Blatant Berry: Good Riddance to 2005!
Hope for library solutions from a problematic year
John N. Berry III, Editor-in-Chief -- Library Journal, 1/15/2006
I'm glad 2005 is over, but it gave hope for 2006. It is almost as if each negative event, practice, or idea from 2005 created a positive possibility for 2006.
Consider library education. While many of our LIS programs still struggle to find an identity that gives them the academic status of disciplines comparable to the “true sciences,” the students are getting better and better. Not only that, the overwhelming majority really want to be librarians and frequently complain about the lack of connections between the programs and the practice.
Still, these students face a shortage of professional jobs when they graduate. The response: an online literature of the best job-hunting advice we've seen in decades. While jobs are not plentiful, the deficit has brought negative attention to the administrative fad of 2005—and earlier—to cut costs by downgrading professional jobs in libraries. It has also brought new respect and attention to that largest constituency of library workers, the support staff.
Notwithstanding the whining of some chronic naysayers in librarianship and the fields that serve libraries, leaders of the American Library Association (ALA) did stick to their guns, and our annual conference is still slated for New Orleans in June. No, David, that's not making ALA into a “social welfare agency” (see David Bryant's “Uneasy in the Big Easy,” Feedback, p. 10). It is making ALA socially ­responsible and part of the solution to Hurricane Katrina, unlike the Bush administration or the Red Cross. We'll have a great conference in the Big Easy this year. Laissez le bon temps roulez!
Google was one of the big stories of 2005. Its impact on libraries and library practice brought fear and trembling to some librarians, dreams for the future to others, and a new set of digital disruptions, dilemmas, and debate. So far Google more often links searchers to bookstores but not to libraries, a cause for concern (see News, p. 19). On the other hand, it has the potential to revolutionize research and to make the libraries of the world into the world's library. Like so much of what happened in 2005, the emergence and growth of a monster called Google has forced us to reposition our profession and our libraries. This can provide us with the next mission of the library, beyond but not without books, to the community builder and binder it must become.
Possibly the most negative news of 2005 was the massive growth in the legal and illegal surveillance of and intrusion into the information-seeking and free expression processes of Americans by their government. We haven't seen a government so intrusive and so neglectful of our civil rights and liberties since the era of Sen. Joseph McCarthy. This time, however, some very courageous librarians have resisted government prying and brought great credit to themselves and to our profession. We start this year knowing our concerns have been magnified and spread to our politicians, our library users, and our citizens. In what many think is a victory for librarians, the U.S. Senate recently extended the life of the USA PATRIOT Act for six months, promising a review of its most onerous sections.
I don't mean to come on like Eleanor Porter's Pollyanna, because all of these very real problems of 2005 still need solutions. All I'm saying is that 2005 gave us the motivation to try to find ways to deal with them. That's my resolution for 2006, to keep seeking ways to solve the many problems of libraries and of America.
