Introduction: Donald G. Davis, Jr.: A Gentleman and a Scholar

Don reinvigorated the journal (now in its fortieth volume year) and, by extension, the field of library history by attracting to it an interdisciplinary and international group of writers and readers interested in "the significance of collections of recorded knowledge-their creation, organization, preservation, and utilization-in the context of cultural and social history," as the journal's homepage puts it. [...]he decided to take them to her since he and his wife, Avis, were planning a road trip that would take them near her university town, a generous gesture even for a gentleman and a scholar of Don's renown. Through his thirty-four-year pedagogic career (one year in the United Kingdom and thirty-three at UT), Don Davis served as an advisor to approximately 825 students (some 800 at the master's level and 25 doctoral students, out of which about 130 were international students) who now work as professionals in public, academic, and special libraries or teach in library and information science programs throughout the world. Reflecting key themes in Don Davis's extensive career in the section "Library History Education and Research," Christine Pawley reports on state-of-the-art thinking about the teaching of library history in changing times, providing a pedagogical context for the subsequent essays.