The exceptions and limitations that are an integral part of many national copyright systems play a critically important role in enabling libraries to deliver such services. For example, they allow libraries to make copies on behalf of students and others for research or study purposes, of works that might not otherwise be directly accessible to them. Libraries also make interlibrary loans possible, providing local access to materials that normally reside in a library hundreds, or even thousands, of miles away.
A library is not only a building with bunch of books and several types of materials, it also plays a vital role in supporting the educational and research activities of society, promoting culture, disseminating information, building up a value system for every individual, etc.
role of library in modern society
As gateways to knowledge and culture, libraries play a fundamental role in society. Foundational in creating opportunities for learning, as well as supporting literacy and education, the resources and services each library offers all work towards helping to shape new ideas that are central to building a creative and innovative society.
Whether a library boasts grand architecture or modest design, the physical space of a library has a way of communicating our underlying values as a society, providing resources and services for literacy and education, and aiding individuals in expanding their communal network. Libraries truly stand as remarkable spaces, playing the necessary role in ensuring that we continue to build up creative and innovative individuals to partake in our ever-evolving society. Therefore, the public's need for libraries that serve as shared, community-centered spaces is unlikely going to change in the near future.
The theme of the discussion today is 'the crisis of modern society'. I would like to start by evoking what appears to be a fantastic paradox concerning modern industrial society and the way people live and act in it. It is the contradiction between the apparent omnipotence of humanity over its physical environment (the fact that technique is becoming more and more powerful, that physical conditions are increasingly controlled, that we are able to extract more and more energy from matter) and, on the other hand, the tremendous chaos and sense of impotence concerning the proper affairs of society, the human affairs, the way social systems work, etc.
These paradoxes offer a first way of defining the crisis of modern society. But this is a superficial way of looking at the phenomena which confront us. If we go a bit deeper, we'll see that the crisis manifests itself at all levels of social life,
Could knowledge or art provide values for society today ? First of all let us not forget that knowledge or art are important or have meaning, at least today, for only very limited strata of the population. More generally, in history, wherever art has played a role in social life, it has never been as an end in itself. It has been as part of a community which was expressing its life in this art. This was the case in the Elizabethan period. It was the case in the Renaissance. It was the case in Ancient Greece. The Greeks or the people during the Renaissance did not live for art, but they put great value into their art because they recognized themselves and their problems in it. Their whole life had a meaning which was expressed in its highest form in this artistic creation.
I will not dwell on the fact that all this does not just create a subjective crisis. It isn't just that we resent the fact that society is run this way. All this has objective repercussions. In an Italian town, during the Renaissance, a tyrant might have succeeded in keeping the population cowed. But a modern society, with its established rules and deep-going institutions, cannot be managed on this basis, even from the point of view of the rulers themselves. It cannot be run with the total abstention of the population from any intervention or any control in politics, for there is then no control by the reality on the politicians. They run amok and the result is, for instance, Suez. Here again the crisis impinges upon the workings of society itself.
From the point of view of the whole nexus of problems that exist around the family, sex, parents, children, men and women and so on, nobody knows for certain what he or she is expected to do. What is his or her role ? What, for instance, is the place of the woman in today's society ? You can make her one of fifteen wives in a harem, you can make her the Victorian matron, you can make her the Greek woman in the gynaeceum, but somehow or other she has to have a certain place in society. You can say, as Hitler did, that her place is in the kitchen with the children and/or in church. This is coherent. It is inhuman, it is barbaric, but it is coherent. But what is the place of the woman in today's society ? Is it to be just like a man, with a small physical difference ? Is she to be a person who has to work most of the time ? Or is she primarily a wife and mother ? Or is she both ? And can she be both ? Is it feasible ? Is society creating the conditions whereby this would become feasible ? Total uncertainty about these matters creates a tremendous crisis concerning the status and even the personality of women. It creates a complete disorientation which literally and immediately affects men. Men, have a sort of privilege in this respect, in the sense that they appear more or less to continue in their traditional role. They are outside, earning a living. But that's a fallacious appearance, because men and women in this respect are abstractions. What happens to women affects men. You can't define the two beings except in relation to each other.
The most dramatic effect of this uncertainty is upon the younger generations. Through largely unconscious mechanisms, about which we know something today, thanks to Sigmund Freud, children take models, identify themselves with this or that parental figure according to sex. Perhaps they even do this in a wider family context than just in relation to the biological father and mother. But this presupposes that developing children find before them a woman-mother and a man-father with patterns of behaviour, attitudes and roles which even if not defined in black and white nevertheless correspond to something fairly clear and certain. Inasmuch as all this is more and more questioned in today's society, children cannot grow up with the help of this process of identification, a process which is partly necessary, though it can be seen as alienating as well. Development today is not, as before, helped by the parental figures.
On the other hand, it is impossible for the expanding and exploding technology of today to leave general education at the present level. People who are going to enter modern industry must have technical skills, must know more, even if only about techniques. Their educational needs are increasing at a tremendous rate. How is this to be dealt with ? The solutions found in today's society are all internally contradictory. One solution consists in trying to give to the children an essentially technical education. For reasons which concern the whole set-up of society, and which are partly economic, you have to start this specialization very early. But this is not only extremely destructive for the personality of the children, it is also self-destructive. It is self-destructive in the sense that given today's rate of technological development and change you cannot have people whom you have so to speak allocated once and for all to a very limited speciality. This type of educational crisis expresses itself in industry through the increasing demand for programmes for adult re-education, in the demand for what's now called a 'permanent educational process'. But in order to be able to absorb in later life whatever this 'permanent educational process' may offer (if it ever materializes) you must have as general a grounding as possible. It is obvious that if the basis on which you start is extremely narrow, then further education becomes an impossible proposition. Here again there is a sort of internal conflict which illustrates the crisis of this level.
So we see that the crisis of modern society is not without issue. It contains the seeds of something new, which is emerging even now. But the new will not come about automatically. Its emergence will be assisted by the actions of people in society, by their permanent resistance and struggle and by their often unconscious activity. But the new will not complete itself, will not be able to establish itself as a new social system, as a new pattern of social life, unless at some stage it becomes a conscious activity, a conscious action of the mass of the people. For us, to initiate this conscious action and to help it develop, whenever it may manifest itself, is the real new meaning to be given to the words 'revolutionary politics'.
The role of information institutions and professionals, including libraries and librarians, in modern society is to support the optimisation of the recording and representation of information and to provide access to it.Information service in the interest of social, cultural and economic well-being is at the heart of librarianship and therefore librarians have social responsibility.
Beyond its curricular role, the school library program gives each individual member of the learning community a venue for exploring questions that arise out of individual curiosity and personal interest. As part of the school library program, the school librarian provides leadership in the use of information technologies and instruction for both students and staff in how to use them constructively, ethically, and safely. The school librarian offers expertise in accessing and evaluating information, using information technologies, and collections of quality physical and virtual resources. In addition, the school librarian possesses dispositions that encourage broad and deep exploration of ideas as well as responsible use of information technologies. These attributes add value to the school community. 2ff7e9595c
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