Some librarians are sharply criticizing a report issued in January that urges libraries to pursue more digitization projects and make greater use of the Web. The critics say the federal report gives short shrift to the specific needs of both scholars and the Library of Congress's cataloging services.
The protests are being fueled by a critique written in March on behalf of more than 1,500 unionized professional employees of the Library of Congress. The critique says the earlier report—"On the Record: Report of the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control"—shows a naïve faith in interactive Web applications and pushes librarians to spend more time with technology at the expense of developing and managing catalogs for scholarship.
Thomas J. Mann, a reference librarian at the Library of Congress, wrote the critique for the employees' union. Managing research materials "requires high-level professional thinking," he writes, "not just computer algorithms and nonstandardized tags contributed by anyone with access to the Internet." The paper, titled "'On the Record' but off the Track," was released this month.
He writes that the "On the Record" report—put together by an ad hoc committee of research librarians and business executives—fails to distinguish between "scholars and those who may be called 'quick information' seekers." Scholars want a good overview of relevant sources, he notes, not online retrievals of "every paragraph in any book that happens to mention their topic in passing."
Ted P. Gemberling, a librarian at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said he agreed with some of Mr. Mann's criticisms. He said some librarians are attempting to organize a petition in opposition to the report.
Deanna B. Marcum, associate librarian for library services at the Library of Congress, who created the group that drafted "On the Record," is preparing a response to Mr. Mann's paper.
