John M. Budd

I tried to like this book, but it turns out to be mostly a heavy theoretical treatise. The first chapter is a historical overview of libraries from the dawn of time to the 20th century. It is pretty dry reading. The other chapters are not that much better. Maybe for me, in large measure, the book did not work because much of what is in the book I have read in various forms in other sources, especially during library school. Instead of providing a true self-reflection of the profession (what I expected), the book got bogged down with a lot of theory, old history, and philosophizing. I was interested in the ethics chapter, but I think there are better places to read in order to consider the ethics of our profession. As a practicing librarian, this is one book about the profession to skip, unless you happen to like dense reading.… (mehr)