A Century of Bibliographic Instruction: The Historical Claim to Professional and Academic Legitimacy

This paper links the origin, decline, and renaissance of bibliographic instruction (BI) to the increasing specialization and democratization of education. It argues that BI in academic libraries and the reference desk in public libraries were both initiated to foster independent learning by unsophisticated users; that BI, introduced by scholar-librarians in the 1870s, could not be sustained by the semiclerical graduates of early library schools and was consequently displaced by the reference desk, and that improved training and status for librarians contributed to the BI renaissance of the 1960s. Library schools should recognize the centrality of BI to academic librarianship and develop its theoretical base. Concept-oriented BI can help students understand the disciplines as different but equally rigorous approaches to knowledge by comparing their bibliographic structures and research methods.