I think the beauty of this pre-1960’s literature is its humanist focus or tone. While I do appreciate the empirical studies which have that JASIS tone, it is trying sometimes to deal with books written in this highly structured style, breaking the searching process down into highly subdivided steps and creating more “models”.

It’s great to come across a fellow male blogger from a Canadian library school - we’re a rare breed! I couldn’t agree with you more about the classic literature that library programs ignore. Keep up the great writing - I’ll be following your feed.

Cheers, Graham

I sure wish I had any part of an answer for you. As much as I would like one myself, alas, I do not.

I am glad, though, to see that you have been touched by these works and opened to these questions. Much of this literature has important things to say to us today but most are not reading it.

I will not venture an answer as to why many LIS educators ignore this literature but I can perhaps offer some insight into why most students are not finding it.

1. If it isn’t assigned it isn’t going to get read.
2. If it is assigned it might be skimmed.
3. The smallest percentage of students is ever going to track down sources used in their readings [see 1 & 2 above]
4. Many of our students think (and are repeatedly told) that the world has changed drastically and that they live in a vastly different time than their immediate predecessors.
5. Most of those students in 4 are simply too young or too poorly (narrowly) educated to realize the absurdity of 4.
6. Much of this stuff is not on the Internet and therefore does not exist in many minds.
7. Everyone knows that LIS literature sucks and is all about “how we did it good.” Thus, what in the heck are you talking about?

I have no doubt that I could come up with a few more but will stop. I, too, once thought that most of our literature was crap. And, honestly, a lot of it is. But one only has to keep trying and reading a few things on their own. Trace a footnote or two to those things that repeatedly keep showing up in reference lists, e.g., Wilson’s Two kinds of power essay.

Welcome to that (almost) secret part of my world that I sure wish I could make widely known, both in our field and out of it. There is so much of importance and relevance to today’s issues in our literature that so many know so little about.