Last week I attended the Kentucky Library Association Annual Conference. The Opening Keynote presentation by Rick Anderson on “Slaying the Sacred Cows of Librarianship” resounded with many of the listeners. Overall, my thought was that Mr. Anderson was a bit short-sighted in a few of his slaughters.
One of the key points made was in relation to preservation as a library service that must die. Preservation in the traditional sense of protecting the tomes is definitely a non-essential service. Unfortunately, Mr. Anderson spoke in terms of preserving the “physical” library based upon his academic background.
Electronic content has a degree of preservation/archiving that must be considered in terms of global business and litigation risk management. The Web Archive is an important tool in litigation, especially in Trademark Infringement cases. Corporate and law librarians will insist upon the increasing importance of capturing web content at specific points of time. The puzzle of 2.0 content preservation is an evolving and undefined area of concern in the scope of global business.
Another cow that Mr. Anderson attempted to slaughter was Collection Development and Management. Again, I felt that his points, while valid, were missing the greater context of the necessity of managing electronic content. While Anderson sought to address the issues in how the duties would evolve I disagree that information collection development and management is a sacrificial part of services. The need to strategically manage a collection and guide the purchase and license of content in new formats exists and requires even more diligence by information professionals. Yes, “just-in-time” rather than “just-in-case” collection development philosophies must persevere. Unfortunately, the information collections that allow that just-in-time delivery still relies upon licensing content collections and the ability to seek out specific items within the collection. Providing access to the wealth of material available on specific topics still requires understanding who produces the material, where it is available and how to get the best deal to provide access.
The one cow that Anderson sacrifices that I don’t entirely disagree with is Bibliographic Description. I have always considered myself a guerrilla cataloger who provides enough description for an item to be found and if someone/anyone including Amazon has done it first then I would prefer to use them rather myself. Form doesn’t seem to matter that much in today’s seeking of known items. As a user of catalogs I want to find a specific item. However, I do rely upon cross-references and more. Unfortunately for Mr. Anderson’s slaughterhouse, the ability to build taxonomies and use meta data are skills being sought for new information managers in the electronic realm.
All in all Mr. Anderson provided enough food for thought that the audience as a whole was excited to think about new ways to operate. What Mr. Anderson failed to do was look outside his country of academia and into the global interaction of business and information to understand that transformation rather than slaughter was required to preserve the strength of information professionals.
Constance Ard October 4, 2009
