READING RESEARCH AND LIBRARIANSHIP TO 1940; AN ANALYSIS

This work analyzes the development of the movement within American librarianship to conduct scientific research on the sociological aspects of adult reading. The necessary information was obtained primarily through analysis of the published investigations and writings of reading rsearchers which appeared during the movement's most productive period--the 1930's. The values, attitudes, philosophies, methods and findings of the researchers are described and analyzed, as are the form and dynamics of the research movement they fashioned. The work explores the relationships between the production, distribution and utilization of the ideas and findings of the research movement and factors within the library profession.;The Graduate Library School at the University of Chicago, founded in 1928, was a focal point of the new forces within the profession and the center of the movement to study reading. For over a decade there, Douglas Waples dominated the movement. He was largely responsible for the theoretical and methodological advances made in the field and his research findings formed the core of knowledge for the subject area. He skillfully coordinated the research projects of his colleagues and his many graduate students so that they formed the basis of a directed, productive program of study. The result was a body of knowledge which gave a fairly clear sociological picture of what types of people read what types of material and where they obtained it.;There was strong opposition within librarianship to the reading research movement. Its opponents claimed that the essence of librarianship was art--not science--and that the methods of social science were inhumane and ineffective. The researchers countered that the practicing librarians' preoccupations with library techniques and operations and with individual books and readers prevented them from perceiving and fulfilling their social functions.;The research movement had a beneficial effect on librarianship, although the lack of support within the library profession at large limited its impact.;The few attempts at the objective investigation of reading in the first quarter of the twentieth century had serious deficiencies in terms of conceptualization, methodology and results. It was not till the late twenties and the thirties that people in the library profession developed scientific research on the subject. It was fostered by a growing interest within librarianship in the general expansion of social science research, de-emphasis of the technical aspects of the profession, widening acknowledgment of the need for advanced research and education in librarianship and increased contact with more developed professions and academic disciplines. Increased interest in reading behavior was also encouraged by the growth of the world-wide adult education movement, the Great Depression, the rapid development of mass communication and the threat posed by the growing power of totalitarian movements.