What Your MLIS Never Taught You

The Other 90%: What Your MLIS Never Taught You is an article by Byron Anderson, originally a talk at last summer\’s ALA conference and later published in Counterpoise and then picked up in Library Juice. In it, he claims that 90% of what is published is semi-invisible to librarians, because it is not covered in the major review journals, which are dominated by the marketing apparati of the major publishing companies (which have grown ever larger as a result of merger-mania). Publications that are critical of the status quo are affected the most, since their interests vary from the corporate interests of the big publishers. This ultimately affects the nature of our library collections. Anderson criticises some of the major \”lessons\” of common collection development textbooks and offers alternatives. He also recommends that library schools teach new librarians about the publishing industry so they will be able to respond to these facts. I am skeptical of the 90% figure but strongly agree with Anderson\’s major points. Do you have any comments? Kudos? Threats?

August 5, 2000 by Uncategorized 0

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