Daring to Be Erudite: Traditional Librarianship in an Age of Social Media Paperback -

From the publisher

The education that future librarians receive in Master's-level programs accredited by the American Library Association is lamentable. Newly minted librarians often enter the workforce with only a nebulous constellation of skills centered on hospitality, sociability, and approachability-the result of having been taught that niceness is a professional trait and that machine-based processes can be confidently relied on to perform the tasks of selecting, cataloging, and recommending books. It's little wonder that libraries are no longer "monument[s] of culture and learning," as per T.C. Boyle's story "Theft and Other Issues." This book presents an alternative approach to librarianship based on John Erskine's view that everyone should feel they have a "moral obligation to be intelligent." It's frankly an old-fashioned approach infused with conservative values, but in an age dominated by social media-an age where intelligence has been reduced to what Karl Taro Greenfeld, in the essay "Faking Cultural Literacy," refers to as "a pastiche of knowledgeability that is really a new model of know-nothingness"-an old-fashioned approach may be the only method of saving what's left of librarianship. As Edmund Wilson commented, people will eventually realize that "an acquaintance with the great works of art and thought is the only real insurance possible against the barbarism of the time."