SILS History
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Video history
To view an eight minute film about the history of SILS, select the video size appropriate for your Internet connection (requires RealPlayer to view):
Overview
… a library school is needed, where librarians, like lawyers and doctors and teachers, may secure expert professional training. With its magnificent new building as a laboratory for the school, such an institution would not only be in harmony with the program on which the University has embarked, it would offer opportunity through the sending out of trained librarians … to tap the vast reservoirs of human knowledge.
Louis Round Wilson
University Librarian
Although a student could not receive a degree in library science until almost three decades later, library education really began at UNC-Chapel Hill as early as 1904, when Dr. Louis Round Wilson began offering summer school classes.
In 1929, just as the new library building was finished on the UNC campus, Wilson wrote an article on the “Library in Modern Education.” In that article, he said:
As part of the program of social welfare now being worked out at Chapel Hill, a library school is needed, where librarians, like lawyers and doctors and teachers, may secure expert professional training. With its magnificent new building as a laboratory for the school, such an institution would not only be in harmony with the program on which the University has embarked, it would offer opportunity through the sending out of trained librarians for the South to tap the vast reservoir of human knowledge.
The School of Library Science opened at Chapel Hill in the fall of 1931, with a class of 37 students and five faculty members, including Dr. Wilson. The Carnegie Corporation offered a grant of $100,000 to enable the school to operate for three years and make permanent its conditional accreditation from the American Library Association.
When, in 1987, it became apparent that the study of information use and management was of central importance to society, the faculty of the School of Library Science voted to change the program and the name of the school to include Information Science.
Faculty members had been engaged in the research of this emerging discipline, and it was decided that adding this specialty to the program would complement the school’s focus on librarianship by broadening it to the study of general problems of information management. Seventeen years later, more than 40 percent of the school’s student population is enrolled in the information science program, and that number continues to grow.
Since its beginning 73 years ago, the school has sent out more than 3,500 trained information specialists and librarians. Graduates work primarily in the South but are also employed throughout the nation and the world.
Through the strong leadership of its deans and the great dedication shown by its faculty and staff over the years, the school stands on a solid foundation that is rooted in a rich past and aimed toward a bright future.
To learn more about SILS’ history, read biographies of the directors and deans of the School or click to see a list of guest speakers who have come to SILS.
1900s-1920s | 1930s | 1940s | 1950s | 1960s | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | Who’s Who