The current issue of The Economist has a leader supporting the Google settlement and an article in the business section that quotes me in the course of discussing the issue. I am described, with my enthusiastic consent, as running an orphanage. The more I think of it the better the orphan metaphor works. Orphan works are orphans of a particular type — foundlings. They are not orphaned by a premature loss of their parents. They are left on the doorstep, taken in (by the library, of course, in the role of the tough but kind orphanage staff), nurtured and kept for as long as care is needed. They may have parents out there and they may not, no one knows. And now there is some hope that they will be invited to the dance, and we shall see how the story plays out.
The Economist interviewed me about the settlement at some length, and made a podcast that I quite like. It recapitulates fairly painlessly (it’s 13 minutes) some of things that I’ve been saying about the Google lawsuit and settlement for some time.
And, for something completely different and arguably more important, Paul Krugman has a superb piece entitled “How Did Economists Get It So Wrong” in the New York Times Magazine of September 6. What’s remarkable is how economists got it so wrong 70 years after Keynes got it so right. Anyhow, this is a testimonial for Krugman’s piece from an admiring economist.
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I am curious about your title as university librarian
dean of libraries i can understand, since that is an administrative role, although I would expect there should still be some desire for that role to be filled by someone from the field
but librarian?
well i can see that you really are the university librarian, but what does it say about the position or title (or school of library and information science that I assume you want people to believe has some value) that you became one of the biggest most “powerful”/important/prestigious whatever librarians without any relevant background or experience, wow you became interested while searching for a librarian
must be nice
the fact that they chose to nominate you shows that the selection committee doesn’t really put any value in the whole idea of library and information science as a school or academic field in it’s own regard
if i want to be the head librarian for a university i am better off getting a phd in economics and being an administrator?
it is interesting because people outside the field do question the validity of library and information science as its own academic field, and the value of such an education
the thinking goes that well really you just need a masters degree to be a librarian as a formality and a way for librarians to keep their numbers down and universities to take more kid’s money, but really it s not like you couldn’t just do the job just by being a bright person etc
clearly this is a view you and the university subscribe to
i think it is a joke that the university continues offer masters and phd programs in library and information sciences, and subscribes to any concept of accreditation for these programs
October 8, 2009 @ 12:22 pm