tapes are released which provide more internal discrimination between data elements, more internal discrimination between data elements, and coding of individual characters based on the ANSI standard for records used for interinstitutional communication.
1969
• ARPANET links U.S. researchers and academic institutions such as UCLA, Stanford, UC-Santa Barbara, and University of Utah. The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was a resource-sharing computer network, which became known as ARPANET, a wide-area packet-switching network, which later evolved into the Internet.
1970
• Introduction of International Standard Serial Number (ISSN).
1971
• American publishers and Library of Congress take part in Cataloguing in Publication Project (CIP). CIP was established by the Library of Congress and had more than 4,000 U.S. publishers and affiliates submit applications for CIP Data.
• OCLC shared cataloging system was available online in the state of Ohio. In 1978 it was reorganized as a national system.
• ANZI Z39.2-1985, American National Standard for Bibliographic Information Interchange on Magnetic Tape is adopted.
• Introduction of International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD)
1972
• Higher Education Act of 1965 amended and enlarged
1974
• The Research Libraries Group (RLG) was founded as an alternative to institutional self-sufficiency during a period of tremendous publishing output and rising costs. The consortia originally consisted of Columbia, Harvard, Yale, and the New York Public Library.
1975
• ACRL published Faculty Status for Academic Libraries, which is a collection of policy statements in support of faculty status
Mid-70s
• CLSI, the first turnkey library system vendor, began to sell libraries an entire circulation system based on a Digital Electronics Corporation microcomputer
1976
• Copyright Act of 1976. This revision of the 1909 law pre-empted common law copyright by protecting unpublished works for a period of 100 years from the date of creation rather than in perpetuity
1978
• ACRL presents its first annual Academic or Research Librarian of the Year Award to Robert B. Downs and Keyes D. Metcalf
1979
• Standards for University Libraries approved jointly by ACRL and ARL.
• Stanford joins the Research Libraries Group and the Ballots system is renamed the Research Library Information Network.
• OCLC implements an interlibrary loan system.
1980
• ACRL publishes ACRL University Library Statistics 1978–79, which collected statistics from university libraries not covered by ARL.
• The College Libraries Section began a series called CLIP Notes (College Library Information Packets), containing information and sample documents from academic libraries to assist in establishing or refining services and operations.
1985
• Wilson distributed Readers Guide in electronic format.
• The National Science Foundation (NSF) created NSFNET, which was a series of networks used for research and education communication. Supercomputing sites at the University of California-San Diego, University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, and Princeton University were some of the earliest research center participating.
1986
• Rare Books and Manuscripts Librarianship, a semiannual publication, began publishing in the spring of 1986 on a trial basis. The journal was incorporated into the ACRL publishing program in 1988.
1987
• First online journal New Horizons in Adult Education. Post Modern Culture was published in 1990
1991
• William Andrew Moffet, director of the Huntington Library, opens the archives containing the Dead Sea Scrolls to scholars.
• OCLC launches PRISM, which offers enhanced capabilities for online cataloging and searching
• High Performance Computing Act of 1991 authorized Congress to appropriate funds to expand networks attributable to the federal government—such as the National Research and Education Network (NREN), NSFnet, and some of ARPAnet—and rename the network NREN
1998
• Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 and Copyright Term Extension Act.