This article is an interview with the Vice President/CIO/University Librarian at Rice University.
I do agree in some ways that librarianship is conservative. On a personal level one thing that drives me crazy as a younger newer librarian is the conservativism that occurs sometimes when one has enthusiastically presented a new idea, and then is subjected to a 20 minute lecture about how your nifty plan is impossible to implement because you do not understand the history of your library/institution and therefore your proposal is not worth pursuing.
I don’t think that library science programs dropping “Library” from the school name is a positive sign. I think that we have to make the idea of libraries and librarians much more cool, without the need to jazz up what we do by calling ourselves “information scientists” or whatever.
I definitely agree about the doing away with the word library. I really got annoyed and sad in library school to hear all the talk about names like “information manager.” The director of the school was very much into getting all newfangled in the title department. I was not a fan of his. I wanted to be a librarian! I’m glad to be a librarian. I’ve actually always been a bit annoyed that I have to have the word information in my degree title. I wish I could’ve gotten a good ol’ fashioned MLS.