this week, a lot was said about what literacy is... and what it isn't. and we spent some time talking about the role of librarians as ministers of technology today. And, while i feel that these are important things to define before becoming a literacy minded librarian, i also felt a little left out in the cold. i don't think of myself as a librarian in the making because my interests lie in creating and preserving records - not dispensing them to the public.
that said, critical literacy plays a very different role in my life. to me, critical literacy highlights issues of what information we record and how we interpret its significance/educate others.
the how
friere’s notion of education as a system of economics, and by extension a system of power relations, is fascinating. he describes a pedagogy in which knowledge is capital and it flows only from the top down. and, like hegel’s master-slave dialectic, dominant-submissive roles are constantly reaffirmed by those who participate and never change. students and information are handled as objects, teachers define the scope of our knowledge, etc. but if this system benefits only the few on top (teacher-masters), why do we continue in this way?
how it can change
let’s make the information flow both ways! let’s open our shelves and catalog information according to the knowledge of the masses and serve the greater good…okay, maybe i’m not that radical, but i do believe there is a trend towards truth amongst all those information seeking teacher-students out there. the benefits of developing tools like librarything and wikipedia far out-weigh the drawbacks. we’re much more likely to discover something new by pooling all of the resources we already have. ideally, incorporating a small fraction of the authoritarian 'top-down' method (a content manager at wikipedia wouldn't hurt), while sharing the power between all those who participate, would allow the exchange and evolution of information to happen at unparalleled speeds. (if you don't believe me, listen to ethan hawke and julie delpy discuss collective consciousness. 3 minute mark.)
the what
in 1973, the american psychiatric association decided to remove homosexuality from its diagnostic and statistical manual of psychiatric disorders. to physicians who praticed prior to that date, i'm sure this difference in human desire/behavior was a matter of medical fact (science is, in fact, still trying to find the 'gay gene'). today, however, this episode in history is seen as an example of the influence of bias over the documentation of the society we live in. now, it's easy to make the case for this one considering how much of a hot button issue homosexuality is, but what is an archivist to do when cataloging far less sensitive matters?
what can be changed
the librarian code of ethics prizes professional neutrality above most things, and for good reason. with authority comes responsibility and, as someone who looks to create information, i should feel a great responsibility for changing the content of what people learn by defining its context. this is what critical literacy is concerned with. if i decree that world religions belong in the realm of myth (a la dewey and his decimal system), i am altering a person's world view. if literacy may be loosely defined as the retention and application of information, critical literacy would require me to consider the why (is this here?) along with the what (does this mean?) and the how (do i learn/teach more?)
As a fellow non-LMS student and amateur archivist, I can fully appreciate your perspective on the role we play in developing our collections and spent much of my post discussing the same. During one of my first few days at the architectural archive at which I am interning my curator made an interesting comment that I think is illustrative of the role archives play versus museums, We don't have to pick and choose like museums do because we aren't collecting for curatorial sake; we are preserving the historical record. So that means we have the plans for things like stripmalls. Yes, stripmalls. (The proverbial architectural outcast.)
ReplyDeleteAnd yet yes, there is still judgment involved in collection development, even if it is just in what is processed first. So how do we maintain a critical approach? Constant evaluation of who are audience is and who it could be, what is being requested... see my post for more of the endless questions.
I think it's also worth noting the importance of the archival principle of original order and "respect du fonds," that archivists preserve the integrity of a collection's structure because of the inherent meaning it may have, rather than asserting their own. Perhaps this can serve as a reminder of our role to be unbiased facilitators/collectors.
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad that there is such a diverse group of interests represented in our class, particularly because I have a personal interest in archives as a sort of intellectual puzzle. Archives, as opposed to libraries or museums, as Anne-Marie points out, are about collecting everything related to a particular subject, not curating and developing a collection. As such, they are supposed to be an objective record of history. Still, there are so many potential records to be collected, and I think that you bring up a lot of good questions about how to be critical while creating and organizing these records. There's always such potential for things to be lost, or to seem unimportant.
ReplyDeleteI think another interesting question is how archives are made available and to whom. And, as Anne-Marie points out, what potential audiences aren't being reached? Who knows about the archive? Who knows how to access and use it? In some cases, it might be better to have an archive freely available for anonymous access online.