LibrarianshipQuo Vadis?

Opportunities and Dangers As We Face the New Millennium

Herbert S. White

• Publisher: Libraries Unlimited
• Year: 2000
• eBook ISBN: 9780313009525
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Library & Information Science
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Librarians and libraries now face unprecedented challenges, risks, and opportunities. In his latest collection of articles and speeches, White focuses on the professional issues confronting librarians at a time of increased technological options-when simple information access can be easily and directly done by end users, but in which complex information access poses needs and concerns which the end user may not even recognize, let alone understand. Often delivered with wit, these insightful and sometimes controversial commentaries are intended to provoke serious thought, discussion, and ultimately, action. A must read for library and information science professionals and valuable supplementary reading for students of library and information science.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Look at All Those Beautiful Birds Overhead!
• Priorities for the Research Library Budget: A Humble Proposal
• What Do We Give 'Em? And Who Are 'Em?
• The Legacy of John Swan
• Small Public Libraries—Challenges, Opportunities, and Irrelevancies
• "Lead Me Not into Temptation to Do Good"
• Our Goals and Our Programs: We're Better at Caring Than at Getting Others to Care
• The Politics of Reinventing Government Libraries
• Fairy Tales from the Wonderful World of Library Politics
• Is Anyone Still Training the Circus Animals?
• Information Intermediation: A Fancy Name for Reference Work
• Library Studies or Information Management— What's in a Name?
• Technology in Libraries—A Continuous Process
• Educating for the Now and Future Profession
• The Cost of Knowledge and the Cost of Ignorance
• How Many Priorities Are We Allowed to Have— And Who Sets Them?
• Never Mind Being Innovative and Effective— Just Be Nice
• Smearing with a Broad Brush
• The Role of Information Intermediaries and the Superhighway: Crucial, Important, Trivial, or Non-Existent?
• Unity Through Diversity: We Need to Define Some Terms
• Blaming the Victim—The Academic Library Version
• The Perilous But Also Opportune Future for Special Librarians
• Managing Within Change—Or Helping to Shape the Management of Change
• The Politics of Reinventing Special Libraries
• Our Strategy for Saving Libraries: Add Water to the Thin Soup
• Focusing on the Trivial Is Certainly More Fun
• Selecting Conference Sites for ALA
• Research Library Directors and the Squandered Opportunity to Lead
• Do We Want to Be Knowledge Workers?
• Economic and Political Issues in Determining the Future of the Professionally Managed Library Over the Next Ten Years
• Book Review
• Faculty Status for Academic Librarians: The Search for the Holy Grail
• Adapting Commercial Strategies to Managing Government Libraries
• Our Failure to Seek, Much Less Achieve, Funding and Management Support
• Doing More with Less? If We Can Do It Now, Why Were We Goofing Off Before?
• Marketing As a Tool for Destabilization
• Keynote Address: Fourth International Conference on Fee-Based Information Services in Libraries
• Our Conflicting Responsibilities: To Our Bosses, Our Staff, and Our Profession
• The Passion to Be in Fashion
• Who Will Lead the Unsuspecting Lemmings Over the Cliff?
• Should Leaders Want to Be Managers and Give Up All That Freedom?
• Planning and Evaluation: The Endless Carousel
• Embarking on the Information Superhighway While Downsizing and Outsourcing Libraries
• Dangerous Misconceptions About Organizational Development of Virtual Libraries
• What Is a Professional in Our Field?
• Is There a Surplus of Librarians?
• Library Outsourcing and Contracting: Cost-Effectiveness or Shell Game?
• Organizational Change in an Era of Technological Challenges: Structuring an Environment Conducive to Learning
• Library Managers Must Really Lead
• Library Computers: Tools or Toys?
• Book Review
• The Changes in Off-Campus Education
• What to Evaluate and What to Reward
• Technology and the Pressures and Opportunities for Document Delivery
• Public Library Reference Service— Expectations and Reality
• Edmund Burke
• Librarians and Information Technology: Which Is the Tail and Which Is the Dog?
• Why Outsourcing Happens, and What to Do About It
• Authority, Responsibility, and Delegation in Public Libraries
• Is Our Mission One of Providing Only Information or Providing Knowledge?
• Where Is This Profession Heading?
• Index
• About the Author