Vision: The Essence of Professionalism and Key to the Future of Law Librarianship as a Profession*

* © Dennis S. Sears, 2006. ** Senior Law Librarian, Howard W. Hunter Law Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. 1. See E.A. Feazel, The Status of the Law Librarian, 2 LAW. LIBR. J. 21 (1909). For a more recent perspective, see Richard A. Danner, Redefining a Profession, 90 LAW. LIBR. J. 315 (1998). 2. “‘[T]he calling or occupation which one professes to understand and follow; a vocation in which a professional knowledge of some department of science or learning is used by its practical application to the affairs of others either in guiding, advising or teaching them, or in serving their interests or welfare in the practice of an art founded upon it. The word implies professed attainments in special knowledge as distinguished from mere study or investigation and an application of such knowledge to the uses of others as a vocation as distinguished from its pursuit for one’s own purposes.’” Feazel, supra note 1, at 21–22 (quoting WILLIAM DWIGHT WHITNEY & BENJAMIN E. SMITH, THE CENTURY DICTIONARY: AN ENCYCLOPEDIC LEXICON OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (1889?)). 3. Id. at 22. 4. Id. 5. Id. 6. Id. Vision: The Essence of Professionalism and Key to the Future of Law Librarianship as a Profession*