Retorts

Librarians Defended

I would like to take issue with the unsympathetic portrayal of librarians which appeared in the %Xref=|1282|March editorial=%.

While I appreciate the point being made that, "once, science issues were a matter of strong public interest", I wonder if you aren't doing librarians a great wrong by using them as the stick with which to bang your drum.

Consider the following:

(1) Asking for the science section in a "tiny local library" is like walking into a dairy which sells paper plates and plastic cutlery and asking where the Royal Doulton is shelved.

(2) Most libraries have a science section that is clearly signposted, and most individuals know from an early age that pure science is shelved in the Dewey classification system at 500 while the applied sciences are held in the 600s.

And all public libraries acquire what their reading public demands; if your neighbours chose to read Mills and Boon and ignore books on solar heating, that is their right.

(3) Many people I know who have gone on to become scientists were inspired at an early age by their educators, as well as school and public librarians who often went to extra trouble to provide colourful and informative texts.

(4) Modern training for librarians in New Zealand requires them to complete modules in the arts as well as the "hard" and "soft" sciences; and because of the changing job requirements, don't think that the librarians out there aren't political enough not to have realised that the Crown Research Institutes will require librarians with the sort of knowledge and skills needed to support science staff.

Don't get me wrong. I run a commerce library which serves a number of departments, such as Management, Economics and the Advanced Business Programme.

Each month I clip articles which I know will interest my clientele, and so I shall continue to buy your excellent journal. But I regard it as unsatisfactory that you have overlooked the excellent work being done by first-class public librarians by asking inappropriate and loaded questions in unsuitable venues.

Michael Hamblyn, Librarian Commerce Information Resource Centre, University of Otago

I'm disappointed you regarded the editorial as an attack on librarians. Its intent was to ask why science reading has been relegated to the Royal Doulton category of life. If this is not a suitable venue in which to ask such questions, then what is?