JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Library Quarterly.In this article, the authors examine the discipline of knowledge organization by harnessing the theories of Michel Foucault and Jürgen Habermas. The argument is that knowledge organization is not just a question of improved technology; as an academic discipline, it has to define and legitimize its relevance for society. The authors use the theories of Foucault and Habermas to provide a sociohistorical analysis and critique of knowledge organization in order to point out how the discipline understands itself and how it is a de facto human activity. The selfunderstanding of the discipline is investigated through the case of knowledge organization in the Danish public libraries at the beginning of the twentieth century, using the theories of Foucault. The second part of the article deals with the correspondence between the organization of society and knowledge organization based on the concept of Habermas's public sphere.
Purpose-The purpose of this article is to discuss the stereotype of the librarian and to point to the fact that changing the public view of the librarian requires more than just talking about it. Librarians themselves need to take action. A way to change the image of the librarian could be a new form for reading groups: digital reading groups initiated by libraries. Design/methodology/approach-This article presents a Danish project concerning digital reading groups and the experiences made so far by the involved groups e.g. librarians and readers. The article introduces a historical view on the stereotyped librarian and uses a case study to illustrate the situation today. Findings-The historical conditions that constitute the Danish librarian stereotype show a discrepancy between the role and function of the modern librarian and the way the librarian is seen in a wider public. The applied case study, concerning digital reading groups, shows that digital reading groups work both as a way for the librarian to communicate with the reader in a more dialogical fashion, as a way for the public library to test new promotion tools which point in direction of Web 2.0 and as a more flexible promotion offer to the busy reader. Consequently, the digital reading groups offer a model that can bridge the gap between the librarian stereotype, the librarian and the library user. Originality/value-This article is based on experiences made in connection with a Danish literature promotion project where digital reading groups are launched for the first time. It shows how public libraries can use literature promotion on the internet, not only to reach new users, but also to change the librarian stereotype and upgrade the librarians in direction of Librarian 2.0.
During the last decade a new research area, information history, has focused on the conceptualization of information as a cultural phenomenon in the broader historical framework. In my contribution, I explore the potential of information history in a Danish context at the beginning of the 19th century using two different kinds of texts: the notes by the royal Danish agricultural society in the almanac and broadside ballads. The main theme is to investigate how information was dispersed through the two different genres and how as genres they helped people orientate themselves in the informational landscape that produced the texts.The information in the notes of the almanac was strongly influenced by rationalistic and utilitarian thoughts of enlightenment in order to reform the agricultural sector in Denmark. In order to convince the farmer of the advantages of the new farming methods the information was linked to the notion of experience. However, it was a specific definition of experience as something that was systematic and tested as opposed to a perceived understanding of the farmer’s reliance on experience based on superstition.Furthermore, the notes in the almanac used information as instructions that could easily be transferred to the daily work on the farm thus sustaining the productivity of the farmer.Discussing the concept of information in relation to broadside ballads might at first glance appear to be a far-fetched endavour because the ballads are often associated with bloody descriptions of murder and crime; leaving the question of reliability open. However, the very poetic configuration was often accompanied by prose descriptions of the actual event based on newspaper reports. Thus the broadside ballads demonstrated a unique mixture of information as news and facts and information on morality. The poetic parts of the broadsides showed a keen interest in describing the deviations from normal social behavior and how these digressions were punished. In essence, the broadside ballads were part of a public negotiation of how the event in question should be interpreted.Finally, it should be stressed that there are no intentions as to make connections between the almanac and the broadside ballads. They have been examined in order to give a broad framework for discussing information contexts historically.
The aim of this article is to investigate how the public library user was constructed in a Danish context in the period 1880–1920. The article argues that the definition and understanding of users as coming from all classes in society is a blind spot in Danish librarianship today. The article applies the theories of Michel Foucault on discourse and power in order to discuss how the user was constructed as a classless category and as a means of controlling the masses in libraries. This requires an examination of the way the library population was categorized, as well as of the bureaucratization and normalization of the user.
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