In this stirring manifesto, public intellectual, librarian, and philosopher Gorman addresses head on the “existential panic” among library professionals caused by the radical shift in how libraries are viewed.

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

How librarians can be radical positive change agents in their communities, dedicated to learning and making a difference. This book offers a guide for librarians who see their profession as a chance to make a positive difference in their communities—librarians who recognize that it is no longer enough to stand behind a desk waiting to serve. R. David Lankes, author of The Atlas of New Librarianship, reminds librarians of their mission: to improve society by facilitating knowledge creation in their communities. In this book, he provides tools, arguments, resources, and ideas for fulfilling this mission. Librarians will be prepared to become radical positive change agents in their communities, and other readers will learn to understand libraries in a new way. The librarians of Ferguson, Missouri, famously became positive change agents in August 2014 when they opened library doors when schools were closed because of civil unrest after the shooting of an unarmed teen by police. Working with other local organizations, they provided children and their parents a space for learning, lunch, and peace. But other libraries serve other communities—students, faculty, scholars, law firms—in other ways. All libraries are about community, writes Lankes; that is just librarianship. In concise chapters, Lankes addresses the mission of libraries and explains what constitutes a library. He offers practical advice for librarian training; provides teaching notes for each chapter; and answers “Frequently Argued Questions” about the new librarianship.

Conversations with Leading Academic and Research Library Directors: International Perspectives on Library Management presents a series of conversations with the directors of major academic and research libraries. The book offers insight, analysis, and personal anecdote from leaders in the library field, giving a unique perspective on how the modern library operates. Readers will learn about the most up-to-date trends and practices in the LIS profession from the directors of 24 internationally acclaimed academic and research libraries in Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore, and the UK and USA. This is the first book focusing on leaders and managers of library institutions to offer a global outlook. Facing the need to respond to the expectations of changing populations that librarians strive to serve, this book aims to develop a new understanding of the core values of academic and research libraries, and asks how librarians can innovate, adapt, and flourish in a rapidly shifting professional landscape. - Presents conversations with library leaders from 24 major institutions - Offers a global perspective on the operation and management of libraries - Discusses the director's impact on institutional structures and future landscapes - Gives insights based on first-hand experience

Collecting several key documents and policy statements, this supplement to the ninth edition of the Intellectual Freedom Manual traces a history of ALA’s commitment to fighting censorship. An introductory essay by Judith Krug and Candace Morgan, updated by OIF Director Barbara Jones, sketches out an overview of ALA policy on intellectual freedom. An important resource, this volume includes documents which discuss such foundational issues as The Library Bill of RightsProtecting the freedom to readALA’s Code of EthicsHow to respond to challenges and concerns about library resourcesMinors and internet activityMeeting rooms, bulletin boards, and exhibitsCopyrightPrivacy, including the retention of library usage records

The prevailing notion that the best government is achieved through principles of management and business practices is hardly new—it echoes the early twentieth-century "gospel of efficiency" challenged by Dwight Waldo in 1948 in his pathbreaking book, The Administrative State. Asking, "Efficiency for what?", Waldo warned that public administrative efficiency must be backed by a framework of consciously held democratic values. Revisiting Waldo's Administrative State brings together a group of distinguished authors who critically explore public administration's big ideas and issues and question whether contemporary efforts to "reinvent government," promote privatization, and develop new public management approaches constitute a coherent political theory capable of meeting the complex challenges of governing in a democracy. Taking Waldo's book as a starting point, the authors revisit and update his key concepts and consider their applicability for today. The book follows Waldo's conceptual structure, first probing the material and ideological background of modern public administration, problems of political philosophy, and finally particular challenges inherent in contemporary administrative reform. It concludes with a look ahead to "wicked" policy problems—such as terrorism, global warming, and ecological threats—whose scope is so global and complex that they will defy any existing administrative structures and values. Calling for a return to conscious consideration of democratic accountability, fairness, justice, and transparency in government, the book's conclusion assesses the future direction of public administrative thought. This book can stand alone as a commentary on reconciling democratic values and governance today or as a companion when reading Waldo's classic volume.

Web-Scale Discovery Services: Principles, Applications, Discovery Tools and Development Hypotheses summarizes and presents the state-of-the-art in WSDS. The title promotes a middle-way between finding the best tool for each particular need and the search for the most reliable systems. The title identifies basic theoretical problems and offers practical solutions for librarians. The volume offers a summary of ideas from around the world, giving a new perspective that is backed up by strong theory. Offering a vision for libraries, this book also allows archivists, museum specialists, computer scientists, commercial operators and interested users to deepen their culture and information literacy. The great number of information sources now available and the changing habits of web users has led to the development of Web Scale Discovery Services (WSDS). The goal of these systems and techniques is to make catalogues, databases, institutional repositories, Open Access archives and other databases searchable and discoverable through a single point of access. The diffusion of systems and connections between data disseminated by libraries and published by other institutions poses a challenge to understanding discovery in the modern library. - Lays out the state-of-the-art in WSDS for contemporary libraries and institutions - Presents an innovative take on information retrieval and digital document management - Grounds thinking on a bibliographic basis, combining academic, practical and commercial aspects - Offers a perspective on how WSDS and discovery tools are seen and used internationally - Provides a version of culture and information literacy of relevance to a broad-range of cultural specialists

Poor education, bad parenting, a sense of entitlement, the "wasteland" of television, and more. These are the symptoms of a culture in decline. While it's easy to recite a litany of our problems, identifying their root causes requires more than the facile commentary offered by media pundits. This in-depth historical analysis of cultural trends in American traces the problems of our current malaise back to two profoundly misguided views of human nature that were pervasive in this country in the twentieth century. The first was hereditarianism, which was highly influential until the end of World War II. The second was humanistic psychology, which emerged after the war as a reaction against negativism. Citing a host of original sources, Ruggiero shows that while the hereditarians advanced the absurdly pessimistic view that biology is destiny, humanistic psychology countered with an absurdly optimistic view of human nature. He also demonstrates that the flaws of both hereditarianism and humanistic psychology are observable in today's resurgent progressivism. Beyond critique, Ruggiero presents a compelling case for restoring the traditional principles and values associated with the Western view of human nature. In this view, human nature is inherently imperfect but has the potential for goodness and wisdom; intelligence is the sum of inherited capacity and performance attained through mental training and acquired knowledge; reason is more reliable than feelings; and self-esteem is the result of actual achievement. Blending thorough research with incisive analysis, Ruggiero shows the relevance of recent intellectual history to today's social problems and charts a course for a better future.

Underlying the many crises in American life, writes Richard John Neuhaus, is a crisis of faith. It is not enough that more people should believe or that those who believe should believe more strongly. Rather, the faith of persons and communities must be more compellingly related to the public arena. "The naked public square"--which results from the exclusion of popular values from the public forum--will almost certainly result in the death of democracy. The great challenge, says Neuhaus, is the reconstruction of a public philosophy that can undergird American life and America's ambiguous place in the world. To be truly democratic and to endure, such a public philosophy must be grounded in values that are based on Judeo-Christian religion. The remedy begins with recognizing that democratic theory and practice, which have in the past often been indifferent or hostile to religion, must now be legitimated in terms compatible with biblical faith. Neuhaus explores the strengths and weaknesses of various sectors of American religion in pursuing this task of critical legitimation. Arguing that America is now engaged in an historic moment of testing, he draws upon Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish thinkers who have in other moments of testing seen that the stakes are very high--for America, for the promise of democratic freedom elsewhere, and possibly for God's purpose in the world. An honest analysis of the situation, says Neuhaus, shatters false polarizations between left and right, liberal and conservative. In a democratic culture, the believer's respect for nonbelievers is not a compromise but a requirement of the believer's faith. Similarly, the democratic rights of those outside the communities of religious faith can be assured only by the inclusion of religiously-grounded values in the common life. The Naked Public Square does not offer yet another partisan program for political of social change. Rather, it offers a deeply disturbing, but finally hopeful, examination of Abraham Lincoln's century-old question--whether this nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.

In this update of the ideal introduction to the library profession, the core competencies of professional librarians are presented in 14 essays supplemented with foundational principles and context. The original edition of this book gained popularity as a required work for LIS because it uniquely provided a broad, accessible overview of the core curricular areas and foundations for the library profession. What distinguishes the book as an introduction to the work of professional librarians is that it's not just about information in context or about libraries and their mission. Importantly, it also covers the required competencies of professional librarians, laying a firm foundation for future courses. In this second edition, each chapter has been revised and updated to take into account current thinking and references. As with the first edition, the book is organized around the foundations of the profession and key functional areas. Questions such as how to think like a librarian and how to facilitate community development are specifically and explicitly addressed. In compiling the book, the editors sought out the leading thinkers, educators, and practitioners in each core area as chapter authors. Each of the contributors provides an introduction to the knowledge, skills, and abilities associated with their respective area of expertise, discusses current and emerging applications, and explores trends and issues.