New labour in libraries: the post‐Fordist public library

Abstract

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the value of French School Regulation theory for questions of relevance to researchers and practitioners working in the field of information policy in general and public librarianship in particular. Design/methodology/approach -The paper is divided into two parts. Part one outlines Regulation theory's twin analytic tools of Fordism and post-Fordism and its value for questions about the evolution of the public library. Part two provides an example of the approach's explanatory potential when applied to a series of public library planning documents produced by the Government of Ontario, Canada from the 1950s. Findings -An interpretation of the evolution of the identity of the library user from patron to customer to information producer-consumer is proposed at the intersection of the neoliberal state's austerity in social spending, the ubiquity of the new information and communication technologies, and fundamental changes in libraries as sites of waged-work.Research limitations/implications -The research facilitates the development of a political economy of the contemporary public library of potential value to the international public library community. Also, conceiving of the public library as first and foremost a site of productive work forces one to re-engage with the meaning of shifting relations between the library user and the institution on working conditions. Originality/value -The applicability of a relatively under-utilized theoretical framework is modelled that enables one to ask new questions of relevance to the field of library and information science.

The Public Library System as an Element in the 2007 and 2015 Electoral Programs of Spain's Political Parties in the Region of Castilla-La Mancha

“…For example in the United Kingdom (McMenemy, 2009;Boughey & Cooper, 2010), and in Canada (Stevenson, 2011 r The library as an instrument of democracy, catalyst of transparency, weapon against corruption (Sturges, 2008) and ideal forum for the development of public and political debate (Alstad & Curry, 2003) in accordance with the concept of a public sphere of Habermas and that of the "third place" of Oldemburg.…”

Professionalization, Gender, and Librarianship in Ontario, 1920–75

“…30 This preoccupation with the division of labour may be identified, in some ways, with 'Fordist' labour conditions that predominated in the post-war period until the mid-1970s. 31 By May 1958, the Institute of Professional Librarians' constitution was ratified as part of the OLA and, by 1960, the Institute had incorporated as a separate entity, the Institute of Professional Librarians of Ontario (IPLO). The Institute's appeal stretched to librarians working in all types of libraries.…”

Structuring an Action Net of Public Library Membership

“…0024-2519/2015/8504-0005$10.00 This article is not a critical analysis of the terminology used in research and practice to refer to library participants (e.g., user or nonuser, customer or client), as that is an ongoing question in public library research (Nguyen, Partridge, and Edwards 2012). Nor is it a study of membership from the perspective of the political economy of public libraries (Stevenson 2011) or the excluded or marginalized members of any library's community, as implied in research on information worlds (Jaeger and Burnett 2010). Instead this article takes a pragmatic sociomaterial approach with the goal of identifying all observable and recorded forms of the public library's membership-in-action where membership is but one way into studying public library participation.…”