LIBRARY SCIENCE. - Library science (or, as it was also called with a term that met with no success, bibliothecology) is the science (others say: the art or the service) of libraries, whose every operation, from construction to administration, it studies. More briefly, library science teaches how to establish and operate libraries.
An organization of libraries, more or less scientific or rudimentary, has always existed ever since collections of books have existed: for unorganized collections of books, in disorder, without catalogs, are called storerooms, lumber-rooms, not libraries. The concept of a library carries with it that of ordering and of service.
Moreover, in ancient times matters proceeded rather empirically, in the sense that to keep a library in order one usually sought out a learned person, a friend of books, endowed with gifts of order and precision, but not professionally trained: whence a variety of criteria of organization. In modern times that of the librarian has become a profession in its own right, requiring a theoretical and practical formation imparted in special schools. These schools, which are called either schools for librarians or schools of library science, impart instruction in all library services: construction and choice of premises, arrangement of the equipment, searching out and ordering of books, accession, registration, classification, cataloging, distribution to the public, consultation, reading, lending, verification, etc. Furthermore they impart the complementary disciplines to endow librarians with the culture sufficient for their duties: history of the book, bibliography and bibliotechnics, knowledge of books and culture ad hoc (in a music library, knowledge of music will be required of the librarian).
The profession of librarian has thus become autonomous also with respect to that of the archivist-paleographer, with which in the recent past it was merged. One attends to printed books, the other to manuscript documents.
In individual cloisters and at episcopal or capitular schools, manuscript books were cataloged and were given out for reading with rules and precautions, especially against readers with grasping or dirty hands. A bibliophile and librarian, who spoke with love of books (philobiblon), toward the middle of the 14th century, is the English bishop Richard de Bury (b. near Bury in 1287, d. in 1345), a friend of another great bibliophile, Francesco Petrarch, whom he met at Avignon; while Pedro de Luna, who anticipated [the name] with the name Benedict XII (d. 1424), reorganized the papal library of Avignon, giving rules for the placement and classification of the manuscripts.
These monastic libraries are the public libraries of the Middle Ages. In a Synod held at Paris in 1212, every religious Order was forbidden "to formulate vows against the lending of its own books to anyone who might have need of them; since lending is numbered among the principal works of mercy," and the "anathemas" binding the manuscripts are declared null.
The care of books became a passion of Humanism, when Nicholas V constituted or reconstituted the Vatican Library "pro communi doctorum virorum commodo".
To prevent thefts of the manuscripts, there, as elsewhere, the volumes were "chained" to the desk.
In the bibliophile fervor, not a few norms were dictated for the proper keeping of books. The Duke of Urbino drew some up for his famous collection, and in every sizable library some rule was fixed and enforced. The norms drawn up by the Benedictine Floriano Trefler (1483-1565), by the Jesuits Francesco Sacchini (1570-1625) and Giovanni Garnier (1628-1681), by the archbishop Msgr. Giusto Fontanini (1666-1736), by the Theatine Paolo M. Paciaudi (1710-85), were printed; of the latter, as late as 1863, the 4th edition of the work was reprinted at Rome: Il bibliotecario diretto nel formare, classare e continuare una pubblica biblioteca.
In the 19th century, in the field of libraries, the concern prevailed of drawing up fixed and uniform norms for cataloging. From the most rational cataloging came the impulse for the establishment of schools to train catalogers and, in general, librarians capable of all services: and such establishment marks this first half of the 20th century.
Schools had existed even before: suffice it to recall the famous Ecole des Chartes, founded in 1821, in Paris, and the Library School, opened at Columbia College (now University) in New York, by Melvil Dewey in 1887. In Italy, from 1880, a school of Archival Science and paleography existed at Florence. In 1923 various schools for librarians were opened by the Ministry of Education at universities.
Under Pius XI, a school of Library Science arose in the Vatican, to complement the vast work of technical modernization of the papal Library undertaken by that Pontiff. The School has intended to place the professional and technical experience of the Vatican Library at the disposal first of all of the clergy and of religious communities, for the formation of the librarians of seminaries, schools and religious houses, and then at the disposal of all. It has come to complement the teaching of the school of Paleography and diplomatics, existing for half a century at the Vatican Secret Archive, and to give an easy realization and great development to the instructions already issued, in 1902, 1907 and 1923, by the Secretariat of State to the Italian bishops for the orderly keeping of archives and libraries: instructions drawn up, with noted competence, by Fr. Francesco Ehrle, then prefect of the Vatican [Library].
The courses of the new School, begun in 1934, have been attended by ecclesiastical and lay students of every nation. The subjects of instruction have been fixed as follows: bibliography, cataloging and classification, general ordering and library services, with added lectures on the history of the book, the use of photography, the preservation and restoration of printed works, etc.
The aim that this reorganization proposes is to render as useful as possible the books, periodicals, prints, photographs, etc. of a collection, for a purpose of social utility, in a readier and vaster service of scholars, the library being understood as made not only to gather books, but also to serve readers. This aim gives the librarian a new physiognomy, no longer understood only as a guardian of treasures, but also as a host of those who treasure them. Reading informs, forms and recreates; and the librarian collaborates with the reader in the selection of the suitable book and collaborates with the schools in the instruction of pupils.
Pupils of the Vatican School of Library Science have already reorganized and directed ecclesiastical libraries in several States; and the Norme per la catalogazione degli stampati, drawn up by the Vatican Library, have become the principal textbook of the School, and have been translated into Spanish, English and French, and applied also in non-ecclesiastical libraries on both sides of the Ocean (v. also CATALOGO; CLASSIFICAZIONE, sistemi di).
Bibliography6 works
Igino Giordani