Non-fiction: an unnaturally naturalised concept for collection development

Abstract

Purpose: This paper seeks to problematise the basis of our use of non-fiction as an explanatory category in libraries that have mandates to deliver information to civil society users in order to initiate debate on its ongoing value.Design/methodology/approach: A range of literature from the fields of information science, philosophy, literary studies and the sociology of knowledge was critically surveyed in order to uncover reasons for the use of the non-fiction concept when librarians are dealing with documentary knowledge. A process of thematisation of relevant material was then conducted utilising a methodology informed by historicist and hermeneutic-phenomenological approaches to social scientific inquiry.Findings: While the concept of non-fiction has arguably been the single most influential "gift" of librarianship to other disciplines and to readers, the term's extreme simplicity masks a complex range of factors associated with common-sense understanding of life and our conceptualisation of what constitutes knowledge in civil society information environments. By masking the nature of questions associated with knowledge and documentary knowledge the non-fiction concept contributes to a restricted view of how these concepts interrelate.Practical implications: Preliminary reasons are offered for why the non-fiction concept is problematic and an alternative discursive formation is put forward which may enable more fruitful caretaking of documentary collections in school and public libraries.Originality/value: This paper helps to open the discussion among collection management theorists and practitioners regarding how the concept of documentary knowledge can be more usefully theorised so that it is better able to support the epistemic learning and socialisation goals of libraries characterised by their civil society setting. NON-FICTION: AN UNNATURALLY NATURALISED 3 PART 1Within the world of ideas that school and public library selectors are called upon to represent to their readers the contingency which operates to separate fiction from what has some physical manifestation, albeit as a real or intentional object, has an uncertain and largely undefined status as "non-fiction." Why reality, as either a physical object or process or, as a product of human thought-as metaphysical, ethical or historical speculation-is, or should be, defined with reference to novels in libraries, and by extension within general literary discursive frameworks, is largely undefined. An attempt is made here to highlight why this is problematic and how knowledge is arrested in its development as a result of a choice by civil society's librarians to represent knowledge as a nebulous concept, either incalculable beyond mere classification, or inestimable, given the limits of the typical librarian's scientific and humanistic training.By choosing to avoid an engagement with the concept of knowledge librarians in nonacademic settings work within a poorly framed set of epistemic reference points. This construction is that knowledge is an entity...