Libraries and Alternatives: An Essay

Abstract

The library is the only social institution whose main ethical underpinning is the collection, preservation, and dissemination of all manner of information. This, at any rate, is the library's avowed goal. It rarely becomes a reality, and for good and sundry reasons: budget constraints, space limitations, personnel shortages. The danger is not so much that the library often falls short of its heady and laudable goal, but that librarians are sometimes seized by an almost pathological smugness. In short, they come to believe that the goal is actually being realized.

Citation

Glass Schuman, P. (1980), "Libraries and Alternatives: An Essay", Collection Building, Vol. 2 No. 2, pp. 7-11. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb023038