Educating The Librarian
As part of his platform when running for ALA President in 2006, Gorman pledged to address what he called the education crisis.
The article Whither Library Education? set out his views on the current state of LIS education. He concluded that LIS education had become technocentric, male-dominated and out of touch with the needs of practitioners. This view was critiqued by Dillon and Norris, while both papers were critiqued by Pawley for their treatment of the issue of gender in librarianship.
Library and Information Science academics also responded in the professional press, questioning whether there was a crisis to address.
During his year in office, Gorman introduced an initiative intended to discuss the issue of education. Sessions were held with practitioners and academics. However, Gorman’s traditional views may have led to younger librarians turning away from the idea and their views not being represented:
“Whatever the case, after all that effort we still don’t know what current students and recent graduates really think about the educations upon which they spend so much money.”
Despite the initiative, accreditation and curricula remained unchanged at the end of Gorman’s tenure.
Read more about this topic: Michael Gorman (librarian)
Famous quotes containing the words educating the, educating and/or librarian:
“I am not impressed by the Ivy League establishments. Of course they graduate the best—it’s all they’ll take, leaving to others the problem of educating the country. They will give you an education the way the banks will give you money—provided you can prove to their satisfaction that you don’t need it.”
—Peter De Vries (b. 1910)
“Another success is the post-office, with its educating energy augmented by cheapness and guarded by a certain religious sentiment in mankind; so that the power of a wafer or a drop of wax or gluten to guard a letter, as it flies over sea over land and comes to its address as if a battalion of artillery brought it, I look upon as a fine meter of civilization.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In early days, I tried not to give librarians any trouble, which was where I made my primary mistake. Librarians like to be given trouble; they exist for it, they are geared to it. For the location of a mislaid volume, an uncatalogued item, your good librarian has a ferret’s nose. Give her a scent and she jumps the leash, her eye bright with battle.”
—Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)