The Myth of the Electronic Library: Librarianship and Social Change in America (Contributions in Librarianship and Information Science)

Rating:
Summary: excellent work of Intellectual History (of librarianship)
Review: This is a thoroughly enjoyable book to read, should be read by any new aspiring MLS student hoping to join the LIS field and ought to be read by practising librarians who want to understand the intricate intellectual history of the current controversies in Library & Information Science today...including some of the ideological positions & conflicts that underlie these myths.
The book is very theoretical, which will be a turn off to some, especially some of the more pratical/pragmatic oriented librarians out there, but as an MLS student myself with an undergraduate background in History & Literary Criticism (who is aspiring to be an academic librarian), I thorougly enjoyed this book & feel it makes an excellent companion piece to Nicholson Baker's justifiably acerbic _Double Fold_ & Walt Crawford's _Future Libraries: Dreams, Madness & Reality_ and _Being Analog_. Birdsall's book (and the others) make(s) you stand up and realize American librarianship has been cowed & held hostage by non-librarian outsiders from the US military-industrial complex for far too long now--librarianship needs to be taken back by librarians, for librarians and for the public good!
Birdsall's book in particular is an exemplar of what Germans call "IDEENGESCHICHTE" or "history of ideas". Birdsall offers alternative myths to the 'Myth of the Electronic Library'--truly humanistic myths such as the 'Myth of the Library as Place' and the 'theraputic model of librarianship'.
**Highly recommended!**