THE FIVE LAWS OF LIBRARY SCIENCE:
BOOKS ARE FOR USE
EVERY READER HIS BOOK
EVERY BOOK ITS READER
SAVE THE TIME OF THE READER
LIBRARY IS A GROWING ORGANISM
S.R. RANGANATHAN, 1931
To augment the [American Library Association's] image, [Dewey] also devised an
ALA motto while commuting by horse between his home in Newton and his office
in Boston [in 1878]: "The best reading for the largest number at the least expense."
Wayne A. Wiegand, The Politics of an Emerging Profession: The American Library Association
1876-1917 (Westwood, CT: Greenwood, 1986), p. 23.
Knowledge will forever govern ignorance:
And a people who mean to be their own governours,
must arm themselves with the power which
knowledge gives. A popular government without
popular information, or the means of acquiring it,
is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or
perhaps both.
James Madison (quoted in Report of the Commission
on Freedom and Equality of Access to Information
(Chicago: American Library Association, 1986).
Warren J. Haas, former head of the Council on Library
Resources, believes that librarianship must have a
definition of the profession that the public will
understand. He has proposed the following:
The function of librarianship is
to promote and to continuously
improve the ability of individuals
and society to make use of what is
known, or what has been previously
created.
MOOERS' LAW: An information retrieval
system will tend not to be used whenever
it is more painful and troublesome for a
customer to have information than for him
not to have it.
Calvin N. Mooers, Editorial, American Documentation
11 (July 1960):ii