On Learning in the '80s: The Library Caper

2017

This article discusses the representation of library spaceas a space for pragmatic and ideological contestations. The methodology used here was qualitative by observation, interview and documentation. The study found that pragmatically, space in library can be defined by aspects of function of space, requirement for information, availability of WiFi facility, and phys-ical material. Meanwhile, in ideological contestation, library space can be defined by aspects of historical space and paradoxical space.

[sic] - a journal of literature, culture and literary translation, 2011

What is a book? Perhaps the notion refers firstly to an articulate format: to a substantive amount of printed pages bound together. Yet it also presupposes an articulate discourse: these pages are bound together for a reason, they have a single organizing principle in the conceptual as in the material level. The order in which the pages are arranged corresponds to the gradual spinning out of an overall sense. Furthermore, this coherent material and discursive entity circulates in social worlds, becoming charged with different attributes according to context. A consistent symbolic role in a given time and place may lead a book to operate as the book, or at least allow the generic idea of the book to act as a constant mediation in our relationship with any particular volume. Homi Bhabha, for example, has described how "the English book"-a blanket reference to canonical Western texts such as The Bible-impacted the postcolonial contexts in which it was introduced. According to Bhabha, the English book is emblematic of original truth, whether it be the word of God, the entrance into history by way of the written record, or the universal truths proclaimed by humanist literary traditions. All these truths tend to become reified by means of the foreign, imposed, printed text in contexts of reception that hold different configurations of orality and writing (102-122). Yet the idea of the book as an abstract entity that nonetheless mediates actual socio-cultural relationships is also centrally relevant to the postmodern context at a global scale. Books circulate in economic worlds, and this participation often co-determines their material and semantic constitution. The present and potential political significance of how we engage with books, both discursively and in our everyday actions, is informed by how we read that [sic]-a journal of literature, culture and literary translation The Book and Beyond No. 1-Year 2 12/2011-LC.5

Script and Print 36.2, 2013

2014

Although the shift from physical to digital collections is occurring rapidly in some school libraries, change will be slow in others. Liz Gray (2010), the library director at Dana Hall School in Wellesley, MA, suggested that "libraries need to hold on to things that work well even as they keep up with new technologies." William Powers (2010) noted, "The idea that books are outdated is based on a common misconception: the belief that new technologies automatically render existing ones obsolete, as the automobile did with the buggy whip. However, this isn't always the case. Old technologies often handily survive the introduction of new ones, and sometimes become useful in entirely new ways." In looking at the traditional publishing industry in terms of a market economy, we have goods and services (books and information) that require transport systems (publishing to booksellers) to deliver desired content/titles to users/buyers. In recent decades, the industry has been impacted by the shift to e-books, electronic databases, and other related digital forms, but the market is still controlled by materials, production, and delivery costs, as well as the profi ts earned in the delivery of desired goods. Customer preference for those goods is paramount, and today we have a growing number of people who are comfortable with or prefer reading information on their Kindle, Nook, or other e-book reader. At the same time, we still have signifi cant numbers of people who prefer reading the printed page. In many areas, printed books aren't dead-they're alive and healthy. Though a few schools have pioneered the digital movement, there has not been a huge surge of other school libraries going totally bookless. However, this may be due more to library budgets and the inability to take on the added costs of making such changes rather than a preference for more traditional school library resources. Schools across the country have cut back purchases of library materials for budgetary reasons, and today many school collections have fewer books than in the past while trying to devote more monies toward electronic databases, e-books, and other digital resources. Over time, reading preferences are changing. In 2012, e-books in some disciplines and genres began outselling print books for the fi rst time. E-book reader displays continue to improve and drop in price. The move toward e-books and digital information will continue, but currently not every book or article is available in digital form. BookS and the Common Core Schools and most school librarians are involved with implementing the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The standards expect students to read and understand increasingly complex texts not only in English and language arts but across the curriculum. Working with teachers to revise the curriculum and select materials that address these standards, school librarians have shifted their attention from fi ction to nonfi ction works and informational

As a culturally dominant means of organizing and disseminating knowledge, the book is dead. This is not so much an apocalyptic provocation as a recognition of ongoing cultural and technological developments in an era and under a presidency that have been labelled “post-literate.” It is also an invitation to closely examine what the book and its culture actually is, or rather, was. To accept this invitation is to take a socio-historical perspective on the book and on reading, and to see both as much more than a set of physical affordances and cognitive operations. Instead, as media theorist Friedrich Kittler has put it, it is to recognize that the book has served as nothing less than the “concrete form” of “the Western episteme” (Kittler, 2015, p. 38). The book’s physical nature, the means of its production, and the habits and practices of its use and circulation, in other words, together constitute a paradigm for learning, knowing and for knowledge itself. The gradual and ongoing dissolution of this paradigm is one of the defining characteristics of our digital culture, and its significance for education, while not widely discussed, is enormous. This paper examines some of the varying meanings of the book and its culture, and considers what their gradual passing means for education.