The Gospel of Scholarship: Pierce Butler and a Critique of American Librarianship

Pierce Butler is considered one of library science's greatest intellects. His ideological conflicts with Douglas Waples, social scientist par excellence, became legandary in the 1940s. A humanist himself, Butler initially supported the introduction of social science methods in his seminal Introduction to Library Science (1933), which is reprinted in this volume. Yet he recanted this position late in life, and his critique of American librarianship was that it was becoming scientistic. He argu…