Sorry I didn’t post yesterday about Michael Gorman’s visit—I made both the panel discussion and his lecture—but I was completely underwhelmed.
It was interesting to learn that his 1st job in America was to teach Cataloging at UIUC. Even more so to learn that he was my current Cat prof’s prof. What does that make him to me? I know we rarely trace academic pedigrees here but some disciplines do. It can be quite interesting and instructive in many cases.
The panel was boring. Staid. Academic (barely). Boring. And it was not very focused. They were given a very broad topic and all picked different aspects of it. The only part they got ‘right’ was the focusing on different decades of time. Which put together, made it even less coherent. The room was packed anyway. Lots of Michael’s former students, co-workers, and faculty peers. It was billed as "Predictions of the Future from the Past."
Gorman:
Came to UIUC in Aug 1974. Library school education in London 10 years earlier.
Library school in Britain 40 yrs ago:
- Nationally administered
- Curriculum set nationally by The Library Association (now CILIP)
- National exams
- 2 year program – 1st year 4 broad courses taken by everyone
- Profs were all practitioners (as he remembers) with very few academics
He believes that all librarians in any library context should have an understanding of cataloging. Not as a practice (MARC, AACR,…) but a conceptual understanding of cataloging and classification and of the specific systems we use. I could not agree more. How in the hell can anyone profess to understand the organization of knowledge without a thorough grounding in this very basic thing that humans do, classifying?
Kaufman:
Educated in 60s; "has always been a practitioner;" concentrated on financial issues of the 80s.
80s economy:
- Double-digit inflation
- Fall of the dollar against other currencies (foreign materials cost more)
- Serials crisis "budded"
- Large $$ shifting to IT
- Rise of consortia (experimental phase)
- Technology applied to public services (vs. tech applied to tech services in 70s)
- Cold War – she was involved in exposing the Library Awareness Program
- Brittle paper crisis
- Problems of © – new formats (at time © predicted to be biggest barrier to universal access by 2000. Hmmmm?)
She pointed out that LIS education in America was always less consistent than in Britain
Unsworth:
Lots of quoting; focused on the 90s
Recognizes the problems of being a non-LIS dean of a LIS school
Talked about history of academic LIS education, especially at UIUC. The shift to an academic education for librarians came about with the rise of PHDs in the 70s. With enough LIS PHDs schools could begin requiring it. Previous to this most LIS school faculty had an undergraduate education at best in LIS.
Gorman responded that he was only interested in library education. Not information education. He wishes them well off in their own fields. Gotta admit I sometimes feel the same way. There needs to be some cross-disciplinary fertilization, and I can see arguments for us being the same discipline (but I can also see it the other way), but I too wish for a good, deep library education. Maybe the best way to get the cross-fertilization of ideas is to school us together though…?
A question was asked about what they are looking for in a newly minted library school graduate.
Gorman:
Looks at specific classes taken – he does not want a reference librarian that has not taken cataloging
He wants more talk between the practitioners and educators. Well, duh. But in all fairness, it addresses his comments on his education.
He also wants changes to the accreditation process. More prescriptive (ala AMA) unlike descriptive approach of ALA.
Kaufman:
Educated for entire career?
Able to deal with ambiguity, complexity, change and evidence thereof
Able to flourish in UIUC Libraries environment
Also relies on colleagues (search process) to weed through to the best matches for their needs
Coming up: Gorman’s lecture
"The Situation of Libraries Today" (concentrating on academic libs)
- Financial pressures
- Cyclical (approx. every 5 years)
- Goes back to public policy decisions – greater good vs. individualism
- Undervaluation of the library
- Assessment moved to "outcomes" / accreditation (kind of skewed whole thing)
- Technological delusions
- Everything’s on the net…
- Everyone is a skilled searcher
- The fallacy of the literacies, & that they’re all equal "One of the key delusions in higher education."
- Price inflation, partic. in STM materials and electronic resources
- Inability to comprehend it until too late
- Cost of expanding role of IT while maintaining trad. services
- Information commons
- Infrastructure – diversion of resources
- Arises out of user desire for digital resources, but we’ve lost the discernment between desire and need
Information literacy should focus on:
- There are many paths to knowledge — the technological and/or easy is not necessarily the best
- Critical thinking – "One of the most importnat things acquired by getting a higher education."
Government Documents:
- Strong push by federal government to make all government
documents available only digitally; and for federal government control
of the databases of these documents.
- This is not a good development – has nothing to do with paper vs. digital – it is much larger
- Recall, change, withdrawal of public documents
- "Government control of any government document is completely un-American." Amen!
Place is a central role for the academic library
Staff issues:
CLIR fellows, e.g. (Damn, sorry, I forgot what he said here–but I don’t think he thought highly of it)
Non-professionals in some areas
Emphasize the professional aspects of all areas of librarianship
Our assets as academic librarians:
- Hold values that are important to our institutions
- Have a documented value to our institutions
- Have unique skills
- Often most technologically advanced on campus (Yes! He said this was an asset.)
- Have our collections (and amazing access to others)
- Our image and standing
Predictions:
- Scholarly journal is on last legs (only awaiting financial model of purchase and provisioning of individual articles)
- Restoration of real literacy as a central societal concern; will come from business
- Continuation of unique archival collections; these unique collections becoming digitized is "an unmitigated good"
- Increase in collaborative library buildings, e.g. San Jose State
- We’ll "domesticate" technology; it is "feral" at the moment
- #1 We will be in happier times as we experience a brief
interlude when technology is tamed and before the next big thing
arrives…holograms?
We will look back on these times and just see them as an evolutionary time just like any other time.
My quotes are reasonably accurate but may be a minor paraphrase.
Nothing new or exciting. Not much to disagree with. Except
possibly a few word choices. Rhetorics? It was nice to be sitting
next to my professor who so lovingly chides me for perceived
overgeneralizing and so when he did the same thing to his former
colleague, Gorman. Boyd is great!
I just spent 1.5 hours writing this. I hope someone gets some value
from it although I’m sorry it doesn’t have more detail. Again, completely underwhelming.