Alternative Literature: A Practical Guide for Librarians
by Chris Atton
Gower 1996
Critical Approaches to Information Technology in Librarianship
Edited by John Buschman
Greenwood Press 1993
Chapter 4: Censorship, Critical Theory, and New Information Technologies
by Sue Curry Jansen
excerpt from p. 64-65.
Information-CapitalismChapter 7: Issues in Censorship and Information Technology
Horkheimer and Adorno's analysis foreshadows and continues to illuminate current developments within contemporary culture industries. Thus, for example, it anticipates the current global movement toward privatization of information: the transfer of the production, control, and distribution of knowledge from public to private organizations and interests. Under the privatization of "information-capitalism,", what was once regarded as a public good and cornerstone of democracy-Western culture's accumulated social knowledge or "wisdom of the ages"--is increasingly absorbed into the commodity system. [20] As a result, public libraries, education, broadcasting, museums, galleries, performances, and so on are increasingly brought under the discipline of the logic of profit. Under information-capitalism, then, the marketplace of ideas is no longer conceived as a public utility which serves all who seek its goods. Increasingly it becomes a private enterprise which serves only those who can afford to pay a price for the commodities it markets to consumers. [21]
Information-capitalism not only changes conditions of access to knowledge, it also changes the social role and the structure of knowledge as well as the forms of knowledge that are produced. Under this "new world order," the production of knowledge becomes a basic industry like the production of oil, steel, and transporation. [22]
(exerpt from p. 65.)
Knowledge can only become a profitable commodity if democratic access is restricted by removing it from the public sphere and limiting the channels available for its distribution. For this reason, librarians and educators now find themselves policing access to photocopies, computer software, and video equipment. And, more ominously, they find themselves and their institutions increasingly held accountable by the legal system for violations that occur within their venues.
(exerpt from p. 67)
Privatization of information means that information that was formerly available as a part of a citizen's right to know within a democratic system is now only available if that citizen can afford to pay for it. Under information-capitalism, as Herbert Schiller has frequently pointed out, information that cannot be counted upon to bring in a profit will not be produced. [26] Thus, for example, privatization in Britain, and the self-interest of a conservative government, has been responsive to market forces in ways that have gradually resulted in the elimination of the collection and publication of poverty statistics. [27]
by John Buschman
Chapter11: Conclusion: Contexts, Analogies, and Entrepeneurial Directions in Librarianship
by John Buschman
Notes for Chapter 4 excerpts
20. Tessa Morris-Suzuki, "Capitalism in the Computer Age," New Left Review (November/December 1986):81.
21. Anita R. Schiller and Herbert I. Schiller, "who Can Own What America Knows?" The Nation 17 April 1982: 461-64.
22. Dallas Smythe, Dependency Road: Communications, Capitalism, Consciousness, and Canada (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1981).
26. Herbert I. Schiller, Who Knows: Information in the Age of The Fortune 500 (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1981); Herbert I. Schiller, Culture, Inc: The Corporate Takeover of Public Expression (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); and Schiller and Schiller.
27. Philip Elliot, "Intellectuals, the 'Information Society' and the Disappearance of the Public Sphere" Mass Communication Review Yearbook, vol. 4, eds. Ellen Wartella, D. Charles Whitney, and Swen Windahl (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1983).
The Myth of the Electronic Library: Librarianship and Social Change in America
by William F. Birdsall
Greenwood Press 1994
Chapter 1: Introduction: The Myth of the Library
exerpt from p1.
Those who grapple with trying to explain the phenomenon of change describe what is happening as a "paradigm shift". The concept of a paradigm derives from the immensely influential study of the history of science by Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn rejects the traditional view that scientific progress is an incremental process, an accumulation of knowledge through individual research and discovery. Instead, he formulated the concept of paradigms, "universally recognized scientific achievements that for a time provide model problems and solutions to a community of practitioners." [1] Scientists attack problems and adjust theories within the generally accepted assumptions of the paradigm. However, in time a sufficient challenge to the prevailing paradigm results in a new paradigm. Such paradigm shifts are of a magnitude representing an entirely new way of viewing and even thinking about the world.Chapter 2: Breaking the Myth of the Library as Place
Many other disciplines have adopted the notion of paradigm shifts to represent a profound change in the world view held by a group within society. There has been such widespread use of the term "paradigm" as a way of analyzing change that it has been said Kuhn's idea itself cause a paradigm shift.
excerpt from p 24.
In addition to government and association reports, there was an increasing number of scholarly and popular books dealing with technological and social change, information as an economic resource, and information processing in a technological environment. The growing recognition of the importance of information as an economic commodity owed much to Princeton economist Fritz Machlup, whose 1962 book, The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the United States, was pioneering work in the economic analysis of information. [47] Machlup identified the "knowledge industries" as the most rapidly expanding part of the economy. Management theorist Peter Drucker outlined the emergence of a knowledge society in which the efficient organization and application of information is the foundation for most work and increased productivity. The knowledge society would require a new class of professional knowledge workers. [48] The formation of in 1968 of the Information Industry Association in Washington, D.C., served for many as a concrete expression of the phenomenon identified by Machlup, Drucker, and others. The association was formed to serve the interests of private, for-profit organizations concerned with the production and sale of information.Chapter 3: Creating the Myth of the Electronic Library
By the 1970s, these ideas achieved wide recognition as expressed in Daniel Bell's concept of the "post-industrial society." [49] He defined the post-industrial society along five dimensions. First was the shift in the majority of work from agriculture and manufacturing to services. The second key element was the increase in the number of workers engaged in professional and technical employment. The third was the importance of theoretical knowledge, in contrast to the empirically based knowledge characteristic of the Industrial Revolution. The fourth element was the need to be future-oriented, which thereby increased the necessity for deliberate planning and assessment of technological growth. Finally, the post-industrial society would experience the rise of a new intellectual technology systems analysis, information theory, cybernetics, and decision theories.
exerpt from pp. 39-40.
"Information" is also appealing to the myth-makers because it moves librarianship closer to the market-economy model in recognizing information as an economic commodity. The electronic myth-makers question the allegiance to free library service associated with the library as place. Giuliano sees this commitment to serving the "information poor" resulting in the library taking on "the form of some sort of welfare institution, one that is not very effective at that." For Giuliano, the profit motive operation in the marketplace is the best means of achieving a service objective. [34] He considers it unfortunate when librarians oppose fees for service.(pp. 41- 42)
Lancaster also expects the paperless communication system is "likely to be a much more 'pay as you go' one." [35] This phenomenon will be forced on libraries by the emergence of a society in which private vendors will provide for a fee on-line access to electronic data in a market-driven economy where information is a commodity.
According to Tom Suprenant, this dynamic will require "a major philosophical shift in thinking from the concept of the library as a 'free good' to a 'fee based' structure." [36] The economics of Carnegie-Mellon's Project Mercury are marketplace oriented. It is a critical assumption of the project, that information is a commodity. According to the director of the project, it is essential information is recognized as a "public utility-which no more means 'free' than telephones, water, lights, and gas are free to our business and homes today." When this is recognized, "the pressures of the marketplace will then force a fair solution to the tiresome problems of property rights." [37]
The attention given to information coincides with the increasing desire to incorporate librarianship into "information science." Early librarianship was closely associated with the cultural literary traditions. With increased professionalization, there were strenuous efforts to promote a library science as a social science, most notably at the University of Chicago Graduate Library School. The Public Library Inquiry by the Social Science Research Council, completed at the end of the 1940s at the request of the American Library Association, was an important representation of this movement. However after World War II, librarians, confronted with the emergence of the competing discipline of information science, increasingly focused on information as a discrete phenomenon that could be studied through the use of scientific methods of research. Library schools quickly incorporated "information" into their names. Thus, the electronic library is further identified with a scientific milieu.
We can now summarize the development of the myth of the electronic library. The rapid increase in scientific and technical information underlies the inadequacy of traditional library methodologies. This expansion in information and its use is so pervasive that it characterized our time, the information age or society. However, myth-makers claim that technology provides a solution for coping with this deluge of information. Not only is technology the solution, it is also the force for change, a force so strong that its consequences are inevitable, including the transformation if not elemination of the library as place. The organization base for the myth of the electronic library is not the public library but an abstract concept arising out of the special or research library environment: the electronic library without walls serving as a node in an electronic network.
The profession of librarianship must free itself from its traditional institutional base, adopting a free-lance, autonomous, professional model and a new name. This move will enhance the status of and bring greater material rewards t the profession. While the objectives fo the library as place tend to be ambiguous with an inclusive clientele, the objectives of the electronic library and clientele are narrow: the provision of information to the researcher. The core resource of the library as place has been the local collection, primarily of print materials, maintained with a considerable amount of local institutional autonomy. The electronic library operates within an electronic collaborate environment with an emphasis on access to information regardless of its location. The library as place adheres to the welfare liberalism concept of making knowledge available at no direct cost to the user. The electronic library focuses on the provision of information on a fee-for-service basis and celebrates the free-market economy. Information is not a public good but an economic commodity. The library as place is associated with a humanistic/social science culture; the electronic library identifies with a scientific environment, including the hope for an "information science."
The difference in these two myths have profound consequences for libraries and librarianshp. The issues raised by the new myth confront librarians in their day-to-day work life as exemplified, for example, by recent debates over the desirability of constructing new urban central libraries. In the June 1, 1990, issue of Library Journal, we see the clash of the library as place confronting the electronic library. Library Journal's editor, Nora Rawlinson, faces off against editor-in-chief John N. Berry III over the issue of whether cities should continue building large central public libraries. Rawlinson asserts that the new central libraries being built are an illogical "fatal attraction," while Berry sees them as "the reaffirmation of the tradition that says that, in America, every citizen has a right to know." [45]
Notes for Chapter 1 exerpts
1. Thomas S. Kuhn. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2nd edn. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1970, p. viii.Notes for Chapter 2 excerpts
47. Fritz Machlup. The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the United States. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1962.Notes for Chapter 3 exerpts
48. Peter F. Drucker. The Age of Discontinuity. New York: Harper, 1968.
49. Daniel Bell. The Coming of the Post-Industrial Society. New york: Basic Books, 1976.
34. Giuliano, Vincent E. "A Manifesto for Libraries." Library Journal, 104 (September 15, 1979), pp. 1839, 1842.
35. Frederick W. Lancaster. Toward Paperless Information Systems. New York: Academic Press, 1978, p. 110.
36. Tom Suprenant. "Future Libraries: the Electronic Environment." Wilson Library Bulletin, 56 (January 1982), p. 341.
37. Wiliam Y. Arms and Dana S. Scott. Brief Review of Research on the Electronic Library at Carnegie-Mellon University. Mercury Technical Report Series No. 2. Pittsburgh: Carnegie-Mellon University, 1990, p. 2.
45. Nora Rawlinson. "The Central Library-A Fatal Attraction." Library Journal, 115 (June 1, 1990), p. 6; John N. Berry, "The Central Library-Beyond Symbolism." Library Journal, 115 (June 1, 1990), p. 7.
Librarians, Self-Censorship, and Information Technologies
by John Buschman
College & Research Libraries May 1994. V55 Iss.3
The Cost and Consequencs of High-Status Resources, excerpt from p.222:
Early in the twentieth century, scholars of the Frankfurt School began an examination of the hierarchy of social values placed on differing methods of knowing. Western culture, they argued, has elevated scientific rationality as a "preferred value" and as a source of truth and information. As David Held states, the result is that "whatever cannot be reduced to numbers is illusion or metaphysics" or mere humanistic ideology. [4] Certain kinds of knowledge (scientific, measurable, profitable) have a social prestige and more weight as true knowledge. The implication is, of course, that other forms of inquiry and their resulting knowledge are devalued, regardless of their insight or truth. Critical education scholars have extended this analysis to the culture of schooling: there are corresponding high- and low-status areas in the curriculum (math/science versus humanities and the softer social studies). [5]
This notion is applicable to our profession: librarians are opting for high-status electronic resources and access at the expense of lower-status (traditional) formats and resources. Information technology, as John Durham Peters states, is the classic product of scientific rationality and the scientific/military establishment. "Information is the stuff of science, and science is (rightly) where [it] has taken strongest root." [6] As a result of their natural affiliation with scientific rationality, information technologies hold a very high status in our culture. It is the socially and economically preferred medium for access to information and soon, to the full text of documents. [7]
Notes for excerpts
4. For an introduction to the history and thought of the Frankfurt School, see David Held, Introduction to Critical Theory (Berkeley, Calif.: Univ. of California Pr., 1980). For shorter treatments of some of the arguments used here, see Jurgen Habermas, "Theory and Practice in a Scientific Civilization," in Paul Connerton, (ed.), Critical Sociology: Selected Readings, (New York: Penguin, 1976); and Henry T. Blanke, "The Mass Culture Debate: Left Perspectives," Progressive Librarian 6/7 (Winter/Spring 1993):30-51.
5. See Stanley Aronowitz and Henry Giroux, Education under Siege (South Hadley, Mass.: Bergen & Garvey, 1985); and Michael Carbone, "Empowering the Liberal Arts: Analysis and Paradigms from Critical Theory," Quarterly Journal of Ideology 12 (1988): 4-5.
6. John Durham Peters, "Information: Notes toward a Critical Hisotry," Journal of Communication Inquiry 12 (1988): 19-20.
7. For a full exploration of this theme, see chapters by the author in John Buschman, ed., Critical Approaches to Information Technology in Librarianship: Foundations and Applications (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1993).
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