This weekend marks the annual Göteborg Book Fair, Bok och Bibliotek 2014. As part of the Linnaeus University programme, I gave a talk on
library education in a historical and social perspective. The book fair itself
was as crowded and horrendous as ever, but I was happy to see my own little session
turning out to be very nice and surprisingly intimate, with a small number of politely
engaged attendants. The talk was also promoting my upcoming Swedish book Att
bilda en bibliotekarie, which will be out within a week or so on BTJ Förlag.
The following is a short summary of the talk:
Librarianship builds on a long tradition of very stable
practices. It has looked fundamentally the same for at least five thousand
years. Very little has changed. This simple fact is something that many
librarians and library managers and funders today seem to feel a bit
uncomfortable with, since the norm in contemporary librarianship, as well as in
society at large, is to be as adaptive and innovative as possible. Of course we
see this in relation to new information and communication technologies. A
technological imperative has replaced a moral one, which could thrive in times
of less technological pressure on libraries. This change of imperative has also
changed the ways we see library education. The idea of specific education for
librarians is in itself not very old – it isn’t until the middle of the 19th
century that we find what could be described as ”modern” library education curricula,
first in central Europe, and somewhat later in the USA. In the very long time
that preceded these, librarianship was thought of as a highly intellectual
practice and there are many examples of erudite librarians working in close
proximity to various cultural, religious and political power centres. For
centuries the head librarian at the Biblioteca Apostolica in the Vatican State
worked very closely with the Holy See, and in the 17th century France we find
librarians within the inner circles of La Républic des Savants.
The closeness to power was not entirely broken unil the late
19th century when we see the emergence of educational programmes for public
libraries, a completely new kind of library that on a local level needed
another kind of librarians that those of earlier times. Melvil Dewey set the template
for how these new curriculi shold be, focussing on a combination of literature
and library administration and techniques.
When the first proper Swedish library education took off in
1926, it was fully inspired by Dewey’s American example (as were most of the
ideas behind the public libraries). It attracted primarily well educated women,
who completed various humanistic courses with a library education that in four
month gave as many lectures as we today do in one and a half years in our LIS
programmes.
In a sense these librarians might be considered as erudites,
altough in another, more pragmatic sense than that of the 17th century
librarians. For most parts of the 20th century librarians were seen as
”learned” professionals, something which gave them a specific status in their
local communities or in their universities. It isn’t until we see the
paradigmatic shift of information technology that this ideal for library professionals
and the educational programmes that provided them starts to erode. Suddenly
other qualities than humanistic learning and erudite morals takes over – the
perceived needs of the ”user” replaces the authority of the highly qualified
librarian. From an educational point of view, the final turning point is the
implementation of the Bologna process which not only makes european Higher
Education Institutions more homogenous, but also focus more on employability
than morals and learning. Millennia of professional practice development was
thrown overboard in the name of technology and economic growth ideology. It
goes without saying that librarianship is a profession which is very badly
suited to fit this ideology since the very core of professional integrity
appeals to other ideals, now politically obsolete. The new librarians graduating from our LIS programmes, however, are of course
children of this age. Does this mean then that we should shut down our
libraries or change our LIS curricula even more? Well, this is a actually hard
to say, for as time rushes on, we are getting more and more aware of the fact
that the economic growth ideology, which is the foundation of the Bologna process,
is not very durable and that we need to find another path for social
construction. In the same way that the old national states finally seems to
crumble (it was bound to happen), the technological and economic imperative of
higher education – and librarianship – will crumble as well and make way for something
new. This ”new” might very well be a view on humanity as clever enough to build
on experience and a trust in knowledge as a base for building sound
institutions for the benefit of a more equal society, both economically and
culturally. When that time comes, libraries will still be there and we who
educate professional librarians will have a very strong tradition to fall back
on. We will know what to do. The erudite librarian is also a humanistic librarian
and when today’s society suffers its inevitable nervous breakdown, it might
very well be that we will turn to classic humanities to get us back on track.
The way to get there will, after this era of social media and pedagogical
experimentation, be through traditional libraries and library services – provided
by true, erudite professionals. That is, if they still exist. If it is not too
late.
