Learning, Literacy and LIS: A Thesis Conversation

Nedanstående innehåll är skapat av Mimers Brunns besökare. Kommentera arbete

This position paper deals with the notions of learning and literacy in the context of studying Library and Information Science (LIS). More particularly, it addresses the learning and literacy involved in, and manifested by, its own production. It is about writing this particular master’s thesis in LIS – the persons involved, the forms and terms used, the expectations met or ignored. It converses not only with itself but also with the academic system which is its raison d’être. It is maintained that this conversing is inherently tangled and that the irresolvable disorder is literally glossed over via language. The argument relies largely on linguistic analysis, linking discourse and conceptual levels to their etymological foundations. Elements of action research and autoethnography are used in an attempt to capture and communicate the competitive conversing which propels and frustrates both personal learning and the development of a disciplined thesis. Standardized presentation forms are challenged and modified in order to highlight the underlying, and ongoing, interplay rather than the finished product. It is suggested that this tangled, tentative, personal/institutional conversing characterizes not only learning but also libraries and LIS itself. It is further suggested that literacy of whatever variety remains a matter of reading, of being able to continuously and competitively assess, converse and thereby commune. LIS has good reasons to highlight its inherent, transdisciplinary association with the human ...