Into the Future: The Foundations of Library and Information Services in the Post-Industrial Era

"This book is a joy. It is delightful to read authors who so clearly have read widely and who have carefully thought about the impact of other fields' scholarly literature on the practice of librarianship. . . ." - Information Processing & Management This work is a general and synthetic study of the Post-Industrial era and its implications for library and information services in the United States. Since Daniel Bell promulgated his "post-industrial" metaphor in the early 1970s, it has become one of the most dominant metaphors in contemporary America. His ideas on the nature of the era, especially his articulation of what he refers to as the "information society," have influenced the ways in which government officials, corporate leaders, and average citizens think about the future of social, political, and economic life in America. This influence has also been felt in the library and information science field. Yet, while there exists a massive critical literature on Bell's metaphor in the social, political and economic literature, librarians have failed to systematically grapple with it. As a result, they appear to be carrying on their own debate about the future in relative isolation from the most significant contributions to this intensely contested idea.