Billington, LeClerc, Others Given Honorary Degrees

-- Library Journal, 4/1/2006

To ensure that America’s great libraries have a fully credentialed librarian in their top posts, Ken Haycock, dean of the LIS Program at the San Jose State University, has decided unilaterally to award Honorary Executive MLIS degrees to the leaders of several libraries. The San José Executive MLIS program, the first in the world, began in August 2005. The first round of honorary degrees will be given to James Billington of the Library of Congress; Sidney Verba of Harvard University; Paul LeClerc of the New York Public Library; Tom Leonard of the University of California, Berkeley; R. Crosby Kemper III of the Kansas City (MO) PL; and Kit Hadley of the Minneapolis Public Library. “Never again will we allow the Librarian of Congress to say ‘I am not a librarian, but I am THE librarian,’ as Daniel Boorstin did so often when he was Librarian of Congress,” said Haycock. “Billington may be a doctor, but he is not yet a master. We’ll fix that.”

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