SLIS 25th Anniversary Display Page 5

Page 5_Display.tif

Dublin Core

Title

SLIS 25th Anniversary Display Page 5

Subject

MLIS
SLIS

Description

An article about Dean Dr. Andrew Osborn's background and an except from a speech.

Creator

Unknown

Publisher

FIMS Graduate Library

Date

Winter 1992

Format

TIFF

Language

English

Identifier

Page 5_Display.tif

Date Created

1966-07

Is Part Of

SLIS 25th Anniversary Display

Text Item Type Metadata

Text

JULY 1966
DR. OSBORN TAKES UP POSITION AS DEAN IN TEMPORARY QUARTERS IN LAWSON LIBRARY.
Andrew Osborn was born in Launceston and spent his boyhood in Melbourne. He attended Wesley
College and the University of Melbourne and received degrees of Bachelor and Master of Arts.He was senior cataloguer in the Commonwealth Parliament from 1921-1927. In 1927 he arrived at New York Public Library and applied for a position which he obtained without delay. The quality of his keen analytical mind was demonstrated so immediately and effectively that he received the unusual opportunity to serve temporarily in almost all the Divisions in that busiest research Library of the western world. In 1934 he obtained his Ph D. from Columbia University with a thesis on the philosophy of Edmund Husserl. In 1936 he earned a Master’s of Science in Library Science from Michigan. He served for twenty years as Associate Librarian at Harvard University where he also was a Lecturer in Commonwealth History. At Harvard he was responsible for the development of collections which in twenty years grew
from three to six million volumes.

Taken from a speech by Andrew Osborn:
It is extremely important to emphasize that this is a totally new era in education for librarianship. The older, established schools for the most part started on a shoe-string and we learned how to manage with next to nothing just as our libraries did. It’s a very different world now with strong financial support from the government, and the school in London had the better part of half a million dollars to get started. I don’t see any other part of the world putting in the effort that Ontario is and this is why feel confident that education in librarianship in this province is going to lead, not only in North America, but lead in the world. This is what brought me to Ontario—the possibility of doing something with resources the likes of which library schools have never had in the past 80 years of education for librarianship.

It is a new period, a wonderful new period in the education for librarianship. I came from sunny Australia, and I have very considerable doubts. I have turned down quite a number of offers ever to come to Canada. I turned down the University of British Columbia three times.

Original Format

paper

Tags

Citation

Unknown, “SLIS 25th Anniversary Display Page 5,” Special Collections, accessed November 25, 2024, https://archive.fims.uwo.ca/specialcollections/items/show/404.