 |
 |
Just picking on this message, nothing personal here. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Caroline Nappo" <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] Sent: Monday, April 26, 2010 12:39:08 AM GMT -06:00 US/Canada Central Subject: Re: Where do libraries fit in the "information-seeking food chain"? (fwd) Hi all, I've been following this discussion with great interest. I'm a PhD student in LIS at the University of Illinois, where I focus on history of libraries and information. If libraries aren't sufficiently serving their communities, isn't that an indictment of LIS education? That seems the necessary question to ask. An interesting question, which I believe first came up within a few years of the establishment of formal education for librarianship, as opposed to the "apprenticeship" of the good old days. It seems to come up all the time--why aren't the schools doing what we (however defined) want? I have never found the discussion to be all that productive. Could we not make the case that, inter alia, the Catholic priesthood, the Chicago police, FEMA,and Wall street aren't really serving their communities? And should that be blamed primarily on the education of the people in those agencies? On the big issue--if students aren't using libraries "enough", is it possibly related to the amount of marketing done by Google, indirectly by all the media (need a loan, need sex advice, depressed, have cancer--here's a website--rarely a mention of other information sources such as librarians or libraries? Or a second take: we are serving the needs of students very well by providing efficient, easy to use, easy to understand (easy to plagiarize) information sources to rapidly complete assigned work which is perceived by most students as pointless at best. But, direct access to Wikis, social networks, and Google in general is even more efficient, so those things get more use. (Currently selling books, maps, etc. out of a tent at renaissance faires--where, by the way librarians as a group get a lot of respect from the full time traveling renfaire workers, and even more from the parttime actors and reenactors--it all depends on how on defines a library community). Truth in advertising--I do still now and then teach online courses mostly to people who want to be librarians, so I may be biased. -- James H. Sweetland 414-229-4707 Professor Emeritus [log in to unmask] School of Information Studies University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee