Working on a paper for my Information Professions class. It seems impossible to define a culture of information professions outside of a general concern with and commitment to access. We all want to preserve and organize the information for ready access. Other distinctions depend upon whether we're talking about the cultural record keepers or the information scientists, the public or the corporate environment, the liberal or the conservative wing. But that makes sense. We deal with information from myriad sources about myriad topics in a multicultural setting.
I myself cross picket lines. I love the radical left of librarianship--acknowledging value in the out-of-power cultures, promoting diversity, empowering people. As much as I get the accusation of elitism toward traditional prescriptive library practices, however, I love canonical literature and I find value in tradition. I believe that keeping up with technology is extremely important, but I think there is a place for old-school, low-tech things like book binding. Paper, after all, far outlasts any digital format devised to date. Why can't we do it all? I'm not saying that I'm going to do it all. Just that somebody within the Information Professions can do some of everything without threatening the integrity of the whole. It is a glorious, sprawling beast, as befits the guardian of the dynamic, pulsating mass of information we have. OK, back to work.
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AuthorJeffrey Babbitt, MLIS, is a graduate of the School of Library and Information Science at Wayne State University who is pursuing a career as a librarian in Michigan. Subject Headings
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Inter- Library Loan004.02020025.431027.62090813.009Archives
June 2021
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