Information Scotland

The Journal of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland

June 2007 Volume 5(3)

Teaching

A history of studying at Strathclyde

The West of Scotland is celebrating 60 years of library studies. Paul Burton recounts how it has developed at what became the University of Strathclyde.

The current academic year marks the diamond jubilee of the teaching of Librarianship (under various names) in the West of Scotland, first at the Glasgow and West of Scotland College of Commerce in Pitt Street and later at the University of Strathclyde, which was formed in 1963 by the merger of the Royal College of Science and Technology and the College of Commerce.[1]

The Scottish School of Librarianship held its first classes in September 1946 and the minutes of the College Governors of 10 May 1946 record:
“The Chairman reported that along with the Secretary he had met with the President and Secretary of the Scottish Library Association and discussed with them the proposal to form a School of Librarianship. The Chairman reported to the Governors what transpired at that meeting and after some talk it was decided:
l to form a school of Librarianship.
l to appoint Mr William B. Paton, Chief Librarian, Burgh of Greenock as lecturer
l that the course should commence on Monday, 16 September.
l that the fee for the course should be £25 for the session [2]

Things didn’t proceed so smooothly, however. A later minute indicates that the decision was not quite so clear cut: at the end of May, the Curriculum Committee noted “that conditions under which the School should be run had not been clearly thought out nor had it been finally decided whether the school should be held in Edinburgh or Glasgow”.[3] These issues must have been resolved at a later meeting, as the next we read is that classes in Librarianship were in operation by September “for both the Entrance Examination and the Final Examination in Parts I, II and III of the Librarianship Examinations” [of the Library Association]:[4] 25 students had been enrolled for what was the first School of Librarianship in Scotland and possibly only the second in Britain (a School at University College, London had been formed before WW II).
Initially, W.B. (“Bill”) Paton was the sole member of staff teaching the classes, although he was formally appointed as Head of the Scottish School of Librarianship in May 1947 – without, it was noted, “change of salary”.[5]
An early prospectus [6] from the 1940s lists the three levels of education and training provided by the fledging School. The Entrance Exam was for those with Scottish Leaving Certificate or equivalent, and a foreign language was desirable. Graduates of an approved university were exempt. The Registration Exam was for those who had passed the Entrance Exam or were exempt. Three years’ full-time service in an approved library after passing this exam led to Chartered membership and election as an Associate of the LA, although the three years included the time spent at Library School. The Final Exam was open only to Associates: its successful completion was a qualification for Fellowship of the LA.

The majority of the students were practising library staff on leave of absence, and their course included lectures and practical work, “particularly in the subjects of Classification and Cataloguing”, while Bibliography was “enlivened by visits to paper mills, printing works, process-illustration works and library binderies”. That first year, 25 students had enrolled, while numbers in the part-time classes were described as ‘satisfactory’.[7]

The new Scottish School of Librarianship clearly met a need, although in 1950, when Bill Tyler took over as Head, there were 30 full-time students but only one other staff member.[8] In the following years, additional staff were appointed in order to cope with increasing numbers, including Bill Tyler, James (‘Jimmy’) Tait, Alan Whatley, Bill Aitken and Robert (‘Bob’) Walker, names which will be well known to generations of librarians.

The first mention of a link with the Royal College of Science and Technology (RCS&T) is in 1962, when the Board of Governors noted “negotiations with Dr Curran” of the Royal College.[9] A minute of the following May notes the granting of university status to RCS&T and authorised the College Principal to meet the RCS&T’s Principal “to undertake preliminary exploration of the College’s future status and relationship” with the RCS&T.[10] That ‘preliminary exploration’ was eventually successful, for in 1965, after a formal report and an appearance by Bill Tyler before Senate, the School became the Department of Librarianship and was incorporated into the School of Arts and Social Studies in early 1966 [11] with Bill Tyler as Reader and Head of Department.

However, the new Department had already taken its first pioneering step in the education and training of librarians by introducing, alongside the postgraduate Diploma, the first undergraduate degree in Librarianship in the UK, which took its first students (including the present writer!) in September 1966. Five ‘guinea pigs’ began the BA course that year, taking Librarianship in conjunction with another subject from the School and graduating three years later (the joint Honours degree came later). Bill Paton retained a connection with the new Department, as External Examiner in the Library Management. Initial plans to make the Diploma a Master’s degree were not approved by Senate, although they did agree that the Diploma could be awarded with Distinction.[12] A chair in Librarianship was established in 1969 and Bill Tyler was appointed Professor in the following year.

The Department, it seems, was never one to do things by halves, because 15 years later, following Bill Tyler’s retirement, not only was a new Professor appointed but it also merged with the Department of Office Organisation and transferred to another faculty, the Business School, becoming known in the process as the Department of Information Science. The new Professor, Blaise Cronin, immediately set about the restructuring of the Diploma course into the MSc/PG Diploma in Information and Library Studies (ILS), which had a broader curriculum designed to reflect the increasing number of changes in professional practice, caused not least by the spread of microcomputer technologyx.[13]

Blaise Cronin was succeeded in 1992 by Charles Oppenheim (now at the University of Loughborough), by which time the ILS course had been joined by the MSc/PG Diploma in Information Management, which was seen as a complementary course. The undergraduate programme had become a BA Honours in Information Science but, it has to be said, was struggling to maintain numbers and it was eventually discontinued in the late 1980s.

Following Charles’ move to Loughborough, Forbes Gibb became Head of Department and later Professor of Information Science and in that post he has overseen the most recent major development in the teaching of Library Studies at Strathclyde, another merger, this time with Computer Science, and another Faculty, this time Science, in 2001. The ILS course thus became one of (currently) four postgraduate degrees in the Graduate School of Informatics within the Department of Computer and Information Sciences. The merger gave the course access to a suite of up-to-date computer facilities (see picture, above). The class pictured is carrying out practical work in classification using online Dewey schedules. (It has been a policy to review all postgraduate courses at five-year intervals and this has meant, among other things, that classification and cataloguing have re-appeared in the ILS curriculum, first as an option and, from 2007/08, as a core class taught in the first semester.)

From the start the course succeeded in attracting large numbers of students each year (typically 50-55) and it is noteworthy that this jubilee session will also see the 1000th student graduate, an event to be marked later in July. Graduates and Diplomates of Library Studies in the School of Librarianship and later Strathclyde can be found in all the ‘airts and pairts’ and as library and information services take on a new significance in the information society, we will continue to provide the professional education and training needed.

A longer publication charting the teaching of library studies at Strathclyde is planned for publication late this year. I would be delighted to hear from former students.

More information on the ILS course.

I am extremely grateful to Margaret Harrison, University Archivist, and Kirsteen Croll, Assistant Archivist, of Strathclyde University Archives for all their assistance in the preparation of this article.

Paul F. Burton is Senior Lecturer, Department of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Strathclyde e: paul.burton@cis.strath.ac.uk

References
1 Butt, John. John Anderson’s Legacy: the University of Strathclyde and its antecedents, 1796-1996. Tuckwell Press in association with the University of Strathclyde, 1996.
2 Glasgow and West of Scotland Commercial College. Minute VII of Meeting of Governors, 10 May, 1946. University of Strathclyde Archives OH2/1/16.
3 Glasgow and West of Scotland Commercial College. Minute of Curriculum Committee of 30 May, 1946. University of Strathclyde Archives OH2/1/16.
4 Glasgow and West of Scotland Commercial College. Minute of Meeting of the Governors, 3 September, 1946. University of Strathclyde Archives OH2/1/16
5 Glasgow and West of Scotland Commercial College. Minute of Chairman’s Committee III (e), 22 May, 1947. University of Strathclyde Archives OH2/1/16
6 Glasgow and West of Scotland Commercial College. Scottish School of Librarianship Prospectuses. University of Strathclyde Archives H2/4/113 – 123
7 Glasgow and West of Scotland Commercial College. Minute of Curriculum Committee of 3 September, 1946. University of Strathclyde Archives OH2/1/16
8 Graham, J. One Hundred and Twenty-five Years: the evolution of commercial education in Glasgow. Scottish College of Commerce, 1964, p.83
9 Glasgow and West of Scotland Commercial College. Minute of Board of Governors II(b) of 17 October 1962. University of Strathclyde Archives.
10 Glasgow and West of Scotland Commercial College. Minute of Board of Governors VI of 23 May 1963. University of Strathclyde Archives
11 University of Strathclyde. Minutes of Senate 52 of 15 February 1965. University of Strathclyde Archives
12 University of Strathclyde. Minutes of Senate 265.1 of 8 November 1966; Minutes of Senate 286.3 of 13 December 1966. University of Strathclyde Archives University of Strathclyde Archives
13 Burton, Paul. ‘The Department of Information Science, University of Strathclyde’, ITS News: Newsletter of the Library Association Information Technology Group (8), January 1986, pp4-6.

Information Scotland Vol. 5(3) June 2007

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Last updated: 18-Jul-2007