University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

"The New Technology and Competencies for ""The Most Typical of the Activities of Libraries"": Technical Services"

Henderson, Kathryn Luther

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/1219

Description

Title
"The New Technology and Competencies for ""The Most Typical of the Activities of Libraries"": Technical Services"
Author(s)
Henderson, Kathryn Luther
Issue Date
1983
Keyword(s)
  • Libraries --Data processing
  • Online data processing
  • Information technology
  • Library education
Abstract
"At a library conference in 1940, William M. Randall called technical services the ""most typical of the activities of libraries"" ""they are..."" he said, ""the things which librarians do that no one else does the secrets of the craft."" 1 In those intervening forty-three years much has been written and uttered in defense and derision of these ""secrets of the craft."" These most typical of library activities have changed the name Randall used, technical processes, to technical services. They have moved from being sneeringly derided as ""backroom,"" ""basement"" or other dreary location activities to being enthusiastically hailed today as ""where the action is."" They are, fortunately, no longer the ""secrets"" that they were in Randall's day. They have been moved into, moved around within and even moved out of the organizational charts. Regardless of all these attitudes and activities, the functions of acquiring, organizing and preserving library materials persist and the competencies necessary to carry out these three functions will be the focus of this paper. In the paper, reference will frequently be made to the ""technical services librarian"" meaning any librarian who works in that aspect of librarianship. The emphasis is on no particular type of library. The term library will be used as meaning also information center."
Publisher
Graduate School of Library and Information Science. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Series/Report Name or Number
Clinic on Library Applications of Data Processing (20th : 1983)
ISSN
0069-4789
Type of Resource
text
Language
en
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1219
Copyright and License Information
Copyright owned by Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois 1983.

Owning Collections

1983: Professional competencies--technology and the librarian PRIMARY
20th Clinic on Library Applications of Data Processing (1983). Edited by Linda C. Smith
Faculty and Staff Research and Scholarship - Information Sciences
Articles, papers, and other research and scholarship from iSchool faculty and staff