[Download] "Playing with the Future: Library Engagement and Change (Report)" by Australian Academic&Research Libraries " Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Playing with the Future: Library Engagement and Change (Report)
- Author : Australian Academic&Research Libraries
- Release Date : January 01, 2011
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 226 KB
Description
The knowledge environment has changed significantly over the past several decades. A paradigm shift influenced by postmodern ideas, changes in the understanding of information, learning and authority, and the emergence of digital cultures have all contributed to disturbing the position of universities as towers of authoritative knowledge. Predominant views that knowledge and authority are socially constructed and that understanding is based on individual experience and interpretation, place higher education institutions, and the academic libraries within them, in a position where they have to reconsider their place and interactions with all the other players in information and learning environments. Changes in thinking about knowledge and information relate to three main shifts of interest in this article. The first two concern thinking about the nature of information processes. First, the idea that meaning does not exist objectively in its own right but is individually and socially constructed is a corner stone of contemporary information theory. The second shift concerns insights into sensory and emotional aspects of information processes. Although some authors have previously discussed emotional aspects of information-seeking (Kuhlthau, 1993: 185; 1999), the emphasis was generally on rational and intentional processes. In recent years, however, a growing body of research points towards the significance of emotions in information processing (Damasio, 2000a, 2000b). The third shift concerns the conception of authority and authoritative knowledge in postmodern theory. Foucault (1972) and Lyotard (1984), to name just two, discussed the role of power in social constructions of knowledge authority. Discussions about power relations on which scientific knowledge is based have had a significant influence on the "insurrection of subjugated knowledges17 (Foucault, 1980: 81). These ideas provided a fertile ground for the rise of open inclusive digital cultures and environments as we know them. Distributed networks, digital information shaped by numerous players, online learning and socialising, all resulting from philosophical shifts as much as from technological advances, irrevocably transformed the information environment. These changes that are resulting in a participatory networked world where knowledge and authority are based on individual experience have led to a deep unease in the library profession.