There is a common assumption that trends should be identified quickly so that we can more quickly and more fully adapt to them, in order to stay competitively ahead-of-the-curve and relevant. But trends are not all the same. Let me give you an analogy. I have heard of two primary policy themes in response to … Read more Interior space as a social cause
Mark C. Taylor has an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times titled “End the University as We Know It,” which has been circulating rapidly on Facebook. I’m sharing it here because I think people ought to see it. I think Taylor’s insights about higher ed are on the money, for the most part.
From today’s Inside Higher Ed, “Digital Archives That Disappear,” a brief article about Google’s shutdown of the historical newspaper archive Paper of Record, which it secretly purchased in 2006. This is a good example of what many people have feared about Google’s success – that turning over information resources from shared, public control in library-related … Read more The constraining effects of information privatization: Google’s purchase and shutdown of Paper of Record
This is going to be my obnoxious post for the year, the kind of post I write periodically that leads to ugly Google results on my name. There are things that I sometimes need to say that I know a lot of people won’t like. Helps me maintain a sense of integrity, I guess. Like … Read more Library 2.0 talk enters backwardation
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS Are you an LIS student interested in activism and the struggle for social justice? Do you stay awake at night thinking about how your politics might inform your professional practice? The MIRIAM BRAVERMAN MEMORIAL PRIZE, a presentation of the Progressive Librarians Guild (PLG), is awarded each year for the best paper about … Read more Braverman Prize – Call for Papers
I am a big Netflix user. Netflix has a library of about 100,000 movies that users can watch. Because of the size of the library, much of their business comes from customers who have a strong interest in film and want to see movies that they’ve read about in books and are not otherwise easy … Read more The Netflix Prize – not what’s needed
Marjorie Heins of the Free Expression Policy Project has some commentary published on the FEPP site about an interesting copyright case. It’s a Fair Use case that even copyright moderates ought to get riled up about. It concerns a play called Blanche Survives Katrina in a FEMA Trailer Named Desire, which uses the character of … Read more Blanche survives Katrina in a FEMA Trailer Named Desire, only to face off with the copyright police
Kevin Arthur has posted a few paragraphs from recent article by Lewis Lapham on the education and intellectual life in the United States. Kevin picked out a few choice parts that concern the place of the humanities in the technological age (this being the focus of his blog), but Library Juice readers may be interested … Read more Lewis Lapham on education and intellectual life in the postmodern USA
We live in an era (no blame to Baby Boomers intended) when people in positions of authority are often uncomfortable being authority figures. With a keen memory of disliking authority in our youth, we are uneasy on the other side, surely the object of jokes and plots of circumvention by kids who love their youthful … Read more Reference librarians are authority figures with no jurisdiction
Jon Wiener has an editorial in Friday’s Los Angeles Times: “Pillaging Iraqi history: Shortly after Baghdad fell in 2003, the Baath Party archives were shipped to the U.S. It’s time to return them.” The editorial is a very informative summary of this important issue.
Just some scattered thoughts post-Anaheim, potential essays that will for the moment remain seeds…. It is surprising that ALA, being what it is, doesn’t have better control of its own documents. Reports disappear… Council makes decisions that result in internal policies that are available only by request from the offices. It’s 2008 and only now … Read more Scattered thoughts post-conference
Here’s a brief essay in the New York Times by Edward Rothstein that I am afraid I don’t have much to say about at the moment. I think I agree with it, at least partially, but I get the feeling that there is an important counterpoint that is not coming to mind. The editorial essay … Read more The problem with cultural property
First of all, this post is inspired by a new Facebook group called “Zero Based Library School,” which derives from an analogy to Zero Based Budgeting, where nothing is carried over from the past, and everything needs to be justified in terms of present needs and conditions. In librarianship, it means that nothing should be … Read more A note on library “traditionalism”
I am going to take another stab at outlining my views on “library and non-library issues.” Last time I did it I was sloppy in the way that I stated my views, and I surprised and disappointed some people who I think would not have been so surprised and disappointed if I had been clearer … Read more Library and non-library issues
Library Juice Concentrate Edited by Rory Litwin Preface by Kathleen de la Peña McCook Price: $25.00 ISBN-10: 0-9778617-3-2 ISBN-13: 978-0-9778617-3-6 6″ by 9″ Published: December 2006 Library Juice Concentrate is a compilation of the best of Library Juice, an e-zine published by Rory Litwin between 1998 and 2005 that dealt with foundational questions of librarianship … Read more New from LJP: Library Juice Concentrate
Fred Stoss of the SRRT Task Force on the Environment has an editorial in the Spring 2006 issue of Electronic Green Journal on the threatened defunding of the EPA National Library Network. It’s an informative article with a useful webliography at the end.
Perhaps the most pressing issue facing librarianship is one that is unlikely to receive serious scholarly attention. It is, to put it simply, a battle presently being fought between two camps of librarians. Some may cite generational conflict as the primary conflict in librarianship today; baby-boomers representing traditional knowledge of librarianship as well as bibliographic … Read more Geeks and Nerds Battle for the Soul of Librarianship
Now that I’ve officially had my blog for almost month, I can reflect a little bit. Things might still change, but I have to confess that at the moment I feel somewhat outside the mainstream of library blogging culture. My blog entries aren’t getting a lot of links to them and I don’t feel much … Read more Questioning the Techie Mission
Ten years ago, in the Spring of 1996, I was learning of my acceptance to library school and introducing myself to the world-expanding wonders of the internet. (I intend that sentence to be read without irony, as I can recall clearly what a revelation it was when I first browsed the web, sent and read … Read more Information Literacy versus “The Librarian’s Stamp of Approval”
I said earlier that I would comment further on Rick Anderson’s provocative recommendation that we not “teach a man to fish” at the reference desk. What he was saying was that it is a waste of patrons’ and students’ time to teach them how to use our abstruse database interfaces when their time would be … Read more Not teaching a man to fish