Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: sources and methodologies for the history of libraries in the modern era
- 1 Libraries and the modern world
- Part One Enlightening the Masses: the Public Library as Concept and Reality
- Part Two The Voluntary Ethic: Libraries of our Own
- Part Three Libraries for National Needs: Library Provision in the Public Sphere in the Countries of the British Isles
- Part Four The Nation's Treasury: Britain's National Library as Concept and Reality
- Part Five The Spirit of Enquiry: Higher Education and Libraries
- Part Six The Rise of Professional Society: Libraries for Specialist Areas
- 31 Libraries and information for specialist areas
- 32 The scientist and engineer and their need for information
- 33 Information in the service of medicine
- 34 Lawyers and their libraries
- 35 Spreading the Word: religious libraries in the ages of enthusiasm and secularism
- 36 Government and parliamentary libraries
- 37 Company libraries
- 38 Rare-book libraries and the growth of humanities scholarship
- Part Seven The Trade and its Tools: Librarians and Libraries in Action
- Part Eight Automation Pasts, Electronic Futures: the Digital Revolution
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
31 - Libraries and information for specialist areas
from Part Six - The Rise of Professional Society: Libraries for Specialist Areas
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: sources and methodologies for the history of libraries in the modern era
- 1 Libraries and the modern world
- Part One Enlightening the Masses: the Public Library as Concept and Reality
- Part Two The Voluntary Ethic: Libraries of our Own
- Part Three Libraries for National Needs: Library Provision in the Public Sphere in the Countries of the British Isles
- Part Four The Nation's Treasury: Britain's National Library as Concept and Reality
- Part Five The Spirit of Enquiry: Higher Education and Libraries
- Part Six The Rise of Professional Society: Libraries for Specialist Areas
- 31 Libraries and information for specialist areas
- 32 The scientist and engineer and their need for information
- 33 Information in the service of medicine
- 34 Lawyers and their libraries
- 35 Spreading the Word: religious libraries in the ages of enthusiasm and secularism
- 36 Government and parliamentary libraries
- 37 Company libraries
- 38 Rare-book libraries and the growth of humanities scholarship
- Part Seven The Trade and its Tools: Librarians and Libraries in Action
- Part Eight Automation Pasts, Electronic Futures: the Digital Revolution
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
Introduction
The creation of libraries to cater for specialist interests has a long history. As early as the mid-sixteenth century cathedrals received royal orders to start theological libraries. Access to specialised libraries was, indeed, a valuable aid to all the traditional professions – law and medicine, as well as the church. Thus, the Inns of Court had rudimentary libraries from early in their career, while the library of the Royal College of Physicians of London soon developed from an existing private collection. As knowledge expanded in subsequent centuries, so did the variety of professional interests. Hence arose the need for new types of specialised libraries. By the end of the eighteenth century, for example, the Foreign Office had recognised the need not only for a departmental library, but also for a librarian to manage it. Alongside professional developments, new intellectual interests led to the formation of societies devoted to specific subjects. Both the Royal Society in the seventeenth century and the Society of Antiquaries in the eighteenth century began to build collections soon after their foundation.
Although these two strands – the growth of professions and of organised interest in specific topics – therefore existed prior to the nineteenth century, it was during that century that they began to develop rapidly, and specialisation became the norm. Engineering, for example, came to be recognised not only as an important new profession, but as one that increasingly required its practitioners to specialise in one branch of the subject only. Consequently, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, a range of new engineering societies (for gas engineers, mining engineers, and so on) were created to cater for these growing bands of specialists.
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- Information
- The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland , pp. 403 - 422Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006