The seminar provides a theoretical foundation for understanding library and information science, broadly construed, including questions surrounding collection development, preservation, classification, archives, information policy, and the information professions. Particular emphasis is given to the larger framework of cultural informatics and critical information studies, as well as the history of the field. Ethical issues and research methods are also discussed. Three hours of field observation is required.

Syllabus: Critical Introduction to Information Professions (Fall 2014)

Assignments

• #LIStheory Twitter discussion (30%)
• LIStheory Blog articles (3 x 10%)
• Seminar paper (40%)

Selected readings

• André Cossette, Humanism and Libraries: An Essay on the Philosophy of Librarianship, trans. Rory Litwin (Library Juice, 2009)
• Alison Lewis, ed. Questioning Library Neutrality: Essays from Progressive Librarian (Library Juice, 2008)
• Marcia J. Nauratil. The Alienated Librarian (Greenwood Press, 1989)
• Gloria J. Leckie, Lisa M. Given, and John E. Buschman, eds. Critical Theory for Library and Information Science: Exploring the Social from across the Disciplines (Libraries Unlimited, 2010)
• Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (Vintage, 1984)
• Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (Vintage, 1972)
• Jacques Derrida and Eric Prenowitz, “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression” Diacritics 25(2), 1995: 9–25, 53–63
• Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” trans. Andy Blunden (2005 [1936])
• Vannevar Bush, “As We May Think” The Atlantic Monthly (1945)
• Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity (Penguin, 2005)
• Robert McChesney, Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy (New Press, 2013)
• Kathleen Fitzpatrick. Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and The Future (NYU Press, 2001)