Postmodernism is still the subject of vigorous ongoing debate in a variety of fields like education and anthropology and has now arrived in the literature of librarianship. Prior conflicts generated over postmodernism remain--including academic areas where it has been declared passe. This paper summarizes postmodernism and its intellectual…

Librarianship and library and information science (LIS) have long struggled with an ongoing lack of a theoretical and epistemological basis. There have been renewed efforts to explore various theoretical and philosophical positions and their meaning for librarianship and LIS research. This article explores the framework that Jurgen Habermas offers…

Some may think being a school librarian requires the same talents and skills at all grade levels. The author, having a masters in library science, thought she could handle any library-related issue no matter what the patron age. In this article, she describes three distinct moments from her first day as an elementary librarian which made her…

The Federal Government is introducing a new funding model for research in Australian higher education institutions, the Research Quality Framework (RQF). This paper provides an overview of the RQF and looks at possible impacts of the RQF on academic libraries in Australia. These impacts are drawn from experience at one Australian university,…

The library and information science field is currently confronted with difficult decisions about how best to allocate acquisition expenditures among increasingly expensive journals. This article measures the return-on-investment of serial expenditures through the use of citation analysis, which is a widely used approach to ascertaining journal…

Speculates on the impact of the women's movement on librarianship. (PF)

Discussion of the criteria of professionalism, and four ways that librarians fail to attain professional status: they are often subordinate to their patrons; the esoteric knowledge in the field is unimpressive; they lack a highly exclusive professional association; and they have a poor public image. (LS)

Describes the organization, sponsorship, scope, and procedures of American National Standards Institute, Inc., Committee Z39 on library work, documentation, and related publishing practices. Includes a list of Z39 subcommittees, price list of standards in print, report on standards in progress, and a list of the 53 member organizations. (Author)

These notes prepared for an advanced course on the theory and history of cataloging contain a summary of and comments on three aspects of Domanovszky's cataloging theory: (1) the function of the catalog is to identify all publications of a work, as well as all editions of a publication; (2) a catalog code should specify alternative practices for…

An expansion of a list developed at a British library school, this glossary contains terminology used in indexing work done by libraries and information scientists. Entries are arranged alphabetically and vary in length from one line to one page. There may be up to three parts in each entry. The first is a basic definition with examples where…

The scope of this glossary is defined pragmatically and selectively on the basis of the needs of the students at the Columbia University School of Library Service. Most of the terms selected for inclusion are those found to require definition in the courses in information science and indexing. The focus is on those areas where the terminology…

Development of librarianship as a profession is impeded by the librarian who is intent on developing the means to fulfill user needs without regard to the client, as well as those people who believe there is nothing esoteric or complicated about librarianship. Comments from selected CLW readers are included. (Author/MBR)

Fees are charged by these services on the basis of flat rate, service, and "connect time." Support can also be obtained through subsidies. Some services market diverse products in addition to their printed publications, including output in different formats and document services. (JAB)

Activities, philosophies and future plans of the International and Comparative Librarianship Group are described. (4 references) (SJ)