Abstract
The best libraries were never simply buyers and warehouses for information, but something more, centered around synthesis and access and creativity. As the information ecosystem has shifted, forcing our attention to the operational side of how we manage information, some of us have lost sight of that. We hand over our shrinking resources to prominent for-profit publishers and vendors, because it is how the system works, without considering what our role in that system is, has been, and might be. It is time to remind everyone that the power of libraries lies not in our passivity but in our action and reclaim and redefine our roles within it. Drawing on experiences with the American Chemical Society, faculty perceptions of scholarship and libraries, and local and national conversations about library acquisitions, the author shares her vision of what librarians’ rights and responsibilities are and can be in the postdigital information economy.
Librarians in the Postdigital Information Era: Reclaiming Our Rights and Responsibilities
The best libraries were never simply buyers and warehouses for information, but something more, centered around synthesis and access and creativity. As the information ecosystem has shifted, forcing our attention to the operational side of how we manage information, some of us have lost sight of that. We hand over our shrinking resources to prominent for-profit publishers and vendors, because it is how the system works, without considering what our role in that system is, has been, and might be. It is time to remind everyone that the power of libraries lies not in our passivity but in our action and reclaim and redefine our roles within it. Drawing on experiences with the American Chemical Society, faculty perceptions of scholarship and libraries, and local and national conversations about library acquisitions, the author shares her vision of what librarians’ rights and responsibilities are and can be in the postdigital information economy.