The Public Library Inquiry as Public Policy Research

Political scientist Theodore Lowi has made a useful distinction between amateur and professional knowledge in the conduct of congressional affairs. Nineteenth-century congressional legislation was characterized by amateur knowledge, that is, knowledge based on personal experience in dealing with specific problems and typified in the old phrase, "There ought to be a law..." to rectify a given difficulty. In the twentieth century, professional knowledge, represented by academic discourse and grounded in more theoretical approaches, replaced amateur knowledge. In this paper, the author demonstrates that Melvil Dewey, in his testimony before congressional leaders, was a classic representative of amateur knowledge, while Carleton B. Joeckel, of the Graduate Library School at the University of Chicago, the architect of the first federal law in support of public libraries, became a spokesperson in the professional knowledge vein. His work in the public policy arena came to its end with his retirement in the early 1950s, and he was succeeded in part by Robert D. Leigh, the director of the Public Library Inquiry. The author describes the Inquiry as an example of policy research and notes its influence in the setting and implementation of public policy. She notes that this mid-twentieth century research effort has never been replicated and points to the lack of professional faith in the issuance of public library standards as one of the reasons for not undertaking another such major study. She points out that current professional emphasis on the unique mission and goal of individual public libraries will only exacerbate the difficulty of achieving future state and federal aid, since there is now no common vision of the role of the American public library.