On the AFA side of things, I learned a lot about cataloguing integrity from the ALA about a decade ago.
Back then I was the cataloguer for a collection of literature dealing with drug abuse treatment and treatmetn evaluation. I was working for a government contractor supplying government funded, drug treatment centers with info on how to better run their programs and better serve their target groups.
We acquired some of AFA's drug treatment literature which absolutely astounded me. The majority of the research it cited was from the mid seventies or earlier (by then 20+ years old) and had been refuted by more recent and more rigorous studies. Then there were the statements like, "Drugs don't make you feel better, they only make you think you feel better." WTF?
As they were drug treatment related, I entered them into the system, but only gave them the scantest records possible. I brought them up to my surperviser's attention because, in good conscience, I couldn't put them into the system knowing they supported erroneous treatment methods. I never even filed them them with the other white papers because they always remained in my "questionable" stack (a stack of articles I never knew what to do with for various reasons).
Eventually, I was able to pitch them, because they were too old. Our collection was meant to be the most recent info available and our cut off was 5 years. I was terribly happy the day I got to pitch those.
I find the AFA to be truly appalling in just about every way imaginable. It ticks me off that they use both "American" and "family" because in my mind they represent neither American nor family values but pure bigotry and narrow-mindedness.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2007-07-07 11:45 am (UTC)Back then I was the cataloguer for a collection of literature dealing with drug abuse treatment and treatmetn evaluation. I was working for a government contractor supplying government funded, drug treatment centers with info on how to better run their programs and better serve their target groups.
We acquired some of AFA's drug treatment literature which absolutely astounded me. The majority of the research it cited was from the mid seventies or earlier (by then 20+ years old) and had been refuted by more recent and more rigorous studies. Then there were the statements like, "Drugs don't make you feel better, they only make you think you feel better." WTF?
As they were drug treatment related, I entered them into the system, but only gave them the scantest records possible. I brought them up to my surperviser's attention because, in good conscience, I couldn't put them into the system knowing they supported erroneous treatment methods. I never even filed them them with the other white papers because they always remained in my "questionable" stack (a stack of articles I never knew what to do with for various reasons).
Eventually, I was able to pitch them, because they were too old. Our collection was meant to be the most recent info available and our cut off was 5 years. I was terribly happy the day I got to pitch those.
I find the AFA to be truly appalling in just about every way imaginable. It ticks me off that they use both "American" and "family" because in my mind they represent neither American nor family values but pure bigotry and narrow-mindedness.