The Questioning Librarian

My first job as a librarian was in the city of Uniontown, the birthplace of George C. Marshall. Reminders of the general's presence were everywhere, from the plaza dedicated to his memory to the portraits that rested in the library, including one hanging directly across from my desk. Two full shelves were dedicated to various biographies of Marshall, all of them laudatory, including one whose very title declared Marshall "A Hero for Our Time." It was then with great interest that I came across a new biography by historians Debi and Irwin Unger, which promised to paint a more balanced picture of the general's life and achievements. While not denying his successes, the authors are quick to point out Marshall's many flaws. While he deserves acclaim for overseeing the military buildup in the war, the training of American soldiers was grotesquely inadequate. Lauded as an exceptional judge of character, the Ungers assert that the real record speaks otherwise. His...

When I began my tenure as a library director, one of the things that caused me the most trepidation was the thought of putting together a budget. When the time came, I did the best I could with no financial training and as much knowledge about the finances of the library as I could gather. I made sure to check the budget with anyone who might know enough to give constructive comment. Remarkably, it held up rather well in the following year, and it was far less stressful to put together the next budget. But it should never have been this way. This experience, and subsequent work with others in the field of library and information science, revealed a glaring oversight in how librarians are trained. I cannot speak for graduate programs other than my own, but the lack of training in basic finance is not only a surprising lapse but a disservice to the field as a whole. How can we be expected to effectively lead our organizations if we don't have the training we need to thrive? How ...

There have always been anti-intellectual elements in our public life; both Richard Hofstadter and Susan Jacoby have chronicled the waxing and waning of anti-intellectualism in the United States in the past two centuries. What is disturbing is to see that, for all our knowledge, our technology, and the progress we have made, anti-intellectualism is on the rise again. While we have always seen sniping at the edges in the ongoing battles over teaching evolution, and climate change, many of the recent battles have been attacks on education itself, and the very idea that education has value for its own sake. The attacks on education have come largely from the Republican Party, often in the form of deep cuts to both K-12 education and higher education. Sacrifices must be made, the governors and legislators solemnly declare, but those sacrifices never seem to come from those who can afford to make them, nor are they equally distributed. Pennsylvania's now-former Republican gove...