In truth, American libraries and the profession of librarianship are confronted with a structural transformation in the overall economy. It is nothing less than thorough privatization of the information function. The production, processing, storing and transmission of information have been scooped up into private, for-profit hands. Social sources and repositories of information have been taken over for commercial use and benefit. It is not because American libraries and library schools have fallen behind in the mastery of the new information technology that their existence increasingly is called into question. It is their bedrock principles and long-term practices that collide with the realities of today’s corporate-centered and market-driven economy. The extent to which librarians insist on free and untrammeled access to information, ‘unrestricted by administrative barriers, geography, ability to pay or format,’ they will be treated by the privatizers as backward-looking, if not obsolete, irrelevant, and unrealistic.
The technology issue, therefore, is merely a screen behind which a far-reaching and socially regressive institutional change has occurred. The focus on technology also serves to delude many, librarians included, that the new means to achieve status and respect is to concentrate on the machinery of information, production, and transmission. When and if this focus turns regidly exclusive, wittingly or not, the social basis of the profession and the needs of the majority of people are left unattended.”
Information Inequality: The Deepening Social Crisis in America, p. 36. (Routledge, 1996)
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.