Self-Examination: The Present and Future of Librarianship (review)

Self-Examination: The Present and Future of Librarianship is an ambitious book in which John M. Budd, professor and associate director of the School of Information Science at the University of Missouri-Columbia, works toward putting the complex and varied profession of librarianship into a coherent intellectual, philosophical, and political perspective. He suggests that there is an "absence of reflection" in our profession and offers "opportunities and suggestions for reflection" through an examination of history, information science, education, ethics, democracy, and information society. (p. vii) He does not claim to have the last word on this topic, preferring "the initiation of self-examination—in expression and in process—that will be joined by others." (p. viii) Unfortunately, the result is very uneven and provides for reflection and confusion in roughly equal measure.

The author is strongest when he is discussing the political and social aspects of librarianship, which the profession all too often obscures behind seemingly objective standards, policies, and practices. By extending his analysis outside the traditional boundaries of librarianship, he shows that, instead of reflecting on our purpose and letting it drive librarianship, we often allow our purpose to be driven by outside forces. In a time when the very idea of public space is threatened by the idealization of markets and business perspectives, he reminds us that libraries should strive for the common good and that "librarians have the ethical responsibility to provide access to communicative content that resists state control and market homogenization." (p. 129)

Budd questions the constricting vision of patrons as customers and libraries as quasi-bookstores because it impoverishes the services provided to our respective communities. By not confronting this ideology, librarians are allowing market-driven constraints to limit the possibility of contributing to a more inclusive public sphere. He describes the tension between intellectual freedom and social responsibility at the heart of librarianship and offers reasons why addressing that tension would help to make our profession more deliberate and assertive. He unpacks the multiple and often contradictory meanings of democracy and information society to show that librarians should be more aware of how these obfuscations promote certain interests over others. The problem in all these discussions, however, is that, in order to glean Budd's genuine insights, the reader is forced through a vast maze of political and philosophical detours.

Though many of the themes he treats are of great importance and his approach is often interesting, Self-Examination is fragmented by a lack of focus on his essential points and by a habit of straying wildly off course. He provides quick references to scores of thinkers but inadequate explanations of his own philosophical principles. He offers wide-ranging perspectives on librarianship but too few concrete examples. Throughout, the reader is left to wonder whether the chapters are a series of stand-alone pieces meant for meditative reflection or links in a chain that are leading to a grand synthesis. The final chapter, entitled "Optimistic Synthesis," does little to resolve this question.

Self-Examination is packed with references to technical philosophical terms, philosophies, and philosophers. This is not the first time Budd has dipped heavily into philosophy to illuminate the ways of our profession, having previously published Knowledge and Knowing in Library and Information Science: A Philosophical Framework (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2001). Often there seems to be no apparent reason why these references are introduced, since they do little to elaborate the library issues at hand. For instance, the author often refers to "telos" (italics in the original) when he could just as easily say "purpose." He titles his first chapter "Genealogy of the Profession" and discusses Fríedrích Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals and the work of Michel Foucault before racing through thousands of years of library history. The themes introduced in this first chapter alone could fill an entire book. Instead, it is difficult to understand what role this genealogy plays in the remainder of Self-Examination. In the...