On 05/22/2011 10:41 PM, David H. Rothman wrote:
<snip>
> I agree with worries over censorship even if that isn't Bill Clinton's
> intent. And, yes, both librarians and journalists are solutions. No
> policing or corrections agency, though. I hate the idea.
</snip>
My own concern is that so few non-librarians have an understanding what
library selection (collection development) really means today. A good
overview of the U.S. theory of selection is Peggy Johnson's
"Fundamentals of collection development and management." 2nd ed. ALA
Editions, 2009, available on Google Books (this section for free in the
preview!) http://books.google.com/books?id=BVQhMEKf3pUC&pg=PA13#v=onepage.
Bill Clinton's idea is to provide the truth, whatever that means. As the
above book describes, there has been a tension to provide "what the
public wants" vs. "what is good for them." Part of this is the latter is
the need for a librarian to provide "the truth," which is extremely
difficult--not only trying to determine what "the truth" happens to be,
but also trying to define "what is the public?" in a non-stereotypical
way. So librarians have focused instead on trying to provide "balanced
coverage" as much as possible, and no librarian would ever want to say
that their collection contains "the truth". In this regard, you may be
interested in reading a section of an online book I wrote, "What is a
Library?" at http://aurlibrary.wetpaint.com/page/What+is+a+Library%3F
In my experience however, these considerations of library selection may
need to evolve into something different (somehow). It seems that it is
slowly dawning upon people who use the resources on the Internet that
they are being manipulated in all kinds of ways, not only through the
resources themselves, but the Google-type searching and how it is all
being manipulated in turn. As I have worked with people, especially
younger students, they like one-stop shopping and want what I call a
"Sam's Club for Truth" where they can go to this great big place and
find truth on the shelves just for the taking. The library information
literacy programs are seen as big pains and are relegated to other
classes students don't want to take, and forgotten just as quickly as
their basic algebra. In any case, people are not going to research the
authors and corporate bodies in the books and articles they want to use.
That's too much work; nobody has that much time to do it, and in any
case, that was what the entire bibliographic structure was supposed to
achieve in earlier days: the author's work was vetted using peer
reviewers assigned by the publishers, the publishers were rated reliable
or not, and libraries bought overwhelmingly from the reliable publishers
through book jobbers, who did a lot of vetting themselves.
For all kinds of reasons, this relationship is breaking down and nothing
has replaced it, primarily (I think) because selection processes for
resources on the web have not been monetized yet. I personally consider
the Google/Yahoo etc. tools as a modernized "Books in Print", i.e. an
essential tool of use mainly to bibliographers and librarians, never
used alone but best used in conjunction with other tools. Google/Yahoo
etc. misses a lot and hides much more, but nevertheless, they are the
best we have. The newer tools such as Mendeley and specialized Web2.0
resources show great promise but are not coordinated yet. I have
considered such coordination and management to be among the tasks of the
future librarian.
--
James L. Weinheimer weinheimer.jim.l_at_gmail.com
First Thus: http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/
Cooperative Cataloging Rules: http://sites.google.com/site/opencatalogingrules/
Received on Mon May 23 2011 - 05:18:34 EDT