Our Enduring Values: Librarianship in the 21st Century

Front Cover
American Library Association, 2000 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 188 pages

"In a sense, the world of libraries is a microcosm of the wider world, buoyed by technology but daunted by the unknown, changing in ways that most of us understand dimly, if at all."
From Our Enduring Values

A veteran of four decades of library service and one of today's leading library thinkers, Michael Gorman opens a discussion on library values--those that are rooted in historical perspective and those that can adapt to changing times. This provocative book takes you through the principles of eight core values as it considers the questions on the minds of most librarians today, including:

  • What is the role of the library today?
  • What is librarianship in the 21st Century?
  • What do patrons and communities want from their libraries?
  • Will libraries be strengthened or destroyed by new and changing technology?
  • How can I maintain the core values of librarianship into the future?

A must-read for progressive librarians everywhere, Our Enduring Values will help you to define your role in the library of the future.

 

Selected pages

Contents

Introduction
1
The History and Philosophy of Library Values
16
The Value of Libraries
29
The Library as Place
43
Stewardship
58
Service
74
Intellectual Freedom
88
Rationalism
102
Literacy and Learning
117
Equity of Access to Recorded Knowledge and Information
131
Privacy
144
Democracy
158
Keeping Faith
172
Index
179
Copyright

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Page 6 - A value is an enduring belief that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of ''conduct or end-state of existence. A value system is an enduring organization of beliefs concerning preferable modes of conduct or end-states of existence along a continuum of relative importance.

About the author (2000)

Michael Gorman was Dean of Library Services at the Henry Madden Library, California State University, Fresno from 1988-2007. From 1977 to 1988 he worked at the Library of the University of Illinois, Urbana as, successively, Director of Technical Services, Director of General Services, and Acting University Librarian. From 1966 to 1977 he was, successively, Head of Cataloging at the British National Bibliography, a member of the British Library Planning Secretariat, and Head of the Office of Bibliographic Standards in the British Library. He is the first editor of the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, Second Edition (1978) and of the revision of that work (1988), and he is the author of The Concise AACR2. Future Libraries: Dreams, Madness, and Reality (co-written with Walt Crawford) was honored with the 1997 Blackwell’s Scholarship Award. Our Enduring Values, published by ALA in 2000, was the winner of ALA’s 2001 Highsmith Award for the best book on librarianship. He is also the author of Our Own Selves: More Meditations for Librarians (2005) as well as hundreds of articles in professional and scholarly journals. He has given numerous presentations at international, national, and state conferences. Michael has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Margaret Mann Citation in 1979, the 1992 Melvil Dewey Medal, Blackwell’s Scholarship Award in 1997, the California Library Association/Access, Collections, and Technical Services Section Award of Achievement in 1999, and the Ken Haycock Award in 2010. He was a member of the American Library Association’s Council (1991-1995 and 2002-2006), the ALA Executive Board through 2007, and was president of ALA in 2005-2006. He was made a fellow of the [British] Library Association in 1979 and an Honorary Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) in 2005. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of the Thames Valley in 2007.

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