MULTICULTURAL APPROACHES TO LIBRARIANSHIP CURRICULA: FIRST THOUGHTS TOWARDS A SEARCH FOR ANSWERS

Abstract

There was a time — some might say a blessed time — when our professional curricula were assumed to be resting securely on the bedrock of a European culture. It was further assumed that this Eurocentric culture was eternally self‐subsistent, and not contingent upon, or indebted to, any source outside itself. For a considerable time our professional curricula were a pale derivative of this humanistic culture; many readers may remember the Library Association's Registration Examination in English literature. This paper consisted of a hefty gallop from Chaucer to the present day — a gallop that usually left quite a few riderless horses wandering aimlessly round the course. The curriculum was ill‐conceived, and it was badly taught; nonetheless in its own limited way it helped to make students aware of aesthetic values and imparted, however vaguely, a sense of the history of ideas. Book selection was considered to be an important activity and it was fashionable to agonise whether the ideal librarian should be an administrator or a bookman (sic). Then came the impact of technology. Librarians became information managers, the organization of knowledge became information management and we witnessed the re‐emergence and ascendancy of Benthamite man. Indeed, old Jeremy would have been proud of us as we enthusiastically adapted his famous “felicific calculus” to the measurement of user satisfaction. By this time the “user” as a concept had mutated from being a “borrower”, or even a “reader” and the information‐gathering behaviour of human beings had become a special study of its own. If this potentially valuable study is ever to be enlightening and productive it must include all kinds and conditions of people in varying contexts of cultural change and linguistic settings. It is tempting to limit the analysis to a ruler and stopwatch approach to specialized groups in readily definable roles; the approach has a tidy look about it and is more susceptible to the methodologies of the sciences and social sciences. Such an approach encircles reality as a doughnut does its hole; it is an approach that is doubly deceptive because it has the appearance of being scientific.

Citation

McGARRY, K. (1987), "MULTICULTURAL APPROACHES TO LIBRARIANSHIP CURRICULA: FIRST THOUGHTS TOWARDS A SEARCH FOR ANSWERS", Library Review, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 76-82. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb012835