The future of librarianship

Sometimes it’s not just library school that leaves us feeling uninspired. Take, for example, this article from Library Journal (via the.effing.librarian): Blatant Berry: The Vanishing Librarians. As a library school student (and I’m sure any readers who care enough about these issues to read this blog will agree), it’s obviously frustrating that society seems to place so little value on the skills of information professionals. But if we wring our hands and say, “oh well, there’s nothing a lowly student can do about it,” then what we’ll end up with is a generation of librarians who are apathetic and subservient to the whims of managers and that segment of the population that wants libraries to be like a version of Chapters where all the books are free. So let’s keep two things in mind: first of all, there are plenty of library users out there who value our services. And secondly, it’s a lot easier for our profession to be pushed aside if we’re apathetic and offer no resistance. So let’s focus on what we love about information and use that enthusiasm to prove to management and users that they need us.

Advertisement

2 thoughts on “The future of librarianship

  1. good for you. keep that attitude. which is probably much harder to do where it’s really really cold and with all those beavers getting on your tuque (I had a beaver on my tuque once,… insert punchline here). anyway… remember, if you have only enough time to read just one blog, stick with Jessamyn’s (but mine should be on your list if you have time to read 50 blogs). cheers,

  2. Thanks, effing! To be honest, it’s the salt that bothers me more than the cold – it’s terrible for your leather boots and pets’ paws (and don’t even think about going barefoot!). As you can see to the left, your blog is most certainly on my list, and it’s only near the bottom because it’s in alphabetical order – or is it? How weird would it be if i ranked my blogroll and it just happened to end up alphabetized? But no, I love Unshelved way too much for that to be the case. And… insert punchline about blog near the top of the list here.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s