It seems to me that the small exchange of emails on this matter raises
the whole question of why we have professional librarians (or whatever
we choose to call them) in higher and further education. In the last few
months, many librarians have bemaoned their lowly salary and - just
today with the announcement of the new head of the BL - their poor
image.
It seems to me that the purpose of a librarian is to make a contribution
to the work of the institution, and to be valued for this. The
instutions on this list are to do with learning, and not just learning
in itself, but learning for life. Unfortunately real life is not quite
so cosy as at university and, as I have discovered since moving to a
spot away from a good library, finding quality information is not a
cheap process. It never is, wherever you happen to be. Many students
appear to think that the opposite is true, and feel that too much effort
is required to find their own information. "Plagiarism" is another word
for "theft" and those librarians who teach information retrieval skills
will doubtless refer to it in their sessions. Whilst we have a
responsibility to facilitate the finding of information, it is a part of
knowledge management to ensure that the information is properly used an
not abused. Copyright is an issue similar to plagiarism.
If a librarian wants to be a part of an institution, then s/he should be
prepared to make the effort to be fully involved and accept both the
good AND bad things. Fortunately examples of major plagiarism are not
frequent. Responding to a request from a lecturer - a request which we
know perfectly well won't take much effort (but will assist relatonships
and improve our image) is surely one of the necessary ingredients of
being part of a team.
One of the good things about lis-link is that it is a network of
librarians from a variety of institutions. It's good to get another
perspective, or to be supported. But networks bring bad things as well
as good things. Inveitably there will be some issues which don't
interest us. We all have the "delete" key if that's the case. But, like
the Cuba librarians and mobile telephones - we should be extremely
careful of censoring the list content. I suspect that if we analysed
some of the matters appearing on the list we might just see why our
image is not all that we might want it to be!!!
Nobody should have to apologise for sending any matter to the list.
---
Roy Killey, MLS ALA Cert Ed
(formerly Academic Liaison Librarian, Design and Communication Systems,
Anglia Polytechnic University; now MPhil/PhD student researching into
the psychology of transport imagery)
28 Howe Lane,
Nafferton,
Driffield,
East Yorkshire,
YO25 4JU
01377 254718
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