National Planning for Public Library Service: The Work and Ideas of Lionel McColvin

摘要

Lionel McColvin (1896???1976) is regarded as one of the most infl uentialfi gures in the history of British librarianship. In the specifi c context of 150years of public librarianship in Britain, his reputation as a visionary inflfl uenceis second only to that of the nineteenth-century pioneer Edward Edwards,while in the twentieth century his reputation is unsurpassed. McColvin wasthe major voice in the mid-twentieth-century movement to reconstructand modernize public libraries. He is best known as author of The PublicLibrary System of Great Britain: A Report on Its Present Condition with Proposalsfor Post-war Reorganization, published in 1942 at a moment of intensewartime efforts to assemble plans for social and economic reconstruction.The ???McColvin Report,??? as it came to be termed, was a landmark in thestruggle to de-Victorianize the public library, not least by emphasizing theinstitution???s universalism and its function as a national, not just a civic,agency. This article briefl y describes McColvin???s notable contribution totwentieth-century librarianship, resulting from his work as a public librarian,as a leading fi gure in the Library Association, and as an infl uentialplayer in the international library movement. The article???s core aim is tooffer a critical appraisal of McColvin???s vision for public libraries by placingit in the context of the project to build a better postwar world. This projectwas defi ned by the conceptualization and development of a welfare statein Britain, the underlying values of which can be seen to correspond toMcColvin???s national plan for a rejuvenated public library system. McColvindrew on the spirit of the time to produce a plan for public libraries that wasshot through with social idealism and commitment and with a confi dencein the need for intervention by the state???values that perhaps provide lessons for current and future library and information policymakers andprofessionals.