ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


16 / C&RL News ■  January 1998

VALUES FOR THE ELECTRONIC 
INFORMATION AGE

The axe for the frozen s e a ..

The value of reading for academic librarians

“

by Katherine Branch

I n his 1987 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Joseph Brodsky said, “Having emerged in 
order to give us some idea not so much of 
our origins as o f what the sapiens is capable 
of, a book constitutes a means o f transporta­
tion through the space of experience, at the 
speed of a turning page.”

H as r e a d in g  b e c o m e  a b a d  w o rd ?
This eloquent statement about the power 
and mystery o f reading causes me, as an 
academic librarian, to wonder why our pro­
fession talks, thinks, and writes so infre­
quently about reading. Curiously, the mis­
sion and strategic plan o f ACRL do not 
contain the word read in g . Yet have you ever 
met a librarian who said they d id n  ’t like to 
read? And how many o f us chose the field 
because we love to read, a confession that 
we feel vaguely embarrassed to admit when 
we are asked during job interviews or cock ­
tail parties about how we came to b e a li­
brarian?

Our p rofessional literature m entions 
reading hardly a whit. Is the topic too mun­
dane, too lowly, too associated with the im­
age o f the dowdy librarian? Or is it that the 
importance and value o f reading to our cli­
entele and our profession is too obvious to 
bother with? Or is it that we don’t consider 
the topic o f reading to be within our pro­
fessional purview?

As the ACRL focuses on its values this year, 
let us remember that reading is within our 
purview.

It’s  n o t ju s t  f o r  k id s
In journals catering to the academic library 
crowd, articles on such divergent topics such 
as censorship, preservation microfilming, in­
formation technology, participative manage­
ment, scholarly communication, and infor­
mation literacy abound, yet the topic o f 
reading seems to be relegated to the litera­
ture of children’s, young adult, and public 
librarians. Compare the body o f work by 
academic librarians on reading to the body 
o f work by writers on reading. Authors as 
diverse as Amy Tan, Bernard Malamud, Ri­
chard Wright, Stephen King, Isaac Asimov, 
Robert Pinsky, Jam es Baldwin, Henry Miller, 
Grace Paley, and Edith Wharton have writ­
ten passionately about reading and books.1

T h e  b o o k  as th e  n e w  h a v e n
Henry James asked in Brooksm ith, “What is 
the place o f reading, and of the reading sensi­
bility, in our culture as it has become?” A hun­
dred years later, Ernest Boyer answers this 
question for academic librarians in today’s elec­
tronic culture by saying, “Television extends 
human sight, computers extend memory and 
ability for calculation. Books extend wisdom. 
It is now our task to fit together these tools, 
the new ones with the old.”

As for the importance o f reading to us as 
individuals, Alvin Kernan in The D eath o f  Lit­
e r a tu re says, “This is what makes reading so 
very difficult in the cultural present: we can­
not easily get off the rails o f one kind of 

( “The axe for the frozen sea” cont. on page 35)

 A b o u t th e  a u th o r

Katherine Branch is library director o f Anne Arundel Community College; e-mail: kabranch@mail.aacc.cc.md.us

mailto:kabranch@mail.aacc.cc.md.us


C&RL News m  January 1998 / 17



18 /  C&RL News m January 1998



C&RL News m January 1 9 9 8 /3 5

cording to the following categories: biology, 
environmental science, health, physical sci­
ence, social science, sports, and technology.

The Whyfiles are published by the Na­
tional Institute for Science Education, funded 
by the National Science Foundation. Accord­
ing to the information page, “the NISE is a 
collaborative effort to ensure that all students 
who leave the educational system can make 
informed decisions about science, mathemat­
ics, engineering and technology.” While the 
implication is that this information is geared 
towards students at a pre-college level, the 
easy-to-read style of writing and selection of 
current topics should also appeal to the under­
graduate student.

The site does a good job o f staying fresh—  
every article has a different background and 
graphics theme. Some articles are only a page, 
while others are quite lengthy. There is also 
a section for an online forum— basically Web-
based discussion groups.

After spending some time exploring this 
site, my opinion o f it changed considerably. 
I came to appreciate the non-technical writ­
ing style and the simple interface. I learned 
a lot. I ’ll bet your students will too.— P a u l 
Pival, N ova S ou th eastern  University; p a u lp @  
n s u .n o v a .e d u

A f r ic a  N e w s  O n lin e . A ccess: http://www.
africanews.org.
Through a partnership with Africa’s lead­

ing news agencies, newspapers, and maga­
zines, Africa News Service produces Africa 
News Online. Africa News Service is a non­
profit U. S. news agency that started in 1973. 
This agency boasts being “directly or indi­
rectly responsible for a significant percent­
age of U. S. media coverage o f Africa.” Africa 
News Online is the online version o f the 
widely read news periodical A fr ic a  News, 
which has b een an exclusively electronic 
publication since 1993.

The homepage contains an abundance of 
links for contemporary news in politics, en­
tertainment, sports, business, science, and 
health. The “Resources Cuisine” link provides 
access to special reports, interviews, profiles, 
and even a link for ordering an African cook­
book. “Internet Gateway” links to Web sites 
for news topics such as United Nations & 
Africa, United States & Africa, and Africa’s 
Great Lakes Region. Links can also b e found

to Web sites for African news organizations, 
newspapers, and news agencies. For daily, 

full-text ar­
ticle s from 
th e larg est 

news gathering agency in Africa, there’s the 
“PANA News” link, which includes searchable 
archives. Additional current articles from news 
magazines and newspapers can be accessed 
by clicking on the “News Central” link. In­
cluded are links to news reports from vari­
ous regions and countries in Africa. It offers 
searchable archives that are in the testing stage.

African News Online fills an information 
gap for faculty, undergraduate, and gradu­
ate students in the fields o f African studies, 
government, and international affairs. Al­
though the link for information resources is 
labeled “Resources Cuisine,” a user will find 
navigating through this Web site is easy. This 
Internet resource opens up Africa to the rest 
o f the world.— N an cy Allen, USF a t  S a r a s o ta / 
New C ollege ■

“ The axe fo r the frozen sea. . . ”  continued from  page 16

time to experien ce another. But perhaps 
when the need is strong enough we will seek 
out the word on the page, and the work that 
puts us back into the force field of deep time. 
The book— and my optimism, you may sense, 
is not unwavering— will be seen as a haven, 
as a way o f going off-line and into a space 
satisfied by subjectivity.”2

If you are convinced that we need to do 
more to recognize and support reading, I rec­
ommend the Library o f Congress’s Center for 
the B ook’s 1997– 2000 campaign, “Building a 
Nation o f Readers.” Their web page at http:/ 
/lcweb.loc.gov/loc/cfbook/readbro.html con­
tains excellent ideas about promoting read­
ing, both in our libraries and as individuals. 
As we academic librarians skillfully surf the 
shoals and tidal waves of the Internet, let’s 
heed the words o f Franz Kakfa who said, 
“The book must be the axe for the frozen 
sea within us.”

N o t e s
1. Toth, Susan Allen and Jo hn Coughlan, 

R e a d in g  R o o m s  (N ew  York: D ou bled ay 
1990).

2. Kernan, Alvin, The D eath o f  Literature, 
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990). ■

http://www