Librarians’ Views on Critical Theories and Critical Practices

This study was conducted to investigate levels of familiarity that librarians have with critical theory, to determine the extent to which it informs professional practices, and to examine how the social justice issues related to critical theory inform the practices of librarians who are unfamiliar with it. A survey found that librarians were versed not only in the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, but also in poststructuralism, feminism, queer theory, critical race theory, and postcolonialism. Many librarians, lacking familiarity with critical theory, were also shown to be concerned with social justice and these issues significantly affect these librarians’ professional practices. Based on these results, the authors propose the plausibility of incorporating more critical theory into library and information science programs

Democratic Theory in LIS: Toward an Emendation

Despite quantities of popular rhetoric, democratic theory holds an aposiopetic place within library and information science (LIS) in both senses of that word: It is both in a stasis holding to basic ideas outlined 200 years ago and also a silence largely maintained. A review of a number of state-of-the-literature reviews make the case that it has not been systematically explored or applied, and most LIS work elides the questions democratic theory raises. It is time to emend this and account for a relevant intellectual source which can more firmly ground LIS practice and research in normative terms. Toward that end, three productive wellsprings of democratic theory are reviewed: Jürgen Habermas, Sheldon Wolin, and those working on democratic education (Amy Gutmann, Richard Brosio, Maxine Greene). The article concludes with an outline of some possible LIS questions and approaches drawn from these democratic theorists

Useful Divides: Games of Truth in Library and Information Studies Research and Practice

For much of its history, the work of knowing the library has been said to be riven with divides—between academics and practitioners; between theory and practice; between thinking and doing. There is now a sizable literature in library and information studies that seeks to measure, diagnose, and mend these gaps. This paper interrogates this discourse of division in LIS research and practice. We explore its history, the uses to which it is put, by whom, and to what ends. Rather than seek to bridge the divide, we occupy it, as a space of friction, discomfort, and possibility. Drawing on a vast corpus of academic and industry texts that engage with the gap discourse, we approach these as “games of truth,” as systems of knowledge that produce and reinforce certain ways of being. Using this approach, we highlight how the divide sustains power relations between different groups and constitutes specific forms of knowledge (and not others) as useful and relevant. Seeking to challenge the underlying logic of the divide and its effects in the world, we approach these descriptors in a relational, rather than absolute, sense. Through this excavation, we invite a critical praxis that sees usefulness and relevance as not that which is inextricably aligned to instrumentalism, nor the domain of specific social groups. Rather, we suggest that adopting a critical praxis means reorienting use, using knowledge to advance a mode of living differently, of changing the shape of the world, and of asking what can be done in the face of inequality and indifference. With this in mind, we put forward an alternative mode of understanding use in LIS: as a collective resource that we draw upon to challenge inequalities, to understand and repair past wrongs and continued silences, and to challenge the role of libraries and other institutions in constructing and legitimizing broader power divides in society. These, we suggest, are gaps worth challenging. Pre-print first published online 12/15/202

Public libraries as agonistic spaces: at the crossroads of librarianship and contemporary artistic practices

The paper deals with the possibilities of engaged interdisciplinary activity implemented at the crossroads of librarianship and contemporary art practices. By relying on the theoretical concepts on which critical librarianship is based on the one hand, and contemporary art on the other hand, a possibility is shown of their interference with the aim to introduce a critical perspective within librarianship through art and to establish a new methodology at the crossroads of the two disciplines. The aforementioned is demonstrated in the paper through the coexistence and activity of S. S. Kranjčević Library and Prozori Gallery (Zagreb City Libraries), the programmatic and curatorial concept of which deals with the questions of the manner in which the theoretical positions of contemporary art and their practical and discursive analysis can contribute to the visibility, importance, and cultural capital of the library, the library profession, and the encouragement of critical attitude within the framework of information and communication sciences, the branch of which being librarianship, with emphasis on the project Uncertain Interventions: LGBTIQ Users in Public Libraries as a case study. Finally, the paper introduces the concept of libraries as agonistic public spaces

Liberating Knowledge at the Margins: Towards a Discursive-Transactional Research Paradigm in LIS

This paper proposes an LIS research paradigm by which the transactional relationships between knowledge organization systems (KOS) and external scholarly discourses may be identified and examined. It considers subject headings as discursive acts (or Foucauldian “statements”) unto themselves—in terms of their materiality, rarity, exteriority, and accumulation—arising from such discourses, and which, through their usage in library catalogues and databases, produce their own discursive and non-discursive effects. It is argued that, since these statements lead through their existence and discovery (or absence and neglect) to the creation of further texts, then potentially oppressive discursive formations may result where marginalized knowledges are concerned. The paper aims to better understand these processes in scholarly discourses—and the role of libraries therein—by examining recent examples in the LIS literature regarding matters of race and gender, and which are suggestive of this emergent paradigm.https://cjal.ca/index.php/capal/article/view/2990

A Case for a Critical Information Ethics: Lessons Learned from Research Justice

Information ethics as taught in academic information literacy treats students as consumers, largely ignores the broader sociopolitical context of academic knowledge creation and, through a lack of critical analysis, reproduces Eurocentrism and colonialism in the information literacy classroom and literature. We propose applying a critical information ethics inspired by research justice that emphasizes solidarity with marginalized people and communities, respect for community knowledge, and moral integrity related to situated knowledge versus capitalist notions of information as a commodity. Pre-print first published online 01/20/201