LHRT’s Two Communities

I would like to acknowledge Bernadette Lear for articulating an expanded vision of the Library History Round Table community and for devoting years to advocating that vision for the LHRT as appears in her essay in the previous issue of LCHS.1 But as we celebrate the LHRT’s seventy-fifth anniversary, I would also like to offer a rejoinder from a different vantage point.What I offer constitutes less an argument with Bernadette’s essay than a more complex refinement of what constitutes the LHRT. Bernadette laudably focuses on community, a “spirit of openness,” for wide audiences of those interested in producing and learning about the library’s past—especially for those unable to participate in LHRT activities.2For my part, however, I would advocate that the LHRT better acknowledge that there are two communities connected to library history. History is not only about what we like to share about the past; it must also include what the wide and systematic collection of evidence, critical assessment of primary sources, and historiographic analysis documents and demonstrates it is.Broadening interest in the LHRT is a laudable aspiration. Though, throughout its seventy-five years, aspirations notwithstanding, the Round Table might well sustain criticism about being less attractive to students and practitioners, among others, who might otherwise see themselves as active members. Self-critique on this is all to the good. We should always seek to expand the reach of library history—for the good of the LHRT, for the American Library Association, the profession, and for libraries.In celebrating the LHRT’s seventy-fifth year, however, I suggest that we better consider how the Round Table is constituted of two distinct communities, not one. Each of these communities envisions addressing distinct types of questions about history and thus different roles for the LHRT. We should strive to build an LHRT capable of valuing both communities for their respective contributions.To be sure, and to a significant extent, the LHRT does attempt to serve its members and respond to what members feel contributes value to their work and interests. For their part, librarians and archivists sharing stories about the past represents an enriching thread in library history. These tend to be the stories and discussions I observed as a member of the executive committee and as chair, what the LHRT concentrates upon in meetings, panels, conferences, and in the very well-edited LHRT News and Notes newsletter. These are indeed generous efforts assembled and contributed by practicing librarians who share various experiences of the past.I would argue, however, that while the Round Table does achieve good success on this count, we must still broaden the communities of people interested in our history further. In better differentiating two communities of library history, I feel the LHRT would also reach for broader and deeper impact.More pointedly, there is a difference between librarians sharing stories about the past, on the one hand, and academic historians writing critically, on the other. I teach two history research methods classes every year. And I know that these distinctions can be challenging.Stories about the past largely constitute and highlight exemplary circumstances. These stories can include primary sources such as photographs, postcards, recorded interviews, and many other forms of primary source evidence. These stories illuminate, intrigue, and often inspire us to recognize overlooked contributions. Most commonly these are stories of libraries or staff achieving positive community objectives, of overcoming challenging obstacles, and singing unsung individuals persisting through adversity.Let’s examine the notion of “oral history,” for instance, a favored approach to telling about the past. Oral history comes freighted with a colloquial definition commonly conflated with recording interviews or “capturing” selected subjects and their memories. These are perfectly legitimate efforts to document memories, insights, and experiences. But their ability to support broader generalizations is by their nature limited.On the other hand, to offer broader and deeper insights into the institution’s history requires more than the recitation of interview transcripts or the presentation of “facts.”An execution of oral history, as a formal practice of history scholarship, requires a critical and systematic identification of study subjects, the questioning, recording, and critical examination of strategically collected experiences and memories of study subjects. It also requires the synthesis of many, if not inconvenient or even contradictory, narratives and primary sources, and then the contextualizing of these various narratives within historiographic discourses. Further, history scholarship requires defense, review by subject experts (peer review), revision, and publication. These are the kinds of contributions currently promoted in our LHRT journal, Libraries: Culture, History, and Society, which is, however, still only a few years old.Consider the following as another aspect of the LHRT’s two different communities. Consider a librarian who writes, not without some pride, about how a particular library had fought racial segregation under Jim Crow policies. Here we might learn about a particular library’s experience, through newspaper accounts or photos, of resistance and the vanquishing of Jim Crow segregation.This first story produces one of uplift and social progress: the sunny side of the library’s “free to all” promise, an upholding of our profession’s highest aspirations. It is an important story, of course. It deserves attention and would assuredly be of interest to LHRT members.On the other hand, a different community of LHRT members would be curious about the larger contexts of how this one library’s experience comported with, or contrasted, the broader institutional response to racial segregation. This is a task that few have facility, resources, or time to pursue.A more scholarly treatment, however, produces an entirely different history about how deeply ingrained and complicit libraries were in upholding racial segregation, across wide geographies, throughout the profession, how the American Library Association ignored the practice—for a long time, revealing how common it was for libraires to actively defend segregation.3Both stories would be true. One community within the LHRT would produce one telling; the other community would produce another.Don’t we need them both?Don’t we need to appreciate both for their respective contributions?We need not characterize library stories about the past as having “a spirit of openness” as contrasted to history scholarship. Both can be open. Both should be “open.” Both should be open to new and diverse ideas, voices, interpretations, and new ways of viewing library legacies.Only scholarship, however, can sustain and defend broader contributions to our knowledge and contextualize understandings of libraries within institutional, cultural, and social landscapes.Both approaches make contributions. Indeed, we need them both.But as a learned profession we ought not confuse or conflate them. We must appreciate each for their respective contributions.To reinforce my point about two different communities within the LHRT, we know professional librarians, those inclined to share and present stories of the past, study for their master’s degree for roughly two years. During their studies they engage information communities, processes, professional ethics, resources, and the core competencies that cohere in public service. A difficult enough job, we must admit.On the other hand, in their training, history scholars directly study history content, historical analysis, the entire universe of primary sources (physical and the increasingly technologically mediated), social theory, research methods, and pedagogy, in addition to producing their own expertly peer-reviewed history treatment (the doctoral dissertation) demonstrating facility with pertinent historiographic debates. Normative time for earning a history PhD? Eight years.4The point is not to compare length of time to degrees but to acknowledge how history scholars offer entirely different value propositions and skill sets compared with sharing stories about the past. In other words, historians study libraries within history; librarians are more inclined to share stories about libraries.In considering how the LHRT might better address and respect both communities, perhaps it would be a good idea to more explicitly pair them on Round Table panels. Criteria could be developed for each approach.Another suggestion might be to develop two groups of peer reviewers to evaluate manuscripts for Libraries: Culture, History, and Society: one for manuscripts submitted by librarians and another group of history scholars—historians might even be recruited from outside of Library and Information Science. Two benefits could ensue: the first would open the journal to more library stories about the past contributed by librarians; second, recruiting history scholars from other fields could expand library scholarship beyond LIS boundaries.Finally, there is no need to reduce one or other of these approaches to a hierarchical order. Librarians and historians do different jobs. We bring different skills, perspectives, approaches, and contribute different questions to library history.5As we celebrate seventy-five years of the LHRT we should envision it as a welcome home to both practitioners and scholars. But we must also acknowledge that they offer different strengths.