Liberating Knowledge: A Librarian's Manifesto for Change

Fuente: ERIC Institute of Education Sciences
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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Fister, Barbara
Format: Recurso educativo Open Access
Language:en
Published: 2010
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author Fister, Barbara
author_facet Fister, Barbara
Fister, Barbara
collection Education Resources Information Center
contents Liberating Knowledge: A Librarian's Manifesto for Change Fister, Barbara 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 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.)
format Recurso educativo Open Access
id eric_EJ929960
institution ERIC Institute of Education Sciences
language en
publishDate 2010
record_format eric
spellingShingle Liberating Knowledge: A Librarian's Manifesto for Change
Fister, Barbara
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
Liberating Knowledge: A Librarian's Manifesto for Change Fister, Barbara 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 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.)
title Liberating Knowledge: A Librarian's Manifesto for Change
topic 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
url https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ929960