The Importance of Historical Research in Library and Information Science

Every library you walk into today is the product of decisions made decades or even centuries ago, by people responding to the problems of their own time. Historical research is the systematic study of those decisions, the institutions that grew from them, and the people who shaped the profession. In library and information science (LIS), it is far more than a nostalgic look backwards. It is a method of inquiry that uses surviving records, documents, and accounts to learn about the past and to identify trends that help explain present and future events. For students learning research methodology, understanding why this method matters is the first step toward using it well.

What historical research means in LIS 🔗

Historical research in LIS investigates the origins, growth, and transformation of libraries, information systems, professional associations, classification schemes, and the people behind them. It relies on primary sources such as annual reports, correspondence, government records, and old catalogues, alongside secondary sources written by later scholars. The researcher’s job is to gather these materials, test their authenticity, weigh their reliability, and then present the findings in an organised and readable form.

Although some scholars treat it as a less “scientific” approach than surveys or experiments, the historical method has much to contribute to the field of library and information science. It demands the same rigour as any other method: careful sourcing, critical evaluation of evidence, and honest interpretation. The difference is that the “data” are documents from the past rather than responses collected in the present.

The main types of historical inquiry 🔗

Historical research in LIS is not a single activity. It includes biographical research, which traces the life and work of a notable librarian; institutional history, which studies the development of a particular library; and what scholars call “big history”, which places the story of one library within a much larger social and intellectual context. This last approach is valuable because it gives the history of a single institution meaning beyond its own local record, connecting it to broader currents in society.

How historical research enriches knowledge in the field 🔗

The most obvious contribution of historical research is that it builds the knowledge base of the discipline. LIS is a relatively young field, and much of what students learn, the classification systems, the laws of library science, the structure of public library legislation, has a traceable origin. Historical scholarship documents how these ideas emerged, who proposed them, and how they spread. Without this record, the profession would have no memory of itself.

Research methods sit at the centre of scholarly work in LIS, and the field today draws on a wide toolbox of methods that scholars are no longer limited to. The historical method is one of the oldest tools in that box. It supplies the long view that quantitative snapshots cannot. A survey can tell you how many people use libraries this year; only historical analysis can explain how the very idea of a free public library came to exist and why society decided to fund it.

Historical research also contributes by preserving professional identity. The Five Laws of Library Science, the Colon Classification, and the model library legislation that shaped Indian library law all came from a particular historical moment. Recording that lineage is itself a contribution to knowledge, because it lets each new generation of professionals understand the intellectual inheritance they are working with.

Understanding library contexts through history 🔗

One of the strongest arguments for historical research is that it establishes the context in which librarians work and the functions they fulfil in society. Libraries do not exist in a vacuum. They reflect the political, economic, and social conditions of their era. Studying that context helps a professional understand why a library is organised the way it is, why certain collections were built, and why some communities have been served better than others.

Consider a practical example. The status of women in librarianship, the spread of services to rural populations, and debates over who libraries are really “for” are all questions that only make sense when viewed historically. A librarian who understands how these patterns formed is far better equipped to question and improve them.

The Indian story: from subscription libraries to public library Acts 🔗

Nowhere is the value of historical context clearer than in the development of libraries in India. During the colonial period, subscription libraries became gathering places for educated citizens. They were more than reading rooms; the intellectual environment they fostered fed directly into the freedom movement, with nationalist publications circulating widely among their members. Understanding this connection explains why the post-independence state saw libraries as instruments of nation-building rather than mere book depositories.

The figure who dominates this history is S. R. Ranganathan, widely regarded as the father of library science in India. After studying classification in London, he returned to Madras and launched a decades-long campaign to make libraries available to everyone, even introducing a bullock cart service to bring books to villages. His Five Laws of Library Science and the Colon Classification system reshaped both Indian and global practice.

Ranganathan’s influence was institutional as well as intellectual. He drafted a Model Public Libraries Act that was discussed at the All Asia Educational Conference held in Banaras in 1930 and went on to influence library laws across several states. The first such legislation, the Madras Public Libraries Act, was passed in 1948, and the National Library of India was established at Kolkata in 1953 as the central hub of the system. Tracing this sequence shows how a single committed individual, working within a particular political moment, built the legal and physical foundation of an entire national library system. That understanding only comes from historical research.

Learning from past mistakes and successes 🔗

Perhaps the most practical reason to study history is that it helps professionals avoid repeating errors and build on what worked. Library history is full of successes worth emulating, such as the phased development plans Ranganathan designed for public libraries, and failures worth examining, such as the persistent gap between library legislation on paper and actual services on the ground.

This is more than common sense. Historical research is what allows the profession to distinguish a genuine innovation from a recycled idea. When a new “model” of library service is proposed, only someone familiar with the past can recognise whether it has been tried before and what happened when it was. The field’s emphasis on usefulness and practical decision-making is well served by this kind of memory, because it grounds new plans in real experience rather than guesswork.

The danger of tunnel vision 🔗

A famous warning about ignoring history came from the library historian Wayne Wiegand. In his influential 1999 article, he argued that LIS discourse was plagued with tunnel vision and blind spots that limit the profession’s ability to understand the role of the library accurately, which in turn weakens its efforts to plan for the future. His point was direct: a profession that fails to analyse the deeper meaning of its own past will misread its present and stumble in its planning.

This is the core lesson for LIS professionals. History is not decoration. It is diagnostic. When libraries cannot explain why they matter to the communities they serve, the cause is often a failure to study how that relationship developed over time. Historical research corrects this by forcing the profession to look squarely at its record, including the uncomfortable parts, and to learn from both its achievements and its omissions.

Sources and rigour in historical LIS research 🔗

Because the value of historical research depends entirely on the quality of evidence, the method places great emphasis on sourcing. Researchers must locate primary sources, the records created at the time being studied, and treat them critically. They must ask who created a document, why, and whether it can be trusted. Secondary sources are then used to build interpretation and connect findings to wider scholarship.

The discipline has long debated the balance between qualitative and quantitative approaches, and reviews of LIS literature consistently show a field that uses a growing variety of research methodologies, with the historical method recognised as a qualitative strategy alongside case study, biography, and ethnography. For a research methodology student, this is an important point: the historical method is a legitimate, structured form of inquiry, not simply storytelling about old libraries. Its findings reach a wide audience and appear in core research journals as well as popular ones, reflecting a broad acceptance of the historical approach across the field.

What do you think? If your local library could only be understood by studying its history, what one question about its past would you most want answered? And do you think LIS education in India gives historical research the importance it deserves, or has the demand for “practical” methods pushed it to the margins?

References

1. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED450800.pdf
2. https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Research_Methods_in_Information_Science/The_historical_method
3. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0740818815000109
4. https://www.librarianshipstudies.com/2019/02/s-r-ranganathan.html
5. https://ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in/lisp13/chapter/pioneers-of-public-library-movement-in-india-part-2/
6. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/603022
7. https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/55098