The Value of Library History

Abstract

THE HISTORY OF LIBRARIES AND LIBRARIANSHIP has been given both too little and too much attention. That there is a great deal of indifference on the part of many librarians concerning their past, or their original raison d'être, is obvious from the style of many of the articles written in defence of such a knowledge. The greater part of such articles seems to be taken up with explaining that apathy concerning library history is very understandable because modern methods in librarianship are more important; that what happened thousands of years ago in Egypt, or even in Britain in the last century, has very little bearing on modern theory or practice; that modern developments in library science—computers and the like—render the older methods utterly useless. For example, Reichmann says:

Citation

Cutcliffe, M.R. (1967), "The Value of Library History", Library Review, Vol. 21 No. 4, pp. 193-196. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb012486