Right now my tenure dossier is being circulated among various and sundry provosts, chancellors, and other administrative types. If you’ve been through the process, you’re probably already aware that these dossiers often have strict requirements pertaining to what needs to be included, what counts as evidence, formatting, section titles, and so on. So, I suppose it really wasn’t a surprise to find that my one-and-a-half page philosophy of librarianship statement would have to be trimmed down to no more than one page before being passed to the next reader. I’ll write a new statement later today but, in the meantime, I thought I’d post the original here.

Philosophy of Librarianship

Lane Wilkinson

“Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”

T.S. Eliot, “The Rock”

“A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.”

David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding