Dismantling the Public Sphere: Situating and Sustaining Librarianship in the Age of the New Public Philosophy

Citation

Audunson, R. (2006), "Dismantling the Public Sphere: Situating and Sustaining Librarianship in the Age of the New Public Philosophy", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 62 No. 2, pp. 295-296. https://doi.org/10.1108/00220410610653361

The market‐oriented liberalism has dominated and reigned more or less unchallenged on the ideological scene for the last decade, i.e. since the fall of the Berlin wall and the Soviet Union, maybe even longer. No doubt this has had its effects also on librarianship. Libraries strive to adapt to markets oriented thinking and New Public Management. New fads stemming from the privat sector, e.g. knowledge management, are introduced. The concept of the customer supplants that of the user. Developing assessment methods aiming partly at measuring the quality of library services but, probably, mainly their instrumentality in contributing to the economic efficiency goals of the university, the local community, the school etc. are flourishing and has become a research field within LIS.

But the development also creates conflicts and counter forces. Whereas liberalism reigned unchallenged in the nineties, the so‐called anti‐globalization movement has developed into a counter force. Also within librarianship and LIS we experience conflicts between those who want to adapt to and embrace the new developments and those who are critical. It might seem paradoxical that the USA, maybe the major homeland of liberalism in general and the liberalist oriented information paradigm in LIS, also has produced some of the best and most stimulating texts criticising those tendencies within librarianship as a practical undertaking and LIS as an academic undertaking. One of the last shots on that three criticising the liberalist paradigm in librarianship is John E. Buschman's book Dismantling the Public Sphere – Situating and Sustaining Librarianship in the Age of the New Public Philosophy.

Buschman's major argument is that librarianship is being built down as a public sphere institution with a social mission related to education and democracy. “The experience centre”, “the learning centre”, “the media centre”, the information storehouse” take the place of the library as a complex and multi‐faceted public space.

Buchanan builds his arguments on to pillars. The first is Henry Giroux and Michael Apple who have criticised US education for sacrificing education for democracy on the altar of (market) economic instrumentality. The other pillar is Jürgen Habermas and his concept of a public sphere for undistorted communication. Historically libraries can be seen as intimately linked to the growth of the bourgeois public sphere. In the market orientation of today, however, the libraries' role as a public space fragments. The result is that libraries lose in importance. Public policy reports speak of the importance of libraries and herald the coming of the information and knowledge age. One should believe that money would rain over libraries. It does not. Why is that so, Buschman asks. And he answers: When librarians in their eagerness to adapt embrace the market oriented perspective on information and knowledge, it is only natural that resources are invested on the market place the market, not in public institutions like libraries. Librarians are digging their own grave, Buschman seems to argue. And he goes to document how librarianship has adopted – according to Buschman in a shallow way ‐ private sector management thinking, how customer oriented ways of thinking erodes the role of libraries as public institutions, how assessment methods taken from the private sector and not suitable for public services, draws attention away from that which should be the primary mission of libraries: securing public access to knowledge and culture and freeing knowledge and culture from being bound to a private commodities such as the book, thus realising the potential of knowledge and culture as common goods. And he criticises the American Library Association, the institution that should represent and defend the value base, for having fallen prey to those tendencies eroding librarianship as a public undertaking.

Buschman book is an engaged and spirited contribution to the debate on the role of libraries and librarianship. It might provoke counter arguments, but therein lays exactly its value. If librarianship is to find a viable position in tomorrows society, and tomorrows society is dependent upon librarianship succeeding in doing that in order develop digital civilisation, not a technological Barbary, we need to discuss problems such as those formulated in Buschman's book.