Page 20 - Training for Librarianship Library Work As a Career

TRAINING FOR LIBRARIANSHIP

work which we may refer to as the social ser-
vice of the modern library—such as work
with physically and mentally defective, the
delinquent, the unskilled, the untrained, the
alien, and which have been America's great
contribution, were not yet thought of; they
are in the main developments of the last
twenty years. Scientific method in the
library was yet in its infancy. Library
schools for the systematic training of Ubra-
rians and their assistants were unknown.
Librarianship had not yet won recognition
as a profession.
All this has undergone change. In the
United States occasionally, and abroad more
often, the voice of the past is still heard, but
it is heard less frequently. In 1903 the great
English librarian, James Duff Brown, in
describing the qualifications for librarianship,
stated that " Like the prominent members of
every other trade, profession or branch of
learning, good librarians are born, not made.
No amount of training or experience will
create such natural gifts as enthusiasm, origi-
nality, initiative and positive genius for the
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