Competing Models of Library Science: Waples-Berelson and Butler

The rivalry between Pierce Butler and other teachers at the Graduate Library School of the University of Chicago has received little attention. Douglas Waples's pragmatic empiricism and Bernard Berelson's behavioral science apparently won over librarianship, yet even psychologists are today questioning some of their basic tenets. Butler anticipated most of these challenges. I examine specific disagreements about (1) interior phenomena, (2) unambiguous definitions, (3) uninterpreted observations, (4) replicability of findings, (5) organization and cumulation of knowledge, and (6) prediction and control of behavior. Butler accepted science, but severely limited its role in librarianship. He argued that the profession needed a humane "worldly wisdom" to determine what libraries can and should be.