Renewing Professional Librarianship: A Fundamental Rethinking [Paperback]

Can professional librarianship exist, let alone thrive, in the 21st century? Does accreditation protect the profession, or reduce it to a minor component of information science? The prognosis is not good, claims cultural pragmatist Bill Crowley, with worse to follow unless library studies and information studies are viewed as separate cognate areas. While an information-centric definition may be appropriate for corporate information specialists, he notes that academic, public, and school librarians are already suffering the effects of devaluation. The remedy is to embrace a concept called lifecycle librarianship, the ability to meet crucial public needs from the lapsit to the nursing home, by honing the library's time honored role as a vital resource for reading and lifelong learning; and he concludes with a series of recommendations for library associations, library and information education educators, and practitioners and a challenge for the reader to do something with them!Bill Crowley, Professor, Graduate School of Library and Information Science Dominican University, River Forest, Illinois.

Crowley's tome is recommended for library schools and profesional collections. Library Journal

Crowley has given this book great thought. He poses question after question. Are we meeting the needs of our public in the academic, school, corporate, and public arenas? Should the information specialist and the librarian unite or be seperate entities?. . . Is your state or county using the excuse of lack of funds for not hiring a librarian or for eliminating librarian aide positions? The author encourages the reader to take the challenge to do something about it. . . . This book would also be valuable as a text for graduate school courese. Recommended. Library Media Connection

As the way people deliver and access information changes, what happens to one of librarians' fundamental roles, that of information provider? InRenewing Profelã1