The Politics Of Libraries And Librarianship

This book covers aspects of the political environment which surrounds and engages libraries and their librarians. It includes anecdotes on the role of the political sphere in the business of library associations. Provides recent stories and real examples of: The various political contexts under which libraries operate Why it is important to be politically aware How political climates influence decision making for libraries

This book features original research, reflective essays and conversations, and dialogues that consider the relationships between theory, practice, and critical librarianship through the lenses of the histories of librarianship, intellectual and activist communities, professional practices, and underexplored epistemologies and ways of knowing.

Over the past thirty years, significant shifts in technology, political ideologies, and policy goals have resulted in an environment in which public libraries face the highest expectations to serve community needs against unprecedented political, economic, and policy challenges. Drawing on two decades of original research conducted by the authors, this book provides a data-driven examination of the interrelated impacts of political discourse and public policy processes on public libraries and the ways in which they are able to serve their communities, explaining the complex current circumstances and offering strategies for effectively creating a better future for public libraries.

This book offers a timely mix of thought-provoking chapters bringing together national and global studies on critical librarianship, and conveying the kind of research which current library managers and researchers need, mixing theory with a good dose of pragmatism.

"An alternative proposal for the education of librarians, emphasizing general knowledge and intellectual rigor and discouraging careerism"--Provided by publisher.

Public librarians do not usually see themselves as politicians. However, as decision-makers in an institutional setting, affected by a variety of pressures and conflicting interests, they are involved in politics in both the broad and narrow sense. Moreover, recent developments in the public library system have brought the librarian directly into the political sphere. Professor Shavit's study, the first major work on the subject in over 35 years, fills a major gap in scholarship on the public library in the political process and provides a detailed survey of the political context in which the modern library functions.

Public spending is under threat and public libraries are suffering. At a time when libraries can play a critical role in supporting people facing difficult economic and social situations, the dominant conservative model of librarianship has nothing meaningful to say about the role and relevance of libraries. It offers more of the same, but no qualitative change so necessary today. It continues to maintain the myth that there is no alternative to its own policies and practices. There is thus an urgent need to alternative ideas and practices to address people’s needs. The progressive librarianship movement is taking up this challenge. It has also been active in Kenya and Britain but its work is not widely know. The Kenyan movement differed from the others in that it grew within the underground political movement in the 1980s - the December Twelve Movement/Mwakenya. Using original documents, this book records this hidden history. In the process, it examines key concepts such as the role of libraries and the relevance of service. Linking library work with the wider social and political concerns, the book explores issues such as politics of information, the role of activism and “neutrality” in library work. It offers an alternative approach to librarianship, to the training of librarians and to organisational change to make libraries more relevant to people’s lives.

These papers examine library policies and organizational structures in light of the literature of ergonomics, high reliability organizations, joint cognitive systems and integrational linguistics. Bade argues that many policies and structures have been designed and implemented on the basis of assumptions about technical possibilities, ignoring entirely the political dimensions of local determination of goals and purposes as well as the lessons from ergonomics, such as the recognition that people are the primary agents of reliability in all technical systems. Because libraries are understood to be loci of human interaction and communication rather than purely technical systems at the disposal of an abstract user, Bade insists on looking at problems of meaning and communication in the construction and use of the library catalog. Looking at various policies for metadata creation and the results of those policies forces the question: is there a responsible human being behind the library web site and catalog, or have we abandoned the responsibilities of thinking and judgment in favor of procedures, algorithms and machines?