LISNews: Librarian News

Are You a Press or Are You a Library? An Interview with NYU’s Monica McCormick
This interview covers one example of the ways in which a university library and press are learning to negotiate this new publishing ecosystem together. I spoke with Monica McCormick (@moncia), who holds the interesting and unusual position of simultaneously working with both the NYU Press and the NYU Library in her position in the Office of Digital Scholarly Publishing. In our conversation, we covered issues ranging from the relationship between the Press and the Library at NYU, her position on open access, and the important and undervalued work that editors continue to play in academia.

It’s a role which conjures the image of a demure character charged with ensuring a hushed silence in one of England’s great centres of learning.
So it is little surprise that Oxford University student Madeline Grant’s bid to win an election to become a librarian by claiming ‘I have a great rack’, has provoked such disquiet.
The English undergraduate has been accused of a ‘sexist’ attempt to sway votes when she wrote on her manifesto for Union Librarian: ‘I don’t hack, I just have a great rack.’

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Libraries are not in the construction business

Social constructionism, constructivism, post-structuralism, standpoint epistemology, deconstructionism….ever heard of these? Chance are, if you’ve taken a look at some of the recent literature in the philosophical aspects of librarianship, you’ve come across these and/or similar theories. Variously lumped together under the aegis of postmodernism, these theories are distinct, yet they are united through a common belief that we have no epistemic access to a mind-independent reality. Some of these theories go even further and claim not only that we can’t know anything about the world outside of ourselves, but that there isn’t even an objective, mind-independent reality at all—reality is subjective. In effect, these theories advocate various forms of relativism. I’ve criticized this type of relativistic thinking in previous posts, but perhaps it’s time to clarify. Specifically, I want to explain why relativism, in all of its forms, is harmful to librarianship. This type of thinking is self-refuting, it impedes learning, it disenfranchises those who most need our help, it obstructs social progress, and it erodes the value of libraries in society.

Occupy Lamont’s rhetoric distracts from the issue of layoffs
"Again, we welcome Occupy Lamont to go about their business. But a discussion of the kind that they claim to be interested in having ought not distract from the issue at hand. As a community, we do not need to re-imagine the fundamental properties of the library. There is no impetus to do so, and Harvard’s librarians, led by University Librarian Robert C. Darnton ’60, have been working not only on modernizing our system but also making Harvard’s material accessible for free online. Occupy Lamont distracts and potentially impinges on this real progress, and stands in the way of a frank discussion about layoffs."