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Greetings, Thanks for your comments. You are not alone. Several folks are upset by my not posting to jESSE the labor union thoughts. There are other places for the discussion of labor unions in libraries, but I confess readily that I don't know what they are. But jESSE is not the place for them. The focus of jESSE is as the website says promotes discussion of library and information science education issues in a world-wide context. It addresses issues of curricula, administration, research, and education theory and practice as they relate to information science issues in general, and in general academia as the membership feels so moved. The focus for jESSE is not on content, but on process for LIS education. That is, how is the student taught about information science concepts - not on what labor unions are currently doing. It is not only the software being used by what company, but how faculty and students are being educated to use those technologies. jESSE focuses on how students are taught, and how students learn, in today's information rich environment. How do students learn about labor unions, vs the MARC format? How do students learn about social issues regarding their professional context, or technical details? Both are equally important, yet how are they balanced? If jESSE focused on the content of an LIS education at the graduate level, it would have to cover not only the means of production of book, serial, video, and other media, but the politics of information management in a democracy (and in a dictatorship, for that matter), the issue of universal bibliographic control and how that matters for a culture, the cultural implications of different kinds of software (the cloud, for example, and how that differs from personal computers and the use of mainframes in the 1980s), the reading habits of adults and children, and a host of other issues. This is simply more than jESSE can handle. Other websites and social media deal with library issues and information science issues. Someone brought up a website that is trying to pull together these content issues and I support that effort. jESSE deals with process - education - issues, and not content or resources issues. (What should be in the curriculum of a newly aspiring information professional is a subject for another day. But the question has been raised.) --gw <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> Gretchen Whitney, PhD, Retired School of Information Sciences University of Tennessee, Knoxville TN 37996 USA [log in to unmask] http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/ jESSE:http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/jesse.html SIGMETRICS:http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> On Mon, 26 Sep 2011, Joyce M Latham wrote: > I have to say I am flumoxed by your choice not to post information about >librarians on strike. I am a library educator, and a scholar of unions >in libraries and you are just wrong ... again. > > Joyce M. Latham, PhD > School of Information Studies > University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee > Bolton Hall, Room 554 > 414-229-3205 > > > >