It is a book all LIS educators and administrators need to read now. The editors and author contributors show us by direct action what critical librarianship is. At the heart of the book is an ethics of care and self-care, an ethics born out of critical stances positioned in examining our rich intersectionalities and inter-being as people of color and allies. Librarians With Spines is a call to action that asks us to reflect on our intentionality as information professionals. (...) It challenges librarians to proudly uphold and carry forward our duty to serve our communities in our daily work. (shrink)

The paper discusses the publications of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (RSAS) as part of a wider network of publication exchange, linking learned societies, libraries, and archives. The periodicals of the RSAS went through several reorganisations between 1813 and 1903, all to some extent related to their role in publication exchange. Although subject to many of the same deliberations of commercial value and institutional prestige as the expanding book trade, publication exchange offered a means of communication for institutions with (...) widely differing financial, linguistic and scientific status, and a forum for articulating a wide range of values significant in scientific publication. In the context of publication exchange, the roles of producers and consumers, and of publishers and repositories of scientific knowledge overlap, and librarians emerge alongside editors as central actors in scientific communication. Scientific editorship should be viewed not only as a means of disseminating scientific findings to wider audiences, but as designing a product that could be used to forge institutional connections, to acquire publications, and to build collections. The case of the RSAS periodicals highlights the importance of publication, not only for the distribution of scientific knowledge, but for its acquisition. (shrink)

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BackgroundDeveloping a comprehensive, reproducible literature search is the basis for a high-quality systematic review (SR). Librarians and information professionals, as expert searchers, can improve the quality of systematic review searches, methodology, and reporting. Likewise, journal editors and authors often seek to improve the quality of published SRs and other evidence syntheses through peer review. Health sciences librarians contribute to systematic review production but little is known about their involvement in peer reviewing SR manuscripts.MethodsThis survey aimed to assess how (...) frequently librarians are asked to peer review systematic review manuscripts and to determine characteristics associated with those invited to review. The survey was distributed to a purposive sample through three health sciences information professional listservs.ResultsThere were 291 complete survey responses. Results indicated that 22% (n = 63) of respondents had been asked by journal editors to peer review systematic review or meta-analysis manuscripts. Of the 78% (n = 228) of respondents who had not already been asked, 54% (n = 122) would peer review, and 41% (n = 93) might peer review. Only 4% (n = 9) would not review a manuscript. Respondents had peer reviewed manuscripts for 38 unique journals and believed they were asked because of their professional expertise. Of respondents who had declined to peer review (32%, n = 20), the most common explanation was “not enough time” (60%, n = 12) followed by “lack of expertise” (50%, n = 10).The vast majority of respondents (95%, n = 40) had “rejected or recommended a revision of a manuscript| after peer review. They based their decision on the “search methodology” (57%, n = 36), “search write-up” (46%, n = 29), or “entire article” (54%, n = 34). Those who selected “other” (37%, n = 23) listed a variety of reasons for rejection, including problems or errors in the PRISMA flow diagram; tables of included, excluded, and ongoing studies; data extraction; reporting; and pooling methods.ConclusionsDespite being experts in conducting literature searches and supporting SR teams through the review process, few librarians have been asked to review SR manuscripts, or even just search strategies; yet many are willing to provide this service. Editors should involve experienced librarians with peer review and we suggest some strategies to consider. (shrink)

A philosophical and practical model for approaching the ethical challenges librarians are facing is provided in this work. The moral value of information is first examined, prompting a rethinking of librarians' understanding of professional neutrality and calling for them to broaden their role as community information specialists. Organizational ethics are next covered; the authors recommend specific management styles and values appropriate to libraries. This is followed by a critical analysis of the culture and tradition of librarianship, showing how (...) the field has reached its current identity and how its history can provide insights for new professional values. Practical recommendations for handling ethical problems in reference service, collection development and Internet access are then presented. (shrink)

Mr. Reed has performed a distinct service by reminding us ,309 ff.) of the odd statement by Guglielmo da Pastrengo that Tacitus was once the director of Titus' private library: if authentic, the information is too precious to be neglected. We cannot deny that Guglielmo may have had ancient sources now lost. When we know that a short epic, probably by Rabirius, one of the most admired poets of the Augustan age, disappeared after 1466, although it was protected by a (...) false ascription to Virgil, it would be foolhardy to claim that any loss after 1350 was impossible. On the other hand, we all know that instant erudition was a speciality of many Medieval sciolists whom admirers of the Middle Ages now call ‘Humanists’’ and ‘scholars’’, e.g. Arnulf of Orleans, whose recondite learning enabled him to inform us that Lucan was called Annaeus because bees settled on the infant's lips, and that he was brought to Rome as a captive after Nero stormed Cordova. (shrink)

There have been a number of studies examining the attitudes of librarians to ethical dilemmas, but few examining them in comparison with Library and Information Science students as we did in our study. According to that UK librarians and students in general hold surprisingly similar ethical attitudes. We expected the students to be more liberal, more willing to uphold idealistic principles, and given their student status, with attitudes balanced in favour of other students' and patrons' rights in terms (...) of fees, and accessibility, and copyright law. On the contrary, in many areas such as Internet filtering, looking at online erotic images, and removing books at the request of patrons, we found practitioners more liberal than the students. A reason for that might be that the students are keen to emulate what they perceive to be a conservative and mature outlook, i.e., a stance of responsibility, as a pressing concern for ILS students is likely to be the establishment of a career. Though there is a fair level of teaching ethical issues it seems to lead into a mediocre level of student awareness of basic issues or of the CILIP Code which is meant as a 'framework' to help information professionals 'manage the responsibilities and sensitivities which figure prominently in their work'. (shrink)

After two decades in the 21st Century, and despite all the advances in the area, some very important names from past centuries still do not have the recognition they deserve in the global history of library and information science and, specifically, of knowledge organization. Although acknowledged in British librarianship, the name of James Duff Brown still does not have a proper recognition on a global scale. His contributions to a free and more democratic library had a prominent place in the (...) works and projects he developed during his time at the libraries of Clerkenwell and Islington in London. Free access to the library shelves, an architecture centered on books and people, and classifications that are more dynamic were dreams fulfilled by Brown. With this biographical article, we hope to live up to his legacy and pay homage to a true librarian and an advocate of the public library and subject classification. (shrink)

This article attempts to provide empirical assessment of the nature and extent of ethical dilemmas confronted by librarians working in the news media. Sixty-eight librarians randomly selected from the membership of the News Division of the Special Libraries Association were surveyed to identify prevailing ethical attitudes, specific ethical problems, and the frequency with which those problems were encountered on the job. The study found a widespread concern about ethical issues among news librarians; 9 widely experienced ethical dilemmas; (...) and although ethical challenges are experienced by a majority of news librarians, they are not encountered with great frequency and therefore a crisis situation is not perceived to exist. These findings raise serious issues for both journalism and library professionals. (shrink)

This book brings into focus both the positive and negative aspects that technology places on the professional identity of librarians, highlighting the new methods involved in data management, communication, and library information education and research.

This paper argues that while the classical, essentialist conception of identity is appealing due to its simplicity, it does not adequately capture the complexity of professional or individual identity. The appeal to essentialism in librarianship contributes to some serious problems for the profession, such as exclusion and homogeneity in the workplace, high attrition rates of minority librarians, exploitation and alienation of an underrepresented workforce, as well as stereotyping. This paper examines the theoretical landscape with regard to the identity question (...) and proposes a more fitting alternative to essentialism, namely the relational conception of identity, and engages in a philosophical argument for the adoption of the relational account as a theoretical grounding for an understanding of the complex, fluid, and emergent nature of librarian identity within our dynamic profession. (shrink)

The luminaries of late thirteenth-century Europe took great interest in the mysterious fifth-century author known as Dionysius the Areopagite. They typically read Dionysius not in the original Greek, but in a Latin edition prepared sometime in the middle of the thirteenth century. This edition, which appeared first in Paris and later circulated all over Western Europe, was no mere translation. In addition to the famous translation made by Eriugena in the ninth century, it contained translations of scholia on the Dionysian (...) texts made by Anastasius the Librarian, alternative readings provided by Anastasius and other Latin readers, as well as excerpts from Eriugena's own theological masterwork, the Periphyseon. University scholars such as Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas thus learned Dionysian mystical theology not only from his text, but from the seven-hundred year interpretive tradition that literally surrounded it on the page. (shrink)

Are LLMs cultural technologies like photocopiers or printing presses, which transmit information but cannot create new content? A challenge for this idea, which we call bibliotechnism, is that LLMs generate novel text. We begin with a defense of bibliotechnism, showing how even novel text may inherit its meaning from original human-generated text. We then argue that bibliotechnism faces an independent challenge from examples in which LLMs generate novel reference, using new names to refer to new entities. Such examples could be (...) explained if LLMs were not cultural technologies but had beliefs, desires, and intentions. According to interpretationism in the philosophy of mind, a system has such attitudes if and only if its behavior is well explained by the hypothesis that it does. Interpretationists may hold that LLMs have attitudes, and thus have a simple solution to the novel reference problem. We emphasize, however, that interpretationism is compatible with very simple creatures having attitudes and differs sharply from views that presuppose these attitudes require onsciousness, sentience, or intelligence (topics about which we make no claims). (shrink)

We present and discuss the responses to a survey we sent to selected libraries regarding their decisions to accept unsolicited book donations, especially regarding any with an apparent political or proselytizing intent.

As a profession, librarians have proclaimed an ethical duty to ensure access to information for all people. However, many barriers exist to fulfilling this duty, including varying levels of education and technology around the globe, the cost of obtaining research information, and the concentration of scholarly publishing in English. This article outlines these barriers, concluding with a call to action for librarians to advocate for multilingual Open Access, to foster international scholarly communities, and to champion Internet access for (...) all. (shrink)