From Caroline Nappo of the UIUC GSLIS PLG chapter: Dear Colleagues, Last week the University of Illinois GSLIS chapter of the Progressive Librarians Guild hosted a panel discussion titled “What is a ‘Progressive Librarian’?” Our guests were Carolyn Anthony, Sanford Berman, Allison Sutton, and Anke Voss. Professor Abdul Alkalimat moderated the discussion. An audio recording … Read more What is a progressive librarian?
Felipe Meneses of Mexico City has written a brief review of David Bade’s Responsible Librarianship: Library Policies for Unreliable Systems. It’s in Spanish, so you may or may not be able to read it without a friend to help. Thanks, Felipe!
I would like to propose that the current era in librarianship, which is normally characterized as a “period of rapid change,” is perhaps better described as a period of denial. It is a period in which librarians are scurrying to disassociate themselves from their own profession as it tends to be thought of, with a … Read more Librarian: Accept Yourself
I rarely read Annoyed Librarian. When I do it’s usually because Word Press tells me that she’s linked to a Library Juice posting, and I go and see what she wrote. I’m usually shocked by how rude and vitriolic this anonymous person is. I went to her site today looking to see if I could … Read more On Annoyed Librarian and anonymous posting
Questioning Library Neutrality: Essays from Progressive Librarian Editor: Alison Lewis Price: $18.00 Published: April 2008 ISBN: 978-0-9778617-7-4 Printed on acid-free paper Questioning Library Neutrality: Essays from Progressive Librarian presents essays that relate to neutrality in librarianship in a philosophical or practical sense, and sometimes both. They are a selection of essays originally published in Progressive … Read more New from LJP: Questioning Library Neutrality
I should have mentioned this conference when I first learned about it. Thinking Critically: Alternative Perspectives and Methods in Information Studies. It’s coming up next month at the Center for Information Policy Research at the School of Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. I’m planning to be there, so if you’re there and … Read more Thinking Critically: Alternative Perspectives and Methods in Information Studies
Eric Alterman, who writes on the news media regularly in The Nation magazine, has an interesting article in the current issue of The New Yorker on the decline of the newspaper: Out of Print: the Death and Life of the American Newspaper. I thought I knew a bit about what was happening to American newspapers, … Read more Alterman on Journalism in the New Yorker
Candy Schwartz, a LIS professor at Simmons, is maintaining coverage of the discussion that has ensued in response to the Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control (and Tom Mann’s response). If you want to follow that, go here.
David Bade pointed me to this very interesting talk (in transcript form) by Andrew Abbott of the University of Chicago, given as the Windsor Lecture at the University of Illinois this month: Library Research and Its Infrastructure in the Twentieth Century. This paper is the author’s own ethnography of library research by scholars in the … Read more How library research is really done
Just for the record at this point; perhaps commentary later… Final Report of the Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control ‚ÄúOn the Record‚Äù but Off the Track: A Review of the Report of The Library of Congress Working Group on The Future of Bibliographic Control, With a Further Examination of Library of Congress … Read more LC Working Group final report, Thomas Mann’s response
Let’s start from the common premise that an important part of being a librarian in this time of rapid change is to keep a close eye on trends. How are things changing? We need to know so that we can keep up, so that we can modify our services to meet society’s changing needs, to … Read more Library trendspotting if you happen to like Susan Jacoby
Slate Magazine has an interesting photographic item featuring eight pictures of library buildings, with a bit of thoughtful discussion about the architecture of library buildings in the digital age. I caught this in the Livejournal community “Libraries.”
We’re presently awash in talk about a great paradigm shift that puts the user at the center of our planning for services. This is sometimes referred to simply as user-centered librarianship. It has been a hot idea for at least a decade, but has gained new power and momentum because of ideas about the interactivity … Read more Dueling Paradigm Shifts
I have not seen this and make no endorsement: Arthur and Esther, A Dark Comedy about Libraries, Lakes, and Lost Love…
Responsible Librarianship: Library Policies for Unreliable Systems Author: David Bade Price: $22.00 ISBN: 978-0-9778617-6-7 Printed on acid-free paper The three papers in this volume were written in the wake of a single policy decision at the Library of Congress: the decision to cease the practice of distinguishing and collating series through the use of distinctive … Read more David Bade’s Responsible Librarianship
Report on ALA Council to SRRT, Midwinter 2008, Philadelphia Although we did not get everything we advocated, SRRT‚Äôs initiatives and interventions in the work of ALA Council went quite well at Midwinter in Philadelphia. Our Resolution on the Confiscation of Iraqi Documents from the Iraq National Library and Archives was passed almost unanimously with very … Read more Al Kagan’s Council Report
Toni Samek and other library educators concerned with the declining place of information ethics, intellectual freedom, and matters having to do with the unique ethos of librarianship formed a Special Interest Group in ALISE (the Association of Library and Information Science Educators) to address Information Ethics in library education. Their SIG released a statement on … Read more ALISE Information Ethics Statement
I’ve been brainstorming about some essential facets of librarianship – skills, roles, services, problems – that while they have not lost any relevance have lately been ignored, passed over, forgotten, swept under the rug, or declared obsolete and old-fashioned by the vocal minority of librarians whose main concern now seems to be to create a … Read more Annotated list of things not to forget (in the 2.0 craze)…
“You must be willing to Embrace Change.” We hear this with such frequency now, and always coming from certain speakers in certain contexts, that it is probably few of us who really need it broken down for them. But I’m going to do it anyway, with an analogy. It’s a bad analogy in some ways, … Read more Embracing Change – an analogy
The new issue of the SRRT Newsletter is out, issue 160/161. It is available online in PDF, and being mailed to members in hardcopy. This issue is full of reports, from SRRT Task Forces, the SRRT Councilor, and the SRRT Action Council Coordinator, so it is a great way to see what SRRT is up … Read more SRRT Newsletter 160/161