Library
frontiers - old and new
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Go west, young man, go west!In the early years of the twentieth century, Norwegian libraries were deeply influenced by new American ideas about librarianship. The two biggest public libraries in the country were headed by men that had experienced US public libraries at their best: Haakon Nyhuus in Oslo and Arne Kildal in Bergen. Nyhuus (1866-1913) had worked at the Newberry Library and the Chicago Public Library - where he became head of Cataloguing in 1893. He returned to Norway in 1897 - and turned Oslo Public Library upside down. He was still young - only 31 - and people describe him as full of enthusiasm and bursting with ideas. From 1905 till 1907 Kildal studied librarianship in the US, at Dewey`s famous school in Albany, NY. Afterwards he worked at the Library of Congress. He returned to Norway, where he became head of Bergen Public Library, in 1910. He was even younger than Nyhuus. At the age of 25 he directed the second largest public library in the country. The ideas the two men brought back included open stacks, public reading rooms, the Dewey Decimal System and ambulant services. Nyhuus wanted to set up library services outdoors, in local parks, and even - it is rumoured - on trams. The Norwegian Library AssociationThese two innovators were also instrumental in setting up The Norwegian Library Association, which was founded in 1913. Nyhuus died in 1913, but Kildal (1885-1972) had a long and distinguished career in the library sector. He served as president of the Association from 1913 till 1916 and again in 1929-33. Nyhuus and Kildal were not exceptional. During the period 1887-1926 more than sixty Norwegians got their formal library training in the United States. Those who returned, got central positions in Norway. The professional basis for Norwegian librarianship was created by students abroad. This particular link was, in fact, unique: during this forty year period more than thirty percent of all foreign library students in the US came from Norway - a country with only two million inhabitants at the time. The great Dewey battleLibraries are quiet and peaceful places. Does that apply to librarians as well? Fifty years after Nyhuus died, Oslo Public Library was the scene of a bitter struggle. The head of the library, Mr. Henrik Hjartøy, and the head of cataloguing, Ms. Birgit Foss, clashed famously over the proper use of Dewey. Hjartøy wanted to order books of fiction on the shelves by their original language - and modify the Dewey codes for literature accordingly. Foss wanted no truck with local dialects:
But Hjartøy was not convinced:
His in-house expert disagreed:
The struggle lasted for almost two years. Finally Mr. Kildal, who now headed the Directorate of Public Libraries, was brought in to decide the issue. It was settled in favor of Ms. Foss and international standardization. And maybe rightly so. Two generations have passed, and the Dewey classification system is still going strong. In 1955, and again in 1969, NLA published Norwegian editions of the DDC - with the victorious Birgit Foss as editor. Radicals and conservativesThe great "catalogue battle" (1951-53) was more than a technical disagreement, however. Political and cultural barriers separated the parties. Before the war, Henrik Hjartøy was an active communist, with deep roots in the radical labour movement. Hjartøy had been the head of the "red" Public Library at Rjukan, an isolated industrial town. In this community, the library was both a social and a political centre. Rjukan still has one of the strongest collections of revolutionary literature in Europe. The world economic crisis in 1929 led to a radicalization of Norwegian political life. In 1933 Hjartøy was elected head of the NLA after Arne Kildal. Within the Association, Hjartøy headed the radical wing. He wanted libraries to engage with social and political issues and disliked the narrow technical orientation that many librarians returning from the United States brought with them. In 1935 he was defeated by a more conservative candidate. Technicians and activistsA certain tension between conservatives and radicals, technicians and activists, is natural. A few years after the great Dewey battle, in the late fifties, a young librarian described the technicians:
Librarians operate at the intersection between technical systems and social communities. By family background, training and inclination, some will emphasize technical improvements. Others while see the need for community development. Some opt for stability, while others go for change. Norwegian librarians and IFLAThe Norwegian Library Association was one of the original members when IFLA itself was established, in Edinburgh in 1927. The 13th IFLA meeting was held in Oslo in 1947. This was the first conference after the war, and the Norwegian Wilhelm Munthe was elected IFLA president. He served from 1947 till 1951. The United States was still a source of inspiration. In 1930 Munthe had crossed the Atlantic to study the organization of US academic libraries. He concluded that
The 41st IFLA meeting was also held in Oslo, in 1975. Another library pioneer from Norway, Else Granheim, chaired the Norwegian Organizing Committee. For many years Else Granheim headed the Norwegian Directorate for Public and School Libraries. She served on IFLA’S Executive Board from 1977 and was elected President in 1979. At that time, the "special relationship" between Norway and the United States no longer existed. Norway was a strong supporter of the United Nations and emphasized its links to the world as a whole. Else Granheim was a committed internationalist. In her Presidential Address (1981) she emphasized the social context in which libraries operate:
Today, the Norwegian Library Association face the same basic issues. As professionals, we believe that culture, education and knowledge should not be divorced from equality, justice and freedom. The library professions has a social as well as a technical mission. But our social environment is changing, now in the early years of the 21st century. We are leaving a world defined by the Book - and entering a world defined by the Web. The heavy industries that created towns like Rjukan are retreating. Professionals, artists and small creative firms move in. In the late nineteenth century, hundreds of thousands of Norwegians emigrated to the United States. Our library pioneers went with them. Now the flow of migration goes from South to North. Norway is becoming a multicultural country. Our task as an organization is to make sense of what is happening - and to find a viable direction for the library sector in this new and unmapped territory. The frontier is right in front of us. References
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