Professional Training of Librarians in the Views and Practice of Alodia Kawecka-Gryczowa and Józef Grycz

Abstract

In Poland, the idea of educating library personnel at university level has its roots already during the times of the Commission of National Education in the second half of the eighteenth century. The Grycz couple themselves belonged to the generation, which due to lack of such studies, had no degrees in library science, but in other fields of knowledge. Nevertheless, the issue of educating and training librarians to work with the reader and the book was one of their chief concerns. In their eyes the library was the ideal meeting point of the reader with the book, and the librarian – methodically prepared for the job – an ideal middle person. Alodia Kawecka-Gryczowa gained her first personal experience in training librarians in 1945. Józef Grycz among other delivered lectures at librarian courses organized in the Kórnik Library in 1945, and in the Jagiellonian Library in 1948. But his chief contribution in this field, showing to the full his pedagogical concepts with relation to librarian training, came through editing books, writing articles for journals devoted to library science, and writing textbooks and manuals aimed at educating candidates for the library profession.