Information Technology in Librarianship

Price: $50.00
ISBN13: 9781591586296
ISBN10: 1591586291
Book code: LU8629
Libraries Unlimited
Paperback | 304 pages
Publication Date: 11/30/2008

DESCRIPTION

In the last 15 years, the ground - both in terms of technological advance and in the sophistication of analyses of technology - has shifted. At the same time, librarianship as a field has adopted a more skeptical perspective; libraries are feeling market pressure to adopt and use new innovations; and their librarians boast a greater awareness of the socio-cultural, economic, and ethical considerations of information and communications technologies. Within such a context, a fresh and critical analysis of the foundations and applications of technology in librarianship is long overdue.

A host of faculty and practitioners consider how and why information technology is vital to the future of the profession, as well as caveats against over/underreliance.

CONTENTS

Introduction: Information Technologies and Libraries--Why Do We Need New Critical Approaches

Part One: Foundations

Chapter 1: Critical Theory of Technology: An Overview

Chapter 2: Surveillance and Technology: Contexts and Distinctions

Chapter 3: Cycles of Net Struggle, Lines of Net Flight

Chapter 4: A Quick Digital Fix? Changing Schools, Changing Literacies, Persistent Inequalities: A Critical, Contextual Analysis

Chapter 5: Theorizing the Impact of IT on Library-State Relations

Part Two: Applications

Chapter 6: The Prospects for an Information Science: The Current Absence of a Critical Perspecitive

Chapter 7: Librarianship and the Labor Process: Aspects of the Rationalization, Restructuring, and Intensification of Intellectual Work

Chapter 8: "Their Little Bit of Ground Slowly Squashed into Nothing": Technology, Gender and the Vanishing Librarian

Chapter 9: Children and Information Technology

Chapter 10: Open Source Software & Libraries

Chapter 11: Technologies of Social Regulation: An Examination of Library OPACs and Web Portals

Chapter 12: Libraries, Archives and Digital Preservation: A Critical Overview

Conclusion: Just How Critical Should Librarianship Be of Technology?

Index

About the Editors and Contributors