This commentary from LewRockwell.com on critical thinking skills and its relationship to intelligence (as in military intelligence and CIA type stuff) is notable for the following comment:
“You can receive all the information you want, but if you are incapable of processing it and establishing patterns and relationships from disparate sources, you may as well be a librarian.”
I dunno about you, but I get the feeling this guy, William Buppert, doesn’t think too much of the work we do.
Hemisphere’s first Competitive Intelligence Center
Hemisphere’s first Competitive Intelligence Center
http://cic.simmons.edu/faq.html
http://cic.simmons.edu/
Guidance for the intelligence process
Guidance for the intelligence process
http://cic.simmons.edu/organizations.html
Correction
This begs for a response from the library community. This is further evidence that perceptions of The Librarian have dropped to new lows. This goes beyond the cute but progress-reversing/stereotype-reinforcing library action figure. This type of thinking is the true unmaking of American intelligence and common sense. His comments defame our profession and render a great disservice to the professional information community, which has long relied on librarians to help cultivate disparate resources and locate patterns, relevance, and meaning in those resources. This anti-librarian attitude must not stand, must not be overlooked, must not be euphemized, must not go unanswered. We owe it to our profession and to the state of information access and exchange to point out dangerously erroneous statements like these as well as to inform everyone that librarians are the only true allies of information seekers and the only remaining capable leaders/facilitators in an age rife with disinformation and information chaos. That should be common sense by now, but clearly even “educated” individuals who should know better do not. Let us correct that wherever possible.