[Publib] Re: LibraryThing and other "free" stuff

[Sue Kamm]

> [Original Message]
> From: Kathleen Stipek <kstipek at exchange.acld.lib.fl.us>
> To: Sharon Foster <fostersm1 at gmail.com>; <jbsphx at cox.net>
> Cc: <publib at webjunction.org>
> Date: 7/7/2007 12:13:39 PM
> Subject: RE: [Publib] Re: LibraryThing and other "free" stuff
>
> It is a job.  It is also a profession in the sense that education and
> pharmacy are professions. Unlike most attorneys and physicians who can
> work free-lance we work in an organization, so sometimes we have to do
> things the organization's leaders tell us to to even if they seem odd.
> And why are you spending your money and time on the MLS or whatever it's
> being called this week? It's dues, and we all have to pay them one way
> or another.  If you pay attention--especially to whatever professors who
> once worked in libraries say through gritted teeth--you will learn what
> being a librarian is.  And you will come to think as librarians think
> and to know yourself to be a librarian.  That's worth the price of
> admission.

Unfortunately, I think the number of library school instrctors who have
staffed public desks or actually made acquisitions and/or cataloging
decisions may have gone the way of clay tablets.  

I had the good fortune to attend UCLA's School of Library Service when
Lawrence Clark Powell and Andrew H. Horn were deans, and the faculty
included Seymour Lubetzky (a renowned cataloger for those too young to
remember) and Betty Rosenberg (first author of GENREFLECTING).  Our course
of study included a mandatory class in data processing in the library,
which Robert M. Hayes taught. 

What concerns me (and others) about the new generation of librarians is
they are not being grounded in basic principles in which our profession is 
rooted.  The queries we have had on this list displaying ignorance of
intellectual freedom are appalling.  The apparent belief that everything is
online, what do we need books for? is disheartening.  (I would venture a
guess that 80 percent of the online searching I do is for books.  Thank
you, WorldCat, for making your database available to everyone who can type
your URL.)  

Fifty years from now, how many librarians will risk going to jail for
questioning a gag order as the four John Does in Connecticut did?  How many
will serve in jail because they won't reveal what materials a library user
checked out or accessed?  How many will be fired because they protest
purchasing materials in a language many of their clients can read?  

Think about it.



Your friendly neighborhood CyberGoddess and ALA Councilor at Large, 
Sue Kamm
Email: suekamm[at]mindspring.com
Inglewood/Los Angeles, CA
Los Angeles Dodgers Truest of the Blue, 2000
Visit my blog:  http://suekamm.blogspot.com
Baseball Is Life...the rest is details