Curator, curatorship and cure? The position of the librarian in the scholarly environment fifty years after Władysław Piasecki’s theoretical clarification and justification of the notion of the “knowledge physician”

Abstract

While making a comparison between librarianship and other professions one may conclude that the former has been more and more laden with new responsibilities and new priorities. Though the librarian as the “knowledge physician” was a construct that underlined the need for the prestige and social standing of the profession, rather than focused on the essence of the librarian profession, the idea of quasi medical role of the librarian and nearly doctor-like responsibility for the patient/user can have indeed something to do with today’s need for implementing the so-called “curated” processes, that is the ones that require a particularly insightful and extensive knowledge of the subject and available methods of management. And this applies to all possible areas related to the circulation of information. Within the context of two case examples of complex and complicated scientific texts and an attempt to identify how a public discussion on them can be carried out, this article attempts to identify the key points in which, without the mediation of the librarian, science can generate a string of misunderstandings, fallacies and conceptual incoherencies or become marginalised. In conclusion, the author proposes to strengthen personnel training, policy support, to create an innovative environment, and promote the development of awareness of any possible manifestations of librarian curatorship in a variety of activities that might be undertaken by librarians. Further strengthening of research and knowledge competences of librarians seems inevitable, in particular in view of the need for the development of inter-disciplinary sciences and a particular supervision needed for research conducted by multi-person research teams as well as for collectively written texts authored by a number of researchers.