Re‐Membering Libraries: Essays on the Profession

Citation

Duckett, B. (2001), "Re‐Membering Libraries: Essays on the Profession", Library Review, Vol. 50 No. 3, pp. 146-159. https://doi.org/10.1108/lr.2001.50.3.146.7

McFarland can generally be relied on to present us with something enterprising, unusual, and often humorous. With Terry Webb’s 15 original essays spanning 25 years of library work in a variety of libraries and posts, McFarland have found another major talent. Webb’s professed predilection is library administration and his first four essays cover management topics. In “Formal organizations: the coming meltdown”, Webb argues that our dependence on formal organisations is dangerous, since they are inherently unstable. Instead of getting staff to adopt corporate goals, lessons should be learned from informal structures and the organization should be “morphed” around the interests and goals of the staff. With the overthrow of a century of management gurus, the attention of your reviewer was aroused!The brutal identification of the print‐based library with the “ice‐age” was a shock but, once catalogues became computerised, the thaw set in, and before long we had a “liquid” library. Using Kurt Lewin’s freezer model for organization change – you unfreeze the organization, introduce change, and then re‐freeze to keep the new configuration (“Deep Freeze, Deep Thaw: a model for library change”) – Webb suggests how libraries can adapt to new situations. From the library “Ice Age to Jamming” – “jam” as in a jazz session – here we have an essay about how to innovate and improvise in a knowledge‐based organization. Get everyone involved, that’s how to manage knowledge workers – as Webb did when his library developed Web sites. The fourth essay is “Fund‐raiding; or the beatitudes of external support”. The first beatitude is “In order to receive, you must make it easy to give”. The second is: “He who gives will give again”. And so on; all ploys illustrated by another of Webb’s success stories in collection building. Exciting stuff this; inspirational even.

Part Two: “Libraries” kicks off with “Libraries as research institutions”, which doesn’t quite mean what it seems. Our libraries are where we, ourselves, as librarians, should be doing our own research into knowledge, and its delivery. Only by doing research ourselves will we really understand our users’ needs and how best to advise users. This essay is followed by a plea for more cross‐sectoral awareness between academic and public libraries, especially the former (unusually, Webb has worked in both). “Run, ULISYS: epic of a technophobe” is the author’s account of his reluctant conversion to computer technology in libraries (“literati to digerati”) and how they are now the saviours of libraries. Yet, despite the success of the virtual library, the importance of the physical library remains. “A library is more than books on shelves or computers on tables.” With a background in anthropology and expertise in library planning, the author’s observation is music to our ears!Music of another sort is Webb’s piece on reference work. Despite a lifetime in reference work, I don’t recall many pieces about what it is like to work in reference. Webb’s respect for “the art and creativity of reference work” is a boost to this modern day Cinderella subject. His last paper in this “Libraries” section travels the Atlantic less well, though its general message about unhelpful staff stratification and boundaries, and the challenges presented by the new technology, is pretty universal. Its title is, memorably, and with apologies to the typesetter, “Antidisestablishmentparaprofessionalism”!

The third group of essays goes under the heading “The Library Profession”. In “Net shift, new work, and retrodig”, serious attention is paid to the role of digitisation in twenty‐first century academic libraries. Six issues are highlighted: selection of materials; organisational accommodation; cooperation with publishers; other information providers; “beyond retrocon”; and funding. It is a most perceptive and informed piece of futurology. In “Beijing, it’s already Monday”, an international perspective is offered and, in particular, concerns about US technological imperialism and the mistakes it has made. These mistakes include automating book catalogues, while ignoring computerization of periodical indexes and “our biggest mistake was to undertake massive retrospective conversion projects”. What we should be doing is to “publish” library resources on Web sites. “Soon, leading libraries will be recognized as much for the quality of their local databases as for the excellence of their book collections.” As for librarians themselves, Webb’s “modest proposal” for library education is to scrap library schools; they are too divorced from real life situations and training should be based in large libraries where user needs can drive curricula. Less radical, perhaps, is Webb’s championing of separating out organizational and administration matters from professional ones. Finally, we come to “The Radical Librarian”: “Librarians are radical, impassioned people.” They fight for the freedom to read and think. A current problem with the Internet is whether to filter content or not. Is filtering a form of censorship that denies freedom of access, or is it being socially responsible, adding value, even?

My review copy of Re‐Membering Libraries (get the pun?) has been read from cover to cover, is thoroughly thumbed and underscored, and of no use for the library shelves now. It will stay on my desk, a reminder of the barrage of provocative ideas and startling insights it embodies, and which I need to act on. It is a valuable contribution to our professional literature.