Remembering LCP

I’ve been spending a rather dull day at the library today. (I had been booked to teach “Introduction to the Internet” but the student didn’t show up.) I browsed Library Dust, a blog written by my friend Michael McGrorty. He had devoted several blog entries in 2005 about Lawrence Clark Powell, the founding dean of the UCLA School of Library Service. (I refuse to use the current name of the program.)

Powell was the dean of the UCLA library school when I applied for admission. The year I came in ('66-'67) UCLA went on the quarter system. The program was originally two semesters and a summer session. I entered in the summer, largely because LCP taught Introduction to Librarianship.

He viewed the computer as a tool rather than something that would replace the book. I think UCLA was the first library school to require its graduates to take a class called "Data Processing in the Library." The objective was to enable librarians to communicate with systems analysts. Bob Hayes, whose degree is in mathematics, taught the class. He later became dean of the school.

You can lay my activism in ALA at his door. He told me (and my friend Joe Sabatini, with the Albuquerque Public Library) to go out and raise hell. I have. (Eric Moon provided the preface to the second volume of LCP's memoirs. When I told him that Larry had encouraged my activism, he signed the book "To Sue Kamm, for whom Larry Powell is largely responsible.")

Powell and his successor, Andrew Horn, were Bookmen with a capital B. The faculty consisted of people who valued books. Betty Rosenberg, who taught acquisitions, special libraries, academic libraries, and a class known as "Reading and Reading Interests," turned her knowledge into Genreflecting.