As always, best, and keep on blogging.

I didn’t mean to equate Wired with professional lit, I was just saying its articles generally have more to do with my professional life than anything going on in JASIST.

I am not comfortable with a profession that doesn’t have any concept of what practical things someone becoming a member should know. I am not comfortable with a profession that has people who have never practiced the profession. I agree with you professionals shouldn’t be reading popular journals. I am just saying that the problem is with the literature, not with the professionals.

If our profession is getting people to information in the easiest way possible, shouldn’t we not have to fight our own professional lit?

I don’t disagree with the overworked thing. I don’t doubt the situation you describe in public libraries (::shudder:: so glad to not be working in that line!). And I won’t argue that any significant percentage of LIS professional literature is high quality (certainly negligible in the material introduced to me by the faculty….)

But there is some, enough in my peculiar interests and job description to have created a towering stack in my office in the 9 months since I started my job (I print it so I won’t lose the cite, but sweet goddess, I have no energy to read.)

I’m blaming my lack of energy on “first year on the job” adjustments. Because I can certainly see the need for grounding and overarching theory to assist me in my everyday work. And in terms of causing change? Effective change is all about theories and models.

If all I want is to get through my day, then I have a job, not a profession. I should get paid by the hour and have a high school diploma or a bachelors.

But, for a professional position, I have an advanced education and an investment in the future of the a) profession and b) my place within it.

I’m not at all comfortable with the future of the field when professionals on the job say “I don’t want it, and it sucks anyway and so I’ll read a magazine instead”

I’m sure I’m laying my head on the guillotine here, but what you said really burned a nerve. Sorry!!

I was not scolding you, I was scolding the professional literature!

I do write on the fly, but I still stand behind my negative statement. My point is, if you are an underpaid librarian at a public library, and your worries are the junkie in the bathroom and the homeless people peeing on the furniture (both things I have dealt with as a public library worker), you do not care about theories. Many librarians work on desk more than 50% of their work time, but stil have 40 hrs of work to accomplish off desk. If you are working that many hours underpaid, and aren’t in love with theory, you are not going to read it. It’s not related to your current situation and you have no time for more work.

Much of the literature is just people writing so that they get tenure. Practicioners might not have time to wade through what is and is not good science.

I feel her pain on that one in many areas of life. Someone who is not a practitioner should rarely tell one who is what practice is, does, or should consist in. But that does not imply that their lack of direct knowledge of something means that they have no knowledge that might bear (even fundamentally) on that topic. To believe so would completely undermine “library science” and philosophy, among others.
Non-practicioners being excluded from writing articles for LIS doesn’t undermine “library science” as a profession, but it does undermine it as an academic discipline. Mainly I just hate tenure and making the profession academic first, and professional second. When you get a CPA, there are a certain set of things you can do. You take a test, because your professional organization decides you have to know a certain amount of things in order to call yourself a professional. Can you imagine that in LIS? I think it would be great, but it will never happen.

Basically, if you don’t have a personal inclination to read the literature, and you are overworked, and the literature appears to be either bad science or irrelevant 9 times out of ten, you are going to stop reading. I think that’s the situation most people are in.

Yes, I read books over five pages. Books I enjoy and pick out myself. Books for fun. I don’t read them to gain information, I read them to enjoy myself. i do not enjoy myself when reading LIS lit, even when it is on a subject I like and well written. It’s medicine.

You seem to get the impression that badly written, boring, technical, irrelevant articles are the minority, but form my forays into LIS lit, I think it’s more the overwhelming majority. if I want to read about a subject affecting libraries, I more often go to non-LIS lit (ie Wired) to find out about it, because I enjoy that writing more.

As for the “MTV Generation thing,” I don’t know. Possibly. But honestly, I think it’s just a cop-out; even if causally true. We are not determined by our society. Overcome the limitations imposed on you by your environment. Be human. But only if you want to. Or if the demands of your profession should require it.
–Well that sums up my point. I don’t want to. And, my profession doesn’t require it!

I think you don’t have to read the LIS literature to question the profession. In fact, by reading outside the discipline, I get far more ideas. Like “wow, Barnes and Noble does this, and customers expect this–why isn’t anyone in LIS even aware this exists?” Also, inside the profession there seem to be SO many of the same discussions going on for decades that I just don’t care about.

This makes me sound like I hate being a librarian! I don’t! I love being a librarian! I am just thinking that if we can’t make our own literature accessible and relevant, how are we possibly helping other disciplines?

This was much more detailed the first time I wrote it! Sorry!

BTW – article is f/t online via Communication and Mass Media Complete at http://search.epnet.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ufh&an=9502162183 (if you’re on a subscribing campus) — it’s a crappy scan but readable.