more thoughts on the CHE piece

As I confided to some PLG friends, I read some of the CHE comments there and became so frustrated & passionate that I had to post my own.

I don't think I was overly harsh, but I did want to demolish a Library school "catechism" that contains the very stupid, quite unquestioned idea that somehow format does not matter in our daily LIS work.

It is one of the more pernicuous, stupid, harmful, and pervasive memes in all of mainstream LIS, and it always produces a virulent allergic reaction in me, at least.

A King James Bible printed on velum, with gold-inlaid leather binding...versus the same text printed in sharpie ink on a roll of toilet paper. I know it's the same text, yada yada yada, but which is more likely to inspire awe and reverence? There's value to having the KJB or other variants of the bible, for that matter, archived online, or on a searchable CD-ROM, specifically for quick reference, quick textual manipulations and comparisons, etc. The toilet paper bible might even be elevated to an important component in an edgy, contemporary art museum piece. In a practical cataloging sense, no, it does not matter, we can describe each manifestation of the work as needed, distinguishing between them with good descriptive cataloging work. But too many librarians go to far and suspend all critical judgement about appropriateness of format, etc, especially if it comes with lots of electronic bells and whistles. In a corporate library, true, there will be not nearly as many hardbound volumes to circulate--some "collections" may be entirely virtual, depending on corporate needs. But to information managers who work in these settings still stubbornly clinging to the term Librarian (and most are actually all to happy to abandon that title, actually)....when there aren't any more Libros (books) to bibliographically control and lend out...and proscribing this state of affairs as the sublime ideal toward which all libraries should strive...because it's so damn sexy...like I said, I thought we humanistic librarians had beat back that particular form of madness in the late 1990s, but the struggle continues. In all the high tech hoopla, there seems to be an unspoken disdain for those of us who still give a damn about books-in-print, about cultivating a love of reading for its own sake, and critical thinking about that reading. Not always, not a 100%, and yes, there are some interesting technology applications out there that are seeking to reinforce the construction of communities of readers, etc. All to the good. But Humanists, don't let your guard down, not for a minute.

Format DOES matter. Read your McLuhan, read Walt Crawford, Michael Gorman, Neil Postman, etc.

Or LC's Thomas Mann, too, for that matter, who is an L.I.S. Demigod second only to Sandford Berman, in my personal pantheon. I just ordered his Oxford Guide to Library Research off of Amazon.com, because dammit, if I'm going to repackage myself as a reference librarian I might as well learn from the best. Mann is a Reference specialist, but he also displays a deep and abiding understanding of subject cataloging and its uses; he also has a deep and abiding understanding of the folly of current LC Administration, and doesn't shy from letting that knowledge shine forth either. I also happen to like his namesake in the Modern German literary Canon as well, as a footnote.

Mann offers a robust defense of the primacy of printed books-on-paper for all research save the hard sciences (and related fields like Engineering). Mann believes passionately in the continuing mission of the research library in support of scholarly enterprise, and rightly eschews "trendy" concerns and buzzwords about "market-share", "competition with other info providers", etc, dismissing them as inappropriate business metaphors butting in where they truly don't belong.

It's unpopular to say so, but "Information Capitalism" and its affiliated ideology that runs through and is embedded in the very guts of so much contemporary high technology, is very much on the offensive against the ideology of traditional librarianship, because it is part of Capital's wider struggle against public sector/social institutions for supremacy, or as Bill Hicks would say (or rather, softly scream) "...sticking a goddamn dollar sign in front of every fucking thing on this planet."

"It's like I'm caught in a fucking web", Hicks said, in reflection.

And how, brother, and how. Yes, it's fucking maddening, it is complex, and it really IS all interconnected.