Featured Book: Information Technology in Librarianship: New Critical Approaches

by Gloria J. Leckie and John E. Buschman

Selected as Featured Book of the Month by Informed Librarian Online; http://www.informedlibrarian.com

STATEMENT:
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.

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?

Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited, 2008. 304pp.

2008/softbound 9781591586296 $50.