Renewing Professional Librarianship: A Fundamental Rethinking

Can professional librarianship exist, let alone thrive, in the 21st century? Does accreditation protect the profession, or reduce it to a minor component of information science? The prognosis is not good, claims cultural pragmatist Bill Crowley, with worse to follow unless library studies and information studies are viewed as separate cognate areas. While an information-centric definition may be appropriate for corporate information specialists, he notes that academic, public, and school librarians are already suffering the effects of devaluation. The remedy is to embrace a concept called lifecycle librarianship, the ability to meet crucial public needs from the lapsit to the nursing home, by honing the library’s time honored role as a vital resource for reading and lifelong learning; and he concludes with a series of recommendations for library associations, library and information education educators, and practitioners and a challenge for the reader to do something with them!