Dissertation Information for Redmond Kathleen Molz NAME: - Redmond Kathleen Molz
- (Alias) R. Kathleen Molz
DEGREE:
- Ph.D.
DISCIPLINE:
- Library and Information Science
SCHOOL:
- Columbia University (USA) (1976)
ADVISORS: - Lowell A. Martin
COMMITTEE MEMBERS: - Richard L. Darling
MPACT Status: Fully Complete
Title: National planning for library service, 1935 to 1975: from the national plan to the national program
Abstract: This study traces the growth of the idea of national planning for library service in the United States from the period of the qreat depression in the 1930s to the present. With the publication by the American Library Association in 1935 of A National Plan for Libraries, a new era for the -library profession was begun. This action by the librarians through the aegis of their professional association coincided with and was influenced by the development of a new phenomenon in the United States, national socioeconomic planning. A federal centralized planning agency, the National Planning Board, was established in 1933 as a part of Roosevelt's administration. Throughout the ten years of its existence, the Board issued an impressive array of publications covering all phases of American social and economic life. The creation of this Board acted as a stimulant to the Association, inspiring some of its leaders notably Carl H. Milam, Carleton B. Joeckel, and Louis Round ,Wilson; to define the goal of American librarianship as the development of a coordinated library system serving the cultural, recreational, and educational needs of all Americans through an array of libraries, comprising those serving the general public, the public schools, institutions. of higher learning, and those specialized enviornments,
such as businesses and industrial plants.
Planning for libraries as a national service, rather than on an individual institutional basis was furthered in the decade of the 1940s by the attention paid to post-war planning, when the nation would be required to
shift from a full-employment, defense oriented economy to an anticipated post-war era of peace and prosperity. Again, the Association responded to this national trend by the appointment of a Committee on Post-War Planning, chaired by Carleton B. Joeckel. The study examines the work of this Committee in developing the Post-War Standards for Public Libraries and A National Plan for Public Library Service. As the Association perceived the issue, the implementation of nationai planning could only occur through federal subsidy, and the study aiso analyzes the Association's role in lobbying for federal aid. Conceding defeat that the allencompassing program which it was recommending
would obtain passage in Congress, the Association took a posture of retrenchment and determined to seek federal funds only for the rural
population, which was largely unserved by any public library. Again the
Association showed a response to factors outside its own of orbit, the rural library plank reflecting national interest in rural socialogy and in regional development schemes, such as the Tennessee Valley Autnority which primarily affected rural areas. . The Association continued to act as the leading spokesman for national planning until 1968 when the report of the National Advisory Commission on Libraries was issued. The Commission, appointed by president Johnson in 1966, recommended the establishment of a permanent national
commission to serve as a continuing long range federal planning agency for the nation's libraries. With the appointment' of this permanent
commission in 1970 by President Nixon, a new mechanism forĀ· national library planning was brought into being: The study analyzes the role of a presidential advisory commission in the determination of public
policy, and carries the development of national library planning through 1975
when the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science issued its major recommendation for a nationwide network in a document entitled Toward a National Program for Library and Information Services: Goals for Action. The study purports to show that national library planning has evolved over a period of forty years: its principal finding is that, the 1975 National program ,is the lineal descendant of the' 1935 National Plan.
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MPACT Scores for Redmond Kathleen Molz A = 14
C = 10
A+C = 24
T = 19
G = 2
W = 14
TD = 16.5
TA = 1
calculated 2008-07-25 19:08:40
Advisors and Advisees Graph
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