Clay Shirky on Newspapers and What It Can Teach Academic Libraries

Abstract

In March 2009 Clay Shirky posted the essay, “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable,” on his blog and in July 2011 he posted a second essay “Why We Need the New News Environment to be Chaotic.” These two essays are concerned with the newspapers and the news, but taken together they provide useful insights for academic librarians. Newspapers and libraries are in many ways quite different, but they share a common heritage, both born out of the technology of the printing press and its 19th century industrialization. Similar technologies drove economic and organizational structures and the values of libraries and newspapers. Both face similar challenges as the Internet unwinds their economic and technical underpinnings and by doing so stresses organizations and the professional values that have sustained them.