Abstract
This essay, which is primarily addressed to academic liaison/subject librarians, considers the degree to which the economically-centered rhetoric of resource production, distribution, and consumption – a language that centers librarianship on the management of things – has pervaded the institutions and practices of modern academic subject librarianship. Drawing on sources in history, literature, and philosophy, the discussion then seeks to recover and restore our sense of library resources as acts of communication between human beings, and proposes an alternate language to help structure and direct the practice of librarianship at a crucial juncture in the history of higher education. This proposed language views librarianship in particular, and intellectual life in general, as a meaningful network of events. The argument concludes by proposing a number of core functions for liaison/subject librarians to develop as they adapt the proposed new viewpoint to the intellectual life of their respective institutions.
Highlights
This essay, which is primarily addressed to academic liaison/subject librarians, considers the degree to which the economically-centered rhetoric of resource production, distribution, and consumption – a language that centers librarianship on the management of things – has pervaded the institutions and practices of modern academic subject librarianship
When we use the same words to describe the same phenomena for a long time, we are inclined to forget that there are different ways of approaching those same phenomena through words that give us a different grip on them, a different path of attack, a different set of possibilities
Talking in a different way can lead to thinking in a different way, and thinking in a different way can lead in turn to fertile and unforeseen revolutions in what we do, the institutions we uphold, and the services we provide
Summary
This essay, which is primarily addressed to academic liaison/subject librarians, considers the degree to which the economically-centered rhetoric of resource production, distribution, and consumption – a language that centers librarianship on the management of things – has pervaded the institutions and practices of modern academic subject librarianship. The economic metaphor construes human knowledge or understanding as a thing, a tangible product of labor, which can be created, maintained, reshaped, distributed, or destroyed – but above all, as a commodity that is a deposit of value, in the shape of time and labor, and is exchangeable against other such commodities.
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