Login

Publications  •  Project Statistics

Glossary  •  Schools  •  Disciplines
People Search: 
   
Title/Abstract Search: 

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.

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