I noticed a reference to Library Notes on the Library History Buff Blog. At Illinois I must have taken a course that talked about the history of library education because I wrote a paper about library hand. Library hand, like almost everything else in libraries at the end of the 19th century was strongly influenced by Melvil Dewey, so I was interested to see that an article in Dewey's Library Notes Vol. 1, #4, March 1887 pp. 273-282 about library hand is available in Google Books.
As I remember, I was able to find some original material about library hand in the archives at Illinois and the school also had a good collection of old library school brochures. As far as I could tell, students at many schools were expected to master library hand at least up until World War II. Even in 1887 when the Library Notes article came out it was recognized that 'mechanical writing' would probably dominate in libraries, but legible handwriting was still considered very important.
Ever since writing that paper I've been interested in Dewey, who was quite a character.
OCLC publishes the DDC.
--Th