Theorizing Libraries: The Conquest of Abundance
In his last book, Conquest of Abundance, Paul Feyerabend argues that the abundance of reality includes ambiguities and paradox without which there is no change. To the extent that the future of libraries is a future of change, it is an unremittingly ambiguous and paradoxical future. Our information age, with its origins in the cyborg sciences of the Second World War, has become the test case for the scientific method (scientism). A contrapuntal theme to scientism is the pursuit of disembodiment through the digital. The tensions in this counterpoint are encountered everywhere: in the quest for less in the face of abundance; in the paradox of uncertainty between the physical and the digital; in the contradiction between local and universal in the pursuit and creation of knowledge; and in the relationship between physics and information. Building on perspectives that include Licklider, Toulmin, Jochum, and others, this paper explores how these ambiguities, paradoxes, and contradictions offer insights into how a culturally significant, abundant, future for libraries may be theorized.
Keywords: Library Futures, Digital Libraries, Scientism, Theorizing Libraries
Anna Gold
Head Librarian, Engineering and Science Libraries, MIT Libraries, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Ref: B06P0202