College and Research Libraries


Post-Professional Education 
and Training 

THE POST-PROFESSIONAL education of librarians was treated in an illuminat-
ing paper by Helen Frances Pierce, li-
brarian, J u n i o r College Library, Modesto, 
Calif., before the Junior College Libraries 
Subsection at the San Francisco meeting. 
Her paper will be published in the A.L.A. 
Bulletin. It complements the foregoing 
papers. 

Miss Pierce pointed out that in recent 
years increasing provision has been made 
by the professions to assist the practitioner 
in growing. T h e r e has also been, as was 
shown by a summary of what has been 
attempted, a considerable stirring in the 
library field. But the efforts and pro-
grams on the graduate level thus f a r are 

deficient in one or more of the following 
respects: ( I ) relatively f e w librarians have 
been reached; ( 2 ) the supply of capable 
teachers is not equal to the demand; ( 3 ) 
problems of content versus methodology 
and technique have been only partially 
solved; and ( 4 ) there is not agreement 
upon the amount of specialization in a 
single field that is desirable. 

Miss Pierce is convinced that librarians 
must overcome the complacency that has 
characterized them in the past and that 
each must ferret out such knowledge and 
methods as will increase his professional 
stature, unless librarians are content to 
be merely mediators or handmaidens to 
the learned scholars. A . F . K . 

Conference of Eastern College Librarians 
(Continued from page 12) 

usual feature of the organization is some 
twenty regional alumni groups distributed 
over the country. These alumni members 
have proved particularly useful in discover-
ing and procuring local imprints for the 
Y a l e library. 

Advocate A.C.R.L. Membership 

A t the suggestion of Charles C . W i l -
liamson, dean of the School of Library 
Service, Columbia University, the ques-
tion of the future status and conduct of 
the Conference of Eastern College L i -
brarians was opened for discussion by W i l -

lard P . Lewis,, librarian of Pennsylvania 
State College. T h e conference has always 
been an informal organization, without 
officers or dues, meeting under the aus-
pices of Columbia University. M r . Lewis 
pointed out the advantages of a closer 
affiliation with the A . L . A . and the 
A . C . R . L . T h e sentiment of the group 
did not favor any change in the informal 
character of the conference but adopted a 
resolution, offered by Henry Bartlett V a n 
Hoesen, librarian, Brown University L i -
brary, supporting individual membership 
in the A . C . R . L . 

D EC EMBER, 1939 39