It is time to dust off the keys and get back to bloggin’!
While I did start a post or two during my last course on resource description, they never saw the light of day. Resource description did not, at first, seem to lend itself to exciting blog posts, but the learning turned out to be much more interesting than it initially appeared. The community of cataloguers is impressive, and the agreements across so many countries and entities is, in fact, amazing. There is a noble spirit and practice of collegial sharing in this profession.
The forensic nature of resource description was entirely fun when it wasn’t maddening. In fact, the maddening aspects of resource description eventually became the exciting part about resource description. Still, no blog post.
Resourcing the Curriculum (ETL 503) will definitely receive the blogging treatment.
As in other subjects of this course, initial readings introduce some extremely fundamental aspects of librarianship which are prescient, affirming and challenging. To start, S.R. Ranganathan’s five laws of library science require great consideration and admiration. Umunna Opara’s (2017) “Empowering Library Users through the Five Laws of Library Science,” gives a very succinct history of contemporary libraries and sings their virtues as ‘an instrument of socio-economic, cultural and political change,” but also of their stability as stewards of information and knowledge (p.3). He then introduces Ranganathan’s five laws.
Given these laws are now 92 years old since their first publication in 1931, they are surprisingly contemporary in tone and purpose. They call for inclusion and growth and efficiency. While the modern library has existed since the late 19th Century (Opara, p.2), Ranganathan seems to have taken the best of early practice and enshrined it, clarifying it and postulating it irresistibly! What came first: the laws or the library? Certainly, libraries, but from the laws, perhaps the science of libraries. Much more reading is required.
There is much more to read about the path which Ranganathan’s laws have traveled and just how officially they were adopted, referenced and embedded into the big moments in library science and libraries.
Carr’s article on analysing the library as technology within the social construction of technology (SCOT) framework was another great piece to stimulate blog thoughts and actions. The determinist versus SCOT views on technology are often fruitless should one desire an answer either way on technology and how unfolds and works its way into the fabric of lives. Ultimately Carr feels strongly that technology is both designed for its users but is also shaped by its users and, in particular, feels this is the case with libraries. The library as technology is a very fun idea. Given a definition of technology as an application of scientific knowledge to practical problems (thank you, Encyclopedia Britannica), libraries are an application of knowledge (resource management) to knowledge (resources) and absolutely do change along with users of knowledge, creators of knowledge, media of knowledge.
Which takes us into ETL 503 Resourcing the Curriculum! Time to dive into the theory and mechanics of things beginning with collection development!
Carr, P. L. (2014). Reimagining the Library as a Technology: An Analysis of Ranganathan’s Five Laws of Library Science within the Social Construction of Technology Framework. Library Quarterly, 84(2), 152–164. https://doi.org/10.1086/675355
Opara, U. N. (2017). Empowering Library Users through the Five Laws of Library Science. Library Philosophy & Practice, 1–14.
