Itinerant Librarians

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Itinerant Librarians, or journeyman catalogers, were trained librarians who travelled around the United States, mainly between 1887 and 1915, taking temporary jobs in local libraries to assist with the organization of cataloging systems for the many new public, school, academic, and special libraries.^[1] Their job amounted to quality control and an effort to standardize procedures within the budding professional field of librarianship.

A Need for Organization[edit]

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there was a rapidly increasing number of libraries across the United States. This trend was driven by a societal desire for increased education and available reading material, and fueled by philanthropic gifts, like Andrew Carnegie's grants to build public libraries that would be open to all patrons regardless of race or gender, and that would be funded at least in-part by local government.^[2] Between 1886 and 1919, Carnegie would fund 1,670 new libraries, more than triple the number that had existed in the U.S. before 1886.^[2]

Even before Carnegie and his contemporaries made libraries more prevalent, an obvious need arose for the standardization of both the profession of librarian and organizational systems for libraries' contents. The year 1876 saw the creation of the American Library Association, the publication of both Cutter's Rules and the Dewey Decimal Classification System, and establishment by Melvil Dewey of the Library Bureau company.^[1] Charles Ammi Cutter's 1882 Expansive Classification system was utilized in the creation of the Library of Congress Classification system.^[3] The Dewey Decimal System was adopted in many other libraries. It was these systems and others that itinerant librarians would institute, along with card catalogs.

While state library commissions would sometimes employ full-time permanent librarians to advise on organizational procedures as new libraries were being set up, many libraries employed local, untrained women who wouldn't need to be paid as much as someone with more training. So many existing libraries hired trained and experienced journeymen catalogers only to categorize their collections and train permanent staff in their use.^[1] These journeyman librarians could be hired through the state commission, a commercial firm - such as Dewey's Library Bureau, or through the director of a library school.

Training and Education[edit]

The number of professional training programs and university library science schools dramatically increased in the later nineteenth century. The Columbia/New York State School of Library Economy was the first dedicated library school, established in 1887.^[1] Other notable library training schools of the period included the Armour/Illinois State Library School started by Katherine L. Sharp in 1893^[4], Simmons, Drexel, Pratt, the Carnegie Atlanta Library School, and the Wisconsin Library School.^[1] These institutions taught Cutter's and Dewey's systems of course, among other things.

Further Reading[edit]

New York State Library School Register 1887-1926

Alumni Register, University of Illinois (1918)

Who's Who In Library Service (1933)

Carnegie Library School Alumni Files

Taylor, Frederick W. The Principals of Scientific Management. New York: Harper & Bros., 1911.

Carnegie Library School Alumni File, Special Collections Department, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.

Foote, Elizabeth L. "Instruction of the Local Librarian by the Organizer." Public Libraries, vol. 3 (October 1898).

Maddox, L. "Trends and Issues in American Librarianship as Reflected in the Papers and Proceedings of the American Library Association, 1876-1885." Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1958.

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