LSA And The Library Services Branch

It is difficult to overestimate the effect of the Library Services Act in improving the status and support of the library services unit in the Office of Education. A brief look at the past will serve to support this point. Up to 1938, there was no library unit in the Office at all. Whatever was done in the field of library studies and research was done on a short-termor part-time basis. It wasn't that the library profession wasn't interested in achieving a more specific assignment of responsibility for libraries in the Office. As far back as 1892, Melvil Dewey wrote in the Library Journal: Our purpose should be to secure in this visit to Washington what we have so long wanted, a library officer in the Bureau of Education. When we went to Washington twelve years ago, Commissioner Eaton agreed to appoint such a person if he could find a satisfactory man to do the work and give his entire time to looking after general library interests. That is the proper place for it to be done. I, therefore, offer the following [resolution] .... There followed a long series of resolutions by the American Library Association from then until 1934, when the ALA Council said flatly: The federal government should assume responsibility for nationwide leadership in the library movement through a library agency associated with other agencies responsible for general educational, cultural, and recreational activities.published or submitted for publicatio