Monday, June 26, 2006, 12:31:06 PM, you wrote:
JJW> The "Give the people what they want" is only valid to a certain point.
JJW> If what people want (and many of them do) is a video game/chat room, we
JJW> would have a hard time justifying our expenditure funds in providing
JJW> them with it.
Why? There are certainly plenty of educational games out there,
including ones that one might not think of as "educational". And chat
can also be educational. Many instructors use it as part of their
course communication.
JJW> There is a difference between gossip and news,
You don't get People Magazine? Or US Magazine? Or.....all sorts of
others?
JJW> objective truth and hyped
JJW> up fiction, fuzzy as certain vested interests and media outlets would
JJW> like to make it.
Ahhhh, yes....I'm sure that we're all so pure an unbiased that we make
perfectly objective decisions on items to add to the collection,
without a single bit of our own beliefs or values entering in.
JJW> There are zillions of sources for gossip/chat and
JJW> hyped up fiction and surely libraries don't need to be providing it. We
JJW> need to be the place where people can measure it against reasonably
JJW> sound facts.
I'm not sure what "hyped up fiction" means. The hits for that phrase
in google sure don't make it clear, though they do seem to indicate
that one person's hyped up fiction is another person's stone cold
truth.
Of course all of us of the library persuasion took "collection
development" or some other such course (title depending on the era we
went to library school....I'm from the "book selection" era). And the
argument of give them quality vs. give them what they want is older
than any library school in the world.
dan
--
Dan Lester, Data Wrangler dan_at_RiverOfData.com 208-283-7711
3577 East Pecan, Boise, Idaho 83716-7115 USA
www.riverofdata.com The Road Goes On Forever....
Received on Wed Jun 28 2006 - 17:10:35 EDT