Critical Studies in Library and Information Science

What Happened to the Ads in Turn-of-the-Century Bound Magazines, and Why

by Ellen Gruber Garvey

Education for Library and Information Science, a means to an end, not an end in itself

by Susan Myburgh

The age of the corporate State versus the informational and cognitive public domain

by Zapopan M. Muela-Meza

Dissertation Reviews Seeking Editors in Humanities and Social Sciences

by Dissertation Reviews

Dissertation Reviews is seeking dynamic, early- to mid-career scholars to help us bring Dissertation Reviews to new... more Dissertation Reviews is seeking dynamic, early- to mid-career scholars to help us bring Dissertation Reviews to new disciplines and fields in all areas of the humanities and social sciences. Please read attached paper or visit http://dissertationreviews.org/seeking-new-editors

Progressive librarianship: oxymoron, tautology, or the smart choice

by Colin Darch

Innovation [Pietermaritzburg] no.22, June 2001, pages 6-9

Librarians have a choice between an instrumental view of their profession or principled engagement. British working... more Librarians have a choice between an instrumental view of their profession or principled engagement. British working class history is used to show how mass cultural literacy and the social availability of information are essential to democracy. Within this reality a neutral library science is untenable. A tradition of engagement has a long history within the profession, valuing concepts such as freedom of expression and human rights. This is now challenged by a view of information as capital and processes of commodification and privatisation. The library is essential to the process of preserving our cultural heritage for the benefit of humankind.

Information needed to cope with crisis in the lives of individuals and communities: an assessment of the roles public libraries and voluntary sector agencies play in the …

by Zapopan M. Muela-Meza

Una introducción a la crítica de los desafíos teóricos y prácticos que enfrentan los integrantes de los repositorios públicos de conocimiento en el fenómeno de la …

by Zapopan M. Muela-Meza

The social class struggles concept with an interdisciplinary approach: a paramount concept for research in library and information science (LIS)

by Zapopan M. Muela-Meza

Muela-Meza, Z.M. (2010). The social class struggles concept with an interdisciplinary approach: a paramount concept for research in library and information science (LIS). Crítica Bibliotecológica: Revista de las Ciencias de la Información Documental (Library and Information Science Critique: Journal of the Sciences of Information Recorded in Documents), 3 (1), pp.8-36 [Online] http://eprints.rclis.org/bitstream/10760/15091/1/c.b.vol.2.no.2%26vol.3.no.1.muela-meza.art.pdf .

This paper analyses the social class struggles concept with an interdisciplinary approach to be used by theorists and... more This paper analyses the social class struggles concept with an interdisciplinary approach to be used by theorists and practitioners of library and information science (LIS). This concept emerged as part of the theoretical framework employed by the author in his doctoral thesis (Muela-Meza, 2010): An Application of Community Profiling to Analyse Community Information Needs, and Providers: Perceptions from the People of the Broomhall Neighbourhood of Sheffield, UK. This concept is complemented from philosophy (Marx and Engels, [1848] 1976a), and the natural sciences (Hauser, 2006; Sagan and Druyan, 1992), and it served the author to understand better the bigger dimensions of the underlying issues behind social classes and human conflicts. It also served to understand better the contradictions between people (e.g. LIS users with contradictory and mutually exclusive information needs to be provided by libraries and other institutions of information recorded in documents), and how these intensify when these are interrelated with the social class they belong to (Muela-Meza, 2007). This paper also criticises some competing views whose proponents by pretending fallaciously and deceitfully to deny the presence of social class divides in society, such as those rhetorical ploys of post-modernism that propose capitalist-class-driven ideologues of “community cohesion” based on “social capital” (Putnam, 1999). It shows evidence of how those followers (e.g. Pateman, 2006; Contreras Contreras, 2004; Bryson, Usherwood and Proctor, 2003) of capitalist-class ideologues, by doing so they aligned their discourse to that of dominance hierarchies and hegemony against working class people, in LIS and other sciences, and the humanities. It also criticises the postmodern pseudoscience because it pretends to undermine the logical rationality fundamental in LIS and all other sciences. It recommends that LIS theorists and practitioners employ the social class struggles concept as configured here in order to understand better contradictions, conflicts, and struggles within LIS theory and practice, and also to search for broader epistemological aims such as justice and wisdom (Fleissner and Hofkirchner, 1998), concealed by the capitalist or bourgeois and middle classes for their benefit against working class.

The social class struggles concept with an interdisciplinary approach: a paramount concept for research in library and information science (LIS)

by Zapopan M. Muela-Meza

Muela-Meza, Z.M. (2010). "The social class struggles concept with an interdisciplinary approach: a paramount concept for research in library and information science (LIS)." Crítica Bibliotecológica: Revista de las Ciencias de la Información Documental (Library and Information Science Critique: Journal of the Sciences of Information Recorded in Documents), 3 (1), pp.8-36.[Online] http://eprints.rclis.org/bitstream/10760/15091/1/c.b.vol.2.no.2%26vol.3.no.1.muela-meza.art.pdf .

This paper analyses the social class struggles concept with an interdisciplinary approach to be used by theorists and... more This paper analyses the social class struggles concept with an interdisciplinary approach to be used by theorists and practitioners of library and information science (LIS). This concept emerged as part of the theoretical framework employed by the author in his doctoral thesis (Muela-Meza, 2010): An Application of Community Profiling to Analyse Community Information Needs, and Providers: Perceptions from the People of the Broomhall Neighbourhood of Sheffield, UK. This concept is complemented from philosophy (Marx and Engels, [1848] 1976a), and the natural sciences (Hauser, 2006; Sagan and Druyan, 1992), and it served the author to understand better the bigger dimensions of the underlying issues behind social classes and human conflicts. It also served to understand better the contradictions between people (e.g. LIS users with contradictory and mutually exclusive information needs to be provided by libraries and other institutions of information recorded in documents), and how these intensify when these are interrelated with the social class they belong to (Muela-Meza, 2007). This paper also criticises some competing views whose proponents by pretending fallaciously and deceitfully to deny the presence of social class divides in society, such as those rhetorical ploys of post-modernism that propose capitalist-class-driven ideologues of “community cohesion” based on “social capital” (Putnam, 1999). It shows evidence of how those followers (e.g. Pateman, 2006; Contreras Contreras, 2004; Bryson, Usherwood and Proctor, 2003) of capitalist-class ideologues, by doing so they aligned their discourse to that of dominance hierarchies and hegemony against working class people, in LIS and other sciences, and the humanities. It also criticises the postmodern pseudoscience because it pretends to undermine the logical rationality fundamental in LIS and all other sciences. It recommends that LIS theorists and practitioners employ the social class struggles concept as configured here in order to understand better contradictions, conflicts, and struggles within LIS theory and practice, and also to search for broader epistemological aims such as justice and wisdom (Fleissner and Hofkirchner, 1998), concealed by the capitalist or bourgeois and middle classes for their benefit against working class.

Latin America's information technologies: promises and realities

by Estela Mastromatteo