American Idealism

The amazingly global, idealistic thinking demonstrated by the ALA statement on access to information also shows up in the recent Darien Statements on the Librarian and Librarians. It is good to have inspirational statements but this one didn't quite do it for me - it was just too idealistic and grandiose although, judging by the coments, I'm in a minority. There has been some discussion on this on the NZ Libs listserv with links to relevant pages and I particularly like the Annoyed Librarian's take on the whole thing.