Information Scotland The Journal of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland ISSN 1743-5471 Issue contents | Journal contents | About the online edition of the journal June 2005 Volume 3 (3)

CILIPS Conference

Keynote address

"Librarians are not to be taken lightly. They are adventurers, explorers, treasure seekers and gun fighters."

In his Keynote Address, cultural commentator Michael Russell took a theme from the character in the Hollywood film The Mummy who said she was none of the above... but a librarian.

"You are adventurers despite what Rachel Weisz said in her role. You are helping our society to move from where it is, to where it might eventually get. You are a democratic force, in just the same way Andrew Carnegie imagined when he said that 'There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters'.

"That is a dangerous job to do, but you are having to do it because of your unique skills which are, by a happy accident, exactly those that our society needs at this time. For you are classifiers, organisers, researchers, enquirers, and have a structured and methodical approach to information and in this time of change it is information that is king."

"We should not, of course, confuse information with knowledge. Knowledge, I suppose, is what comes from the wise absorption and careful analysis of information. The writer Peter Drucker said that information becomes knowledge when we know what to do with it. And you – more than most in fact more than any others – can show people what to do with it.

"Nor should we confuse information with culture, for culture is about information and knowledge being grounded within ourselves as well as within the places we occupy. And as you occupy this piece of ground, then you are a cultural force too.

"Thus you have more than a finger in all these vital pies. In the structuring, presentation and retrieval of information, in the methods and techniques of analysing that information, and in the process of personal osmosis that brings the two together and make us and our society not just what it is, but what it could be.

"But you are also explorers. You are resisting, quite rightly, the downgrading of your role and the reduction of the scope of your activities: instead you are widening your horizons and open doors to a world of information and knowledge, and to a world of culture – doors which sometimes used to be shut, and sometimes used not even to exist. You are therefore finding new ways of doing the same things, and new things to do."

He had a bone to pick with the delegates over the lack of support for Scottish writing: "In my role as an author I am alarmed – as is my publisher and most publishers – at the lack of support for Scottish writing that comes from official sources in Scotland. And your service is not guiltless, I have to say. Of your £8 million of purchasing funds spent in Scotland each year, only 2% goes on Scottish books. That is 30p per head of population. Of the 32 Library Authorities, 31 have no clear Scottish cultural commitment in their tender documents."

He concluded: "I am in favour of an information rich, knowledgeable, cultured and very human Scotland, striving for the best for each of its citizens."

Information Scotland Vol. 3 (3) June 2005

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