The Unintended Revolution in Academic Libraries: 1939 to 1989 and Beyond

n 1989, the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) celebrates its fiftieth anniversary. The years since its founding have been a period of great change and progress in academic librarianship. Academic libraries have evolved from relatively small, self-sufficient institutions to large, multifaceted organizations electronically interconnected and linked in ways not yet envisioned fifty years ago. The librarians who work in these institutions, although sharing many of the same attitudes and values of their predecessors, are called upon to have knowledge of processes and to provide services unforeseen in 1939. Academic librarianship in the United States has changed more rapidly and radically during the past fifty years than it had during its prior 300-year history. This paper will examine some of these changes and attempt to chart the course of academic librarianship from 1939 to the present. To do justice to this history, far more space would be needed than is provided here. What follows is a much compressed and highly selective look at the topic, but it is hoped that the account will be comprehensive enough to permit the identification of the most important trends and influences and to isolate some useful generalizations. Tracing the development of academic librarianship results in two seemingly contradictory impressions. On one hand there are fundamental changes: Libraries have begun to make the transition from manual to electronic systems, and many central components, including collections, organization, personnel, and services, have been modified. The libraries of today are very different institutions from those of fifty years ago. On the other hand there are great similarities, so that an old adage seems to be applicable: the more things change the more they st~y the same. Many contemporary issues and concerns were articulated and shared by academic librarians working in the field fifty years ago. More discouragingly, many of the problems that seemed intractable in the late 1930s have indeed proven to be unyielding and are yet to be resolved. The first issues of C&RL contained articles on topics such as the appropriateness of the Ph.D. and the advisability of faculty status for academic librarians, the necessity for research by academic librarians, the problem of low salaries for librarians in relation to faculty, the percentage of the institutional budget that should be devoted to libraries, and the advantages and disadvantages of library centralization.