Karetzky, Stephen 1946-

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KARETZKY, Stephen 1946-

PERSONAL: Born August 29, 1946, in Brooklyn, NY; son of Harry (a commissioner for labor relations) and Lillian (a homemaker; maiden name, Abrams) Karetzky; married Deborah Ann Shaw, April, 1970 (divorced, July, 1972); married Joanne Ballestrasse (a librarian and author), March 17, 1985. Ethnicity: "Jewish." Education: Queens College of the City University of New York, B.A., 1967; Columbia University, M.L.S., 1969, D.L.S., 1978; California State University—Dominguez Hills, M.A., 1991. Politics: "Conservative/populist." Religion: Jewish. Hobbies and other interests: Collecting books.

ADDRESSES: Offıce—Felician College Library, 262 South Main St., Lodi, NJ 07644. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn, NY, librarian, 1969-70; State University of New York—Buffalo, assistant professor of library and information studies, 1974-76; State University of New York—College at Geneseo, assistant professor of library and information studies, 1977-78; Haifa University, Haifa, Israel, associate professor of library and information studies, 1978-81; Shapolsky/Steimatzky Publishers, New York, NY, senior editor, 1981-82; San Jose State University, San Jose, CA, associate professor of library and information studies, 1982-85; Shapolsky Publishers, New York, NY, senior editor, 1985-86; Felician College, Lodi, NJ, associate professor of library and information studies and director of library, 1986—. Americans for a Safe Israel, executive director, 1985-86.

MEMBER: Authors Guild, American Historical Association, Organization of American Historians, Historians of American Communism, American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Library and Information Science Education, National Association of Scholars.

WRITINGS:

Reading Research and Librarianship: A History and Analysis, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1982.

The Cannons of Journalism, O'Keefe Press, 1984.

(Editor and contributor) The Media's War against Israel, Shapolsky/Steimatzky Publishers (New York, NY), 1985.

(Editor and contributor) The Media's Coverage of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, Shapolsky Publishers (New York, NY), 1989.

Not Seeing Red: American Librarianship and the Soviet Union, 1917-1960, University Press of America (Blue Ridge Summit, PA), 2002.

Contributor of articles and reviews to periodicals, including Catholic Library World, Midstream, New Jersey Libraries, and College and Research Libraries News.

SIDELIGHTS: Stephen Karetzky told CA: "My books have been on a wide variety of subjects, but they are united by a common concern: how can democratic countries maintain their free societies by successfully countering aggressive totalitarian nations and by opposing domestic utopian zealots bent on transmogrifying them? I have been particularly interested in assessing the extent to which professionals—like librarians, journalists, and educators—have helped or hindered the cause of freedom. My findings on the roles played by these professions have not been favorable.

"My first work, Reading Research and Librarianship: A History and Analysis, describes the attempt by earnest scholars to transform librarianship into a social science during the turbulent 1930s. I was interested in seeing how a body of social-science knowledge is developed, used, and misused. I was very pleased that the book was accorded an honorable mention by the American Society for Information Science in its Best Book of the Year competition, the sole time ever done in the history of this award.

"Living in Israel for three years led directly to my next book, The Cannons of Journalism. While there, it became clear to me that Western journalists were doing a poor job of covering events in the region, an unconscionable failure that became more egregious after my return to the United States. It seemed to me that the American people could not make wise decisions concerning their government's foreign policies even if they were getting their information from those newspapers widely touted as the best. The ignorance, sloth, and bias in the journalism profession appalled me, so I decided to document this using the New York Times as my example. I also constructed a typology of poor reporting that could be used by others in their research. I was particularly pleased that the Israeli Foreign Office purchased two dozen copies of this slim paperback and made it required reading for many of its officials and staff members.

"This work was followed by a larger book on the same theme. The Media's War against Israel includes an introduction by Jack Kemp, essays by Norman Podhoretz, Edward Alexander, and others, as well as the text of The Cannons of Journalism. Three years later, there was yet again a need to describe the misreporting in that region, so The Media's Coverage of the Arab-Israeli Conflict appeared. The most comprehensive of the three works, it includes not only my original Cannons essay, but contributions from Irving Kristol, Ruth R. Wisse, and Jeane Kirkpatrick.

"My most recent book, Not Seeing Red: American Librarianship and the Soviet Union, 1917-1960, describes how American librarians and educators—as well as those in Great Britain—responded to the USSR from its inception through its fall. Also treated in this book is a critique of how today's historians view the subject area. It reveals that the leaders of a profession ostensibly devoted to democratic principles failed to criticize the USSR and communism while energetically opposing those who did. While it bears positive blurbs from prominent political scientists and historians, it has—as I predicted in the book—drawn some wild criticism from within the library profession."