Past innovations and competitive models affect current practice in every field. This panel presents historical examples of competition and innovation in librarianship in the 19th and 20th centuries. Ellen Rubenstein traces public libraries’ innovative responses to their communities’ evolving needs for health information from 1876 through the 1960s through a review of articles in Library Journal and the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association. Emily Knox analyzes articles from Library Quarterly to present two competing reading effects models—agnostic and traditional—represented in the professional discourse and their relationship to intellectual freedom and censorship in the paper. Sean Burns examines library automation and one of its early adopters, Ralph H. Parker, through an examination of Parker’s publications and papers. This panel seeks to enrich our understanding of the roles of competition and innovation in library history, and encourage discussions of the role of the history of librarianship in improving understanding of current issues.