Blatant Berry: I Remember That Future

The fall semester has just ended. I can't remember when I've been so sorry to see a semester close or been as engaged by students. It is tiring to teach two three-plus-hour sessions two nights a week after 6:30 p.m. But this semester was energizing, even inspiring. I've noticed a new spirit among the students in the last few years in my classes at the Pratt Institute School of Information and Library Science in New York City, School of Information Resources and Library Science at the University of Arizona in Tucson, and Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Dominican University in suburban Chicago.

The average age of these librarians-to-be is still thirty-something, and there are as many refugees from business, teaching, and other professions as always. But the current cohort bring new expectations, a demand for rigorous challenge in both their studies and their chosen profession. Best of all, they bring a strong, shared conviction that the delivery of uncorrupted information can solve people's problems. They believe the creation of a community center for its free exchange and expression, whether that community is a campus, a city, a company, or an institution, can make things work better.

So it was bittersweet when our time together ended last month and a few of us from Pratt spent a couple of hours socializing and discussing our futures. While we talked, I couldn't help but remember an earlier future that galvanized us three decades ago when a similarly motivated cadre of LIS students met in Baltimore at the Congress for Change.

I remember the glorious challenge of that time, the huge expectations we had for librarianship and the information professions. We believed and were willing to urge our profession and its institutions to confront the most formidable issues of the day—a war gone sour, a society and world torn apart by social injustice and economic inequity, and a government seemingly hell-bent on preserving the affluence and privilege of a few, no matter the cost to the millions.

Librarianship can be proud of the way it received that rebellious and dissenting generation of librarians. Eventually, they won most of the battles they fought, opened up our organizations, and brought a new social consciousness to our professional practice. They slowly became the establishment, though, through protest, participation, and plebiscite. Now it is their turn to be as receptive to the winds of change as the "leadership" of that earlier time.

Like those who came before them, the current cadre of librarians bring new tools for the job ahead, technologies that make access to information much easier but just as corruptible. They bring that vitality and spirit that, in themselves, are enough to force change and even shape its outcome. At first, those in power will hang on, as they did decades ago. Ultimately, if we remember the future we so enthusiastically envisioned, we'll make sure the next generation are enlisted, well received, and take what little power there is to share in our chronically impoverished but permanently crusading profession.

We've begun to make it easier for change to come and for them to have a stronger voice in our march to freedom of information and enlightenment for all. We'd like to pick and choose among these new librarians, through our programs for "emerging" leaders and other institutionalized indoctrination. But they have already begun to organize themselves, singling out their own leaders and demanding of us only that same access to the profession that enabled us to make some of our future dreams into today's realities.

I remember that future, and I remember how tough it was to convince those in charge that we would define it and lead it ourselves, not simply pay our dues and wait to be selected. If our profession is true to its history, we'll leave its door ajar so those new librarians can, once again, march through and change librarianship.

jberry@reedbusiness.com