Being Analog - Softcover

American Library Association

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0838907547 ISBN 13: 9780838907542

Publisher: ALA Editions, 1999

Synopsis

Examining digital resources in libraries and the people that use them, this work offers an alternative model to a simplistic digital future. The author challenges popular notions of the virtual library, asserting that the complex mix of technologies projects no clear path to the future and that people use technology in unexpected ways.

About this title

About the Author

Walt Crawford is a highly prolific writer and editor, currently a senior analyst at the Research Libraries Group, Inc. (RLG). He has authored or co-authored fourteen books and more than 300 articles and columns on such topics as libraries, technology, media, publishing, and personal computing. An award-winning author, he is also a popular speaker at library professional meetings. He has contributed to numerous library publications over the years, and his columns regularly appear in American Libraries (""The Crawford Files""), EContent (""disContent""), and Online (""PC Monitor""). He is the author and publisher of the Web-based ezine ""Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large"" and was named one of the ""Top Librarian Personalities on the Web"" by Searcher magazine. He is active in the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA), winning their Library Hi Tech Award for Outstanding Communication for Continuing Education in Library and Information Science.

From Library Journal

Because of my tremendous respect for Crawford, Access Services Officer of the Research Libraries Group, I read and reread Being Analog to see if the problem with it is me. Maybe it is, but I couldn't figure out for whom the book is written or why. It is a collection of vintage Crawford, so well aged that much of it was already dated when he first thought, said, or wrote it. You will recognize the Crawford voice, the warning, and even many of the villains. These are not exactly "straw targets" as Walt takes great pains to point out, but surely they are rare enemies of libraries, singled out to give the author targets for his attack on a kind of technovision that very few professionals hold anymore, indeed that very few ever did believe. It is the "digital dreamers" who fake "hardnosed practicality" and "those who still write about digital libraries as replacements for mixed libraries" whom Crawford attacks. I doubt any exist in the extreme terms he uses for them, although he did find one to name in the text and in the ten-item bibliography (three by Crawford). It is hard to believe, for example, that anyone is really so dumb that he can be described thus: "They don't read books, so books are dead.... They circulate preprint journal articles and consider magazines beneath contempt...." Oh, sure, there's some good stuff. I like many of Crawford's arguments, like those against Internet filters, but nearly all have been exhausted through heavy use, or are so basic as to already be among "the givens" of librarianship. Crawford says it all in straightforward, popular language. It is exhortative stuff, presuming such low levels of understanding that it is sometimes downright condescending. Most disappointing, the book fails to define or specify the problems it wants to solve, the enemies it wants to vanquish, or the future it wants to shape. After the second reading, I began to think that those problems, enemies, and futures all had an uncanny resemblance to windmills.AJohn Berry, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: ALA Editions
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0838907547
• ISBN 13: 9780838907542
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 245