Institutions

QOTD: public libraries and social engineering

Lorcan Dempsey 1 min read

From the Preface to Books, buildings and social engineering:

We seek to rescue the historic public library building from a perspective that in the past has all too easily denigrated it. The mass construction – for that is what it eventually became – of early public library buildings is to be celebrated as a successful exercise in social engineering, an unprecedented effort by a public-sphere movement to persuade citizens, in a consensual way, of the importance of knowledge in an increasingly open and modernising society (we have deliberately used the term ‘social engineering’ as opposed to the narrower and misleading term ‘social control’). More precisely, the provision of what amounted to over one thousand library buildings in the period 1850-1939 was an exercise in what Karl Popper called ‘piecemeal social engineering’ – social engineering that was incremental and continually amended in the light of experience and new knoweldge, a scientific approach to planning social change, in this instance via the free provision of books, information, education and knowledge, that reflected the essence of the public library as an institution of progress and scientific inquiry. [Black, A., Pepper, S., & Bagshaw, K. (2009). Books, buildings and social engineering: Early public libraries in Britain from past to present. Farnham, England: Ashgate Pub.]

Share
Comments
More from LorcanDempsey.net
Libraries and library studies
Institutions

Libraries and library studies

I wrote this piece on libraries and possible educational responses as part of a longer contribution on the informational disciplines and the iSchool. A principal goal was to suggest that libraries present interesting and challenging research and educational questions, which cross disciplines.
Lorcan Dempsey 14 min read
Information: a brief schematic history
Meta

Information: a brief schematic history

In a piece on the informational disciplines and the iSchool, I sketched this very schematic and informal overview of information, broadly construed. My focus is pragmatic, related to library interests. I consider several current issues, including the 'apotheosis of the document' in an AI context.
Lorcan Dempsey 20 min read
So-called soft skills are hard
Institutions

So-called soft skills are hard

So-called soft skills are important across a range of library activities. Existing trends will further amplify this importance. Describing these skills as soft may be misleading, or even damaging. They should be recognized as learnable and teachable, and should be explicitly supported and rewarded.
Lorcan Dempsey 12 min read
icon

Lorcan Dempsey dot Net

The social, cultural and technological contexts of libraries, services and networks

Great! You’ve successfully signed up.

Welcome back! You've successfully signed in.

You've successfully subscribed to LorcanDempsey.net.

Success! Check your email for magic link to sign-in.

Success! Your billing info has been updated.

Your billing was not updated.