Information Scotland The Journal of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland ISSN 1743-5471 Issue contents | Journal contents | About the online edition of the journal April 2008 Volume 6(2)

Centenary

Non-stop development

Brian Osborne looks at Education & Professional Development in his second article on the history of our professional organisation.

The Scottish Library Association never attempted to set up its own examination and qualification structure in competition with the Library Association’s, even in the period of 22 years when it enjoyed total independence. It did however take an active part in training Scots to sit and obtain their Library Association qualifications and keep abreast of professional developments. Continuing Professional Development may be a buzzword of the 21st Century but it was far from unknown in the early years of the Association.

In the Annual Report of SLA Council for 1919-20, the decision to mount a series of classes in Library Routine to aid those studying for LA exams was recorded and by 1922 this week-long course held in the Mitchell Library and organised by a sub committee which included the SLA President John Minto, and E. A. Savage of Edinburgh, was attracting 80 students. The syllabus included lectures by eminent practitioners such as R. D. MacLeod on County Library Administration (a very relevant subject in the light of the passing of the 1918 Education Act which had given county councils the power to establish rural libraries) and visits to printers and bookbinders. In addition to this intensive centrally organised week-long course the Glasgow branch also offered a weekly class in Library Routine. In 1923 the Association created a Scholarship valued at £15 for an essay of up to 5,000 words. This Essay Prize proved to be something of a disappointment to the Association with fewer entries being received than Council expected and those that were received often being of a troublingly low standard.

The Autumn School moved between Edinburgh and Glasgow through the 1920s and early 1930s, each year attracting around 50 students. In 1936 the decision was taken to change the School to a summer, residential, one and the first such SLA Summer School was held in Edinburgh in July 1936. This was attended by 41 students preparing for the LA’s elementary or intermediate examinations. Financially the venture lost money but Council was persuaded of its practical and educational success and agreed to repeat the venture in 1937 at Newbattle Abbey, the former home of the Kerr family, the Marquesses of Lothian, and now converted into an Adult Education Centre. The 1937 Summer School attracted 35 Scottish, 13 English, 2 Irish, 2 Swedish and 1 Icelandic delegates – establishing a tradition of international attendance that would continue for many years.

The Second World War interrupted the Association’s educational work but peace saw the Association welcoming the establishment, in September 1946, of the Scottish School of Librarianship at the Glasgow and West of Scotland Commercial College. The Association’s welcome for this long-wished for initiative (the SLA had discussed with the LA the need for a Scottish Library Training School at the end of the First World War) was all the greater because of the appointment of the long-serving SLA stalwart, W. B. Paton, then Chief Librarian of Greenock, as Chief Lecturer.

Due to accommodation problems the Association was unable to run a Summer School in 1946 or 1947 but St Andrews in July 1948 saw 62 students enrolling – 42 full-time, the rest day visitors. The 1949 School saw Egyptian and Swiss students while 1950 added Indian, South African and Australian delegates. 1951 saw a move back to Newbattle.

Summer Schools always had financial difficulties and their accounts reveal as well as anything how tiny a budget the Scottish Library Association operated on in those days. In 1952 the LA requested the SLA to make savings and the SLA’s General Purposes Committee recommended economies which would total £50 in 1953. That year the Library Association agreed to meet any Summer School deficit up to the sum of £20. It was not until 1956 that the Association’s overall accounts showed a turnover above £1000 and it is remarkable the amount of activity, in education and in other areas of work, that was generated on what were, even allowing for the greater value of money, quite modest sums of money. The Association always has managed to generate a substantial amount of its own funding through ventures such as the annual conference – in 1952 out of a total income of £679.8.7 only £320 came from the LA capitation grant.
Education for librarianship was developing, the Glasgow school at the College of Commerce went on from strength to strength. A proposal to create a second school at Robert Gordon’s Institute of Technology in Aberdeen had originally failed to find favour with the SLA Council, with members questioning both the need for a second school and its location; but eventually opinion swung behind the scheme and Council voted to support the new school by 18 votes to 8 and in September 1967 the new institution opened under the direction of Jimmy Orr.

The Summer School, always enjoyable but perhaps of decreasing relevance, moved from Newbattle Abbey across Midlothian to Middleton Hall in 1978.

Education, in the narrow sense of preparing students to sit examinations, became less significant as a part of the SLA’s work as the whole framework of professional qualifications changed from Library Association run examinations to a graduate profession where the dominant force was the higher education institution providing the courses and the qualification. Education, in the wider sense, had always been provided by the SLA and its local branches and if the direct involvement in initial training changed then other areas of work more than took up the slack in the Association’s time and energies.

In future articles the SLA’s role in advocacy, in the long struggle for public library legislation, in standards setting and in creating the appropriate infrastructure for the SLA will all be looked at in some detail. A significant development in the Association’s work came in 1965 with the first publication of the Triennial Review, a measured and objective look at developments in all parts of Scotland’s library services – public, academic and special. This series of reviews allowed the Association and its members to step back from the daily struggle and see where the profession and the Association were going. Straws in the wind could be detected – a submission in 1967 on standards for the public library service, a 1969 conference on ‘Libraries and Computers’, and the introduction of the first automated systems, the Plessey Pen, in the early 1970s.

One area of outward-looking activity which the Association took up with some enthusiasm after a slow start was its publishing programme. Annual reports and conference proceedings had always been produced and as we saw in the last article a magazine eventually came along but serious book publication had to wait until 1971 with the publication of the Association’s first hardback: W. R. Aitken’s thesis on the history of the public library movement in Scotland. The publishing programme developed in the 1980s and 1990s with initiatives such as the SLA/MagnaPrint large print book series, professional works such as The Glasgow Novel and Exploring Scottish History and a range of works aimed at a wider audience and showcasing Scottish library resources and the expertise of Scottish librarians such as The Scot and his Maps, Working Lives and Discovering Scottish Writers. Sadly this wider programme has had to be abandoned in recent years.

The Association has also been involved with a range of initiatives to promote interest in reading – the joint sponsorship with Canongate and the BBC of the ‘Quest for a Kelpie’ children’s fiction competition or the promotion, with the Glasgow Herald, of the ‘People’s Prize’ for fiction and the ‘Readiscovery’ project all put books and reading firmly on the Association’s agenda and this has continued more recently with involvement in readership development work and the highly successful multi-media ‘Scottish Writers’ project.

Information Scotland Vol. 6(2) April 2008

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