INFORMATION, LIBRARIES AND SOCIETY
LIS 390 / LEEP3 / Summer, 1996

The Graduate School of Library and Information Science

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS,
Urbana-Champaign

Taught by Terry L. Weech and Marsha C. Woodbury

Readings are either in paper copies included in the Required Readings Packet
or archived on the Web (if on the Web, a URL is given, and all of these URLs will be linked
from the class home page).

I. Introduction

Introductory readings in the Required Readings packet, including "Notes toward a Definition of Libraries, "Library Bill of Rights," and others.

Borges, Jorge Luis. "The Library of Babel," in his Ficciones (tr. by Anthony Kerrigan. New York: Grove Press, 1963), pp. 79-88. [Also in his Labyrinths (tr. by James E. Irby; New York: New Directions, 1962), pp. 51-59]

Krummel, D. W. Fiat lux, fiat latebra. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama, 1983 [Revised version, 1994]

II. The Message in the Medium

Baker, Nicholson. "Annals of Scholarship: Discards," The New Yorker, vol. 70, no. 7 (April 4, 1994), pp. 64-86.

Rothenberg, Jeff. "Ensuring the Longevity of Digital Documents," Scientific American, Jan. 1995, pp. 42-47.

III. The Message in the Institution

Harris, Michael. "The Purpose of the American Public Library: A Revisionist Interpretation of History," Library Journal, 98 (Sept. 1973), 2509-

Dain, Phyllis. "Ambivalence and Paradox: The Social Bonds of the Public Library," Library Journal, 100 (1975), 261-66.

IV. The Message in Special Initiatives

Grimes, William. "Libraries Ponder Role In the Digital Age," The New York Times, April 39, 1996, 1,4.

Schiller, Herbert I., and Anita R. Schiller. "Libraries, Public Access to Information, and Commerce," in Vincent Mosco and Janet Wasko, The Political Economy of Information, (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988), pp. 146-66.

Lamolinara, Guy, "Metamorphosis of a National Treasure." American Libraries, [March 1996], 31-33

V. The Message in the Mission

Heckart, Ronald J. "The Library as a Marketplace of Ideas," College & Research Libraries, 52 (1991), 491-505.

Ross, Catherine Sheldrick. "Metaphors of Reading." Journal of Library History, 22 (1987), 147-63.

Pollitt, Katha. "Canon to the Right of Me (Why We Read)," The Nation, 253 (Sept. 23, 1991), pp. 328-32.

VI. Intellectual Property

* These first two readings are found of the Web, not in Required Readings Packet

* Okerson, Ann. "Who Owns Digital Works?" Scientific American, August 1996. [URL: http://www.sciam.com/WEB/0796issue/0796okerson.html

* U. S. Copyright Law, 17 U.S.C. sec 107-108 (URL: http://www.law.cornell.edu/topics/copyright.html). Go to "U.S. Copyright Act" and then to Chapt. 1 and read section 107-108.

Selected Statements on Copyright (in Required Readings Packet):

National Writers Union. Principles on Contracts between Writers and Electronic Book Publishers (April 1994)

National Information Initiative. Intellectual Property Rights: Preliminary Draft of the Report. (summer 1994)

Intellectual Property: An Association of Research Libraries statement of Principles.

Crews, Kenneth, "What Qualifies as `Fair Use'" The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 17, 1996, pp. B1-B2.

VII. Intellectual Freedom

Materials relating to the Bartlesville censorship incident:

[1.] Article in The Black Dispatch (Oklahoma City), Match 18, 1950.

[2.] Darlene Anderson Essary, "Hush-Hush in Bartlesville" (letter to the editor), Saturday Review (Sept. 30, 1950), p. 24.

[3.] David Berninghausen, "Film Censorship," A.L.A. Bulletin, 44 (Dec. 1950), 447-48

[4.] "Legal Action Taken . . . , ", ibid., 451.

[5.] "Censorship in Bartlesville" (Oklahoma Library Association, Committee on Intellectual Freedom), ibid., 45 (March 1951), 87-90.

[6.] Everett T. Moore, "Bartlesville, and After" ("Intellectual Freedom" column), ibid., 54 (Nov. 1960), 815-17.

[7.] Rice Estes, "Segregated Libraries," Library Journal, 85 (Dec. 15, 1960), 4418-22

[8.] "Segregation in Libraries" ("Readers' Voice" column of Letters to the Editor, responding to Estes, ibid., pp. 730-36 passim.

Asheim, Lester. "Not Censorship but Selection," Wilson Library Bulletin, 28 (1953), 63-67.

VIII. Library and Information Science as a Profession

Abbott, Andrew. The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1988. 331.71209 AB26S / LSX [esp. ch. 8: "The Information Professions," pp. 215-46

Draper, Hal. "MS FND IN A LBRY," Library Journal, 87 (1962), 916-19. [From Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1961]

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Last modified: July 15, 1996, by Marsha Woodbury