The work of Patricia Knapp (1914-1972): Relevance for the electronic era

Patricia Knapp (1914-1972) was an academic librarian and library educator whose work focused largely on two topics, “the fusion of academic librarianship with academic instruction” (“Patricia Bryan Knapp,” 1978) and the role of the undergraduate library within universities. As a major contributor to the Library College concept, Knapp is best known for her work with the Monteith project at Wayne State University, where she developed an experimental library instruction program featuring library-centered learning. Library-centered learning promoted the view that a college education should consist of a series of exercises in independent discoveries of the systems of ways and patterns in which knowledge is organized; this in preparation for life-long learning, rather than the usual accumulation of facts through lectures, assigned readings, and tests. The purpose of this paper is to examine Knapp’s writings to determine if they remain valid today, with particular attention paid to their applicability in the current electronic environment. Although Knapp wrote on a variety of topics, this paper focuses upon her library instruction scholarship, and selected themes from Knapp’s work are analyzed in relation to current literature.