The subject specialist librarian in an academic library: his role and place

Abstract

The librarian's basic duty has always been to acquire, to organize and to exploit a collection of books and other sources of information. Concerning his ability to perform the first two tasks there has never been much doubt, but about the third responsibility he has either kept very quiet or done little—or both!—if we are to judge by the dictionary definitions attached to our profession. Emphasis on exploitation arrived with the twentieth century when closed access was swept away in the public library. It was not long before the merits of subject specialization became apparent to those who administered the public library, and subject departments were born in the days following the First World War. It took another World War before similar ideas had impact on the academic library world—witness the developments at University College, London, at the end of the 1940s, described by Scott—and only in the past twenty years have the results become apparent. And yet this is a strange situation, because the librarian of an academic library has traditionally been a subject specialist himself. As far back as the Renaissance, universities had learned librarians who were scholars in law, or literature or theology. This tradition has been carried on until the present century. Libraries in German universities in particular appear to have seen the need for the continuance of the scholar‐librarian, with their scheme of ‘Referenten’. In Britain, university libraries have remained faithful to the idea of the scholar‐librarian but it has not resulted in much ‘exploitation’ of the stock until recent years, with the emergence of the ‘subject specialist librarian’.