The materiality of knowledge organization: epistemology, metaphors and society. New article.

As the year comes to a close a new article of mine has been published. It was submitted in april for a theme issue of journal Knowledge Organization, published by the International Society for Knowledge Organization. It is the prime forum for classification research within LIS. My contribution can thus be seen as a kind of return to the research themes that occupied me in the late 1990's, culminating in my doctoral dissertation Bibliotek, klassifikation, samhälle from 1999.

It was nice to be asked to participate in this issue, and it is humbling to be published along with such good colleagues. The always interesting editing process proved more than rigorous this time. Knowledge Organization is a journal with very strict formal requirements, and a lot of work had to be put down into making the article fit those requirements. In the process, I felt that some of the arguments were a bit lost. Now seeing the article in its final form, however, I find it at least fitting the formal structure of the other articles, giving the issue a nice conform look. Classification research is in itself a thoroughly conformist branch of LIS, and Knowledge Organization is a good manifestation of this. Still, I can easily defend the final product, and it is with a strange kind of pleasure that I now send it off to a life of its own.

Interestingly enough, this detour into classification research might prove to be timely sign of what is soon to come in terms of new research for me. This, however, I will return to here during next year, when the time is right.

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Hansson, Joacim (2013) The Materiality of Knowledge Organization: Epistemology, Metaphors and Society. Knowledge Organization. 40(6), 384-391. 29 references.

ABSTRACT:

This article discusses the relation between epistemology, social organization and knowledge organization. Three examples are used to show how this relation has proven to be historically stable: 1) the organization of knowledge in 18th century encyclopedias; 2) the problem of bias in the international introduction of DDC in early 20th century libraries in Scandinavia; and 3) the practice of social tagging and folksonomies in contemporary late capitalist society. By using the concept of ‘materiality’ and the theoretical contribution on the documentality of social objects by Maurizio Ferraris, an understanding of the character of the connection between epistemology and social order in knowledge organization systems is achieved. 

 

 

The full content of the issue is found here

Day of the imprisoned writer

Today is the Day of the Imprisoned Writer. Manifestations are held all over the world, even in Växjö, where I live and work. Day of the Imprisoned Writer was started by International PEN in 1981, and has been kept recognized ever since. It puts focus on writers – authors, journalists - standing up against repression and attacks on the free word. The manifestation in Växjö took place at the ”speaker’s corner” in Storgatan. Present were local politicians, representatives from the local daily newspaper, the city public library, Amnesty and various literary associations. I was invited to speak as a representative of my university, and it felt important to participate. It was a small but sincere manifestation in the cold and misty november lunch hour.

An imprisoned writer is never just an imprisoned writer – an imprisoned writer is always a concern for society as a whole. There are many ways to support writers who are imprisoned or under threat. It can be done through NGO:s such as PEN or Amnesty, and it can be done through singular manifestations and protests. It can also be done by keeping the imprisoned writers’ words available and relevant. For this, institutionsal structures in society are required, first and foremost perhaps, through libraries. By securing a strong library system, society is supporting imprisoned authors and by trusting librarians to do their job, the words of authors and journalists under threat are kept alive through persistence. This is important in these times of limited attention span in media and short term political projects. Freedom of speech must never be used by politcians to make self righteous projects in order to gain cheap political credit. Instead work on these issues must be taken seriously and recognized as a cornerstone of librarianship and as such, of society. Only with the unglamorous dullnesss of persistence can forces that wish to limit free speech be kept out of power.

Recollections of a visit to Uruguay. Part 3: sea lions

After an intense week full of meetings, interviews, seminars, coctail parties, dinners, speeches and study visits, I had to get away from humans. I just needed to enjoy the company of other species too, and in Uruguay my interest had turned to a very special place.

On the last day before returning to Sweden, I left Montevideo and took off east along the coast to Punta del Este. There in the harbour, I went on a boat and sailed out on the South Atlantic ocean. Well, perhaps not sailed, the vessel itself was a commercial ”ferry” – a quite small motorboat. Anyway, after about 45 minutes I reached the goal of the day: Isla de Lobos. It is a small island about 8 km southeast of Punta del Este. On it lives one of the largest populations of sea lions in the world. Already some ten minutes before arriving at the island there was like a ”wall of smell” in the middle of the ocean. It intensified as the boat approached the cliffs of the small island. About 180 000 sea lions live there, and it is today a national park. Therefore it is not possible to go ashore, so instead the boat turned off its engines, and we floated close to the coastline. The air immediately filled with the sounds of the sea lions, mixed with their smell and the salty scent of the sea. It was some very sensual 30 minutes in the presence of these strange and beautiful creatures.

As curious and social as humans, no less talkative, but with a different language… and smell. It was such a relief (and fun) to spend time in their presence – in their own unique habitat. Going back, the captain told me to have a lookout for sperm whales. They had been seen close to the coastline earlier in the day. None was spotted though, but knowing that these giants lurked somewhere underneath made me curiously calm.

Beautiful libraries, interesting people and sea lions – all in a week’s work. Life is good.

Recollections of a visit to Uruguay. Part 2: Study visits

Apart from holding a seminar at the Feria Internacional del Libro, the week I spent in Montevideo in early October primarily consisted of a number of study visits to various kinds of libraries and bookstores. I got the opportunity to visit the Parliamentary Library, the National Library and a series of public libraries in different parts of Montevideo. As always when I do these kinds of intense rounds of visits to different libraries in a new town, impressions pile up. Here I will only briefly touch upon some of the singular ones that are still with me.

The Parliament

 

There are no guards. I am guided through the whole parliament with its fifty shades of marble and its library and there is a feeling of trust that is rare in political environments these days. The library is painstakingly beautiful. It is open to the public and there are signs saying ”silence”.

The National Library

I am given a private tour of the National Library and shown through labyrinths and passages. Work is silence and intense. A table is set up in preparation for my visit, displaying rare photographs, letters, incunabliae and medieval manuscripts; folios and miniatures. I am shown a 13th century codex of hymns. Nobody knows how it got there. I am allowed to step into a freezer donated by the Bill Gates Library Foundation, used to preserve a unique and fragile collection of early 20th century photographs.

 Public libraries:

I visit several. In one, tango comes whispering through loudspeakers hidden on the shelves in the main room. Once a week the floor is cleared and the library hosts tango evenings. The head librarian loves tango. Only here, I find myself thinking, and perhaps somewhere in Finland.

I am taken to see La Biblioteca Maria Stagnero de Munar, a small castle in central Montevideo currently being transformed into a library and a cultural centre exclusively for children. It is an ambitious project and Prof. Gonzalo Halty at the División Promoción Cultural of the Intendencia de Montevideo, who is my host this afternoon, is proud. It is easy to understand why. This is the first centre/library of its kind i South America. I get a feeling that public libraries mean something to him. Suddenly he asks me, ”How should we continue?”. ”Don’t ask me”, I say. ”Ask the librarians. They’ll know what to do”.

At the Biblioteca Dr. Francisco Schinca (in Montevideo public libraries are named), I see a different reality, that of high ambition and no money. In an area far from the wealthy city centre and grand projects, I meet librarian Lourdes Díaz, who runs this little library with determination and admirable strenght. This is not a library the Intendencia wanted me to see, so I thank Carina Patrón of the Uruguay Library Association for taking me there. The area is filled with social problems, but this library prevails with only limited support from the fund distributing authorities. Mrs Díaz and I speak for over two hours; about the value of libraries, about the value of resistence and about the joy of creating a space for reading and culture for the people far from the official agenda, be it political, social or cultural.

Bookstores

The very last thing I do in Montevideo is to visit the Puro Verso bookstore in the Ciudad Vieja.  I had eaten lunch there earlier in the week – yes, they offer lunch among the books. I just had to go back. In Sweden you don’t find them any more, bookstores that sell, well, books - and perhaps some music. Wandering through the shelves of Puro Verso I just cannot help wondering what went wrong in my own country. How did we end up with bookstores selling more branded stationery trash than books? Such a waste. It is comforting to know that stores like this exist in other countries, where books and reading obviously is taken more seriously than in Sweden.
 

That, and so many other things I saw and heard in Montevideo during my week in the warm South American spring filled me with gratitude and, dare I say it… hope.

Recollections of a visit to Uruguay. Part 1: book fair seminar

In april, I was contacted by Mr. Jim Larsson at the Swedish-Uruguayan Cultural Institute about coming to Montevideo to talk about public libraries. I had never heard of this institute, and had to check twice that it really existed before getting back to him saying that I would definitively consider coming - but what was expected of me? The initial plan was that I should give a speech at a book fair in Montevideo on the role of public libraries in the Nordic countries, as Nordic literature would be one of the themes of the fair. After a couple of months of discussions and practical arrangements, the pieces finally came together, and I found myself on a plane bound for South America. During the course of our discussions, the event grew and as I landed in sunny Montevideo, I had a full week of work ahead of me.  

The main event was a seminar on October 10 at the 36th Feria International del Libro in Montevideo. The event gathered some 300 of the city’s librarians in a discussion on the future and the present state of Uruguayan libraries.

It was a highly inspirational event, and the discussion was very fruitful. It is interesting to note, that wherever you go, the fundamental problems and concerns about public libraries are pretty much the same. Material and political conditions may differ, but the need to find vital forms for cutural activities, platforms for critical political and cultural discussions is the same everywhere. A belief in the ability of public libraries in this respect was felt very clearly by the present librarians of Uruguay, a country which has a proud history of social welfare, but which suffered severly during the economic fall some ten years ago. The impression the visit gave me of the Uruguayan library sector is that it is both ambitious and determined to provide library services worthy of a welfare state to all citizens of the country.

There have been several political initiatives during the present government which carry the potential to be of significance for libraries. For instance, a decision to provide every child in a public school with his/her own laptop or iPad has meant that a large part of the population now, through the kids, have access to the international flow of knowledge and information on the Internet. This is a reform that at least at a first glance seems like a stroke of political genious in a country like Uruguay. Not only can it be helpful as school books are scarce and of poor quality, but it can open for new dimension in librarianship, as one of the most severe problems in the libraries I visited clearly was the lack of relevant media. Lack of media is, of course, a substantial problem in a library.

At the book fair seminar, many questions concerned the present state of Swedish and Nordic libraries, as they still are seen as models of ”the good library”. The view on Swedish society is still coloured by the social democratic welfare state of the 1960’s and 70’s, renowned throughout the world for its humanistic approach to politics. That we now have left that behind and entered a social era defined by other parametres than humanism and generosity seemed to come as a surprise to many. The reason for the almost glorifying view on Sweden is obvious – many intellectuals took refuge in Sweden in the 1970’s when political conditions in most of South America were unbearable. I had the pleasure of meeting several of them on this journey. Uruguay is the first country I have visited where the librarians and authors I met did not say ”we went to school together”, but in stead ”we went to jail together”. The stories they told were both dramatic and deeply moving. In such an environment politics and ideology is still visible and important, and the advocates of the current left wing presidency are concerned about the role of public libraries. They know that libraries can matter a lot, if treated well. The discussion went on for over an hour revealing structural problems, but also determination and willingness to solve them, not least through international dialogue. Some problems stood out; funding, for sure, but also the perhaps even more important question of how to think about libraries in local communities. I did not feel that I could give a lot of advice, but of course we do know some things from research. Instead it was my impression that the discussion in itself was of importance, and the fact that so many people were gathered at this same occasion provided a common ground for renewed discussons among librarians and politicians. Living under financially restrained conditions, as most Uruguayan public libraries do, it can be difficult to keep above the waterline of everyday decision making and practice. I hope that the seminar worked as an opportunity for those who attended to take a break from that and allow themselves to think ahead. It was obvious that not only questions, but also suggestions and solutions were there in that room on October 10. For me it was an important experience, and I wish that some Swedish librarians would have been there to listen, if only to hear the voices of dedication and determination of their Uruguayan colleagues.

The speech I gave is here (in Spanish).

Bye bye, library?

Recently, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by journalist Anders Mildner about the future of public libraries, for an upcoming article in Swedish magazine Vi. It turned out to be a nice piece where also two prominent Swedish librarians, Anna-Stina Takala and Mats Myrstener, discuss the role and legitimacy of public libraries, today and yesterday. It is well worth a read.

You find it here.

Prayer flags and the need for new thought in Library and Information Science

Library and Information Science is, as scientific disciplines tend to be, a rather rational endeavour. We promote and study cognitive and domain specific information behavior, rational divisions of knowledge and productive organizational structures of document management and library activities. Little room is left for that which is lying beside these cognitive and rational aspects of life. In fact very little we do is about, well, life. I sometimes feel that as being a bit tiresome, especially when I look around and see how people so much depend on knowledge, ideas and traditions that goes beyond our rational structures of knowledge organization, ultimately based as it is, on an aristotelian world view.

Fritz Machlup, the renowned Austrian-American economist who was one of the first to recognize and analyse knowledge as economically significant, mentions five types of knowledge that in equal amounts blend into the lives of most people. Not all at once, perhaps, but over the span of a life time they all play their parts in formulating a whole human being. The five types of knowledge he mentions are:

1.     Practical knowledge

2.     Intellectual knowledge

3.     Small talk and pastime knowledge

4.     Spiritual knowledge

5.     Unwanted knowledge

In LIS we almost exclusively address the two first categories. Even when we analyse spiritual knowledge, we do it in an intellectual manner, for instance in the divisions of religious movements and ideas in library classification systems.

Spiritual knowledge, however, seldom lends itself to such rationalization. Still it is to many people the foundation of their peronal knowledge systems, and still it is absolutely necessary to include sprirtual knowledge into ones life in order to navigate in this disturbingly shallow and yet complex society of today.

The other week, in preparation for our wedding, my wife ordered from San Francisco a package of Tibetan prayer flags. The company she bought them from operates from California, but trades with flags made in Tibet and Nepal. We decided to put them in the trees of our garden.  Autumn and darkness is coming quickly now, and they will bring their colors into the season of no colours, but not just that. They will also bring strenght, compassion, peace and wisdom into the wind surrounding our home.

Tibetan prayer flags come in groups of five, mostly in colours blue, white, red, green and yellow. They represent the elements and the five pure lights: blue is for sky and space, white is for wind, red is for fire, green is for water and yellow is for earth. In Tibetan buddhist tradition, balance between these elements brings harmony and health. It is an easy, yet powerful way of putting a knowledge system to work, promoting other values than those we have to struggle with on the daily basis of our professional and economic activities. The structure of the knowledge system represented by these prayer flags is a reminder of the limitations of rationality and that it is important not to waste our lives focussing too much on it.

I think it is time for Library and Information Science to start looking in new directions in order to develop knowledge that is relevant to people in a more complete way, thus creating a deeper understanding of the roles different forms of knowledge play in the lives of humans (and other species – everything is tied together as one). There are several non-intellectual knowledge forms waiting to be explored in ways that fit their own requirements. In order to approach them, however, we need to revise some of our acquired theoretical and methodological preconceptions.

Prayer flags wither in the wind, thread by thread. When doing so, they don’t send off prayers with each thread. Instead they paint the wind with the knowledge that harmony and compassion will come to all beings sharing this same wind.

I imagine that Fritz Machlup would appreciate this thought, even though he was an economist. One can only wish that more economists would study his work, and if some of them would choose to put prayer flags in their gardens to paint their immediate wind in the colours of harmony, well that might just create some change. By all means, that goes for LIS scholars too.

Picture of prayer flags in our garden is taken by Lotta Hansson Löthgren/1811.nu