ERIC Number: EJ929960
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2010
Pages: 8
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0748-8475
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Available Date: N/A
Liberating Knowledge: A Librarian's Manifesto for Change
Fister, Barbara
Thought & Action, p83-90 Fall 2010
Libraries are an interesting instance of the radical transformations that higher education is experiencing. The neoliberal turn that has led to the commodification of what scholars do--teach and create knowledge--has had a profound effect on the academic library. But the political economy of the transformed library is invisible to many if not most faculty. The current financial problems libraries face--escalating cost of subscriptions to journals and databases, a shrinking budget, and cuts in both professional staff and student employment hours that lead to locking the doors early--are a natural outcome of the trend to treat students as consumers, the faculty as individuals contracted to teach courses but to leave the management of the university to a growing cadre of administrators, and knowledge as intellectual property to be monetized. In recent years, the library has been enclosed and exploited by corporations, and individual scholars have been schooled to be grateful to those corporations for claiming the copyright over their work in exchange for career advancement. In this article, the author presents her manifesto for change, something she whimsically calls Liberation Bibliography. (Contains 13 endnotes.)
Descriptors: Financial Problems, Intellectual Property, Academic Libraries, Library Administration, Library Development, Library Services, Change Strategies, Online Vendors, Scholarship, Access to Information, Cost Effectiveness, Library Materials, Electronic Libraries
National Education Association. 1201 16th Street NW Washington, DC 20036. Tel: 202-833-4000; Fax: 202-822-7974; Web site: http://www.nea.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Higher Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
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