Information Today / Dave Schumaker: “…Specialized librarians are an obvious example of librarians whose success depends on their not being neutral. Legal, medical, corporate, and other specialized librarians perform more in-depth research than librarians in other settings. They fulfill Ranganathan’s fourth law—“Save the time of the reader”—in a very direct way, by selecting, summarizing, and analyzing research results, so their customers don’t have to. They adhere to limits so that they can’t be accused of practicing law, medicine, or other professions, but the scope of their judgment remains considerable. Neutrality would be an abdication of their role. They need to select the best and most relevant, authoritative, and important information and present it in the clearest, most concise way. In some cases, librarians practice as competitive intelligence analysts or market researchers. An emphasis on analysis—on adopting a point of view after evaluating and weighing the evidence—is a key requirement for librarians in these positions. But if specialized librarians are the obvious example, other librarians make plenty of judgments too. In educational settings—whether higher, secondary, or even primary—the teaching role of librarians has assumed greater and greater importance over the past few decades. And what do librarians teach? Information literacy. While there are various definitions of the term, a common component is the ability to evaluate information critically. So, librarians are teaching the evaluation of information. They must address concepts such as misinformation and disinformation and present principles and methods for distinguishing accurate information from error and falsehood. It would be paradoxical—nonsensical, even—to imagine that they could do so while remaining neutral, without making judgments…”