[Sigiii-l] Plaza - POSITION STATEMENT

[Nadia Caidi]

Another position statement...

> Assessing the impact of /globalization/ and the so-called /information 
> society/ as it relates to the future of librarianship within the 
> public system is complicated by bewildering definitional ambiguity. 
> Initially, /globalization/ was synonymous with the free trade 
> exemplified by NAFTA but in current definitions becomes conjoined with 
> all manners of cultural exchange from the ongoing history of 
> international trade, to international migration, multiculturalism, and 
> new world-wide communications technologies. With apologies to Daniel 
> Bell, the /information society/ and/or the /new economy/, seem at 
> times misnomers for a brand of North American materialism that, when 
> convenient, renders the materials being consumed and the labour that 
> produces them invisible. Yet ironically, /information/ in this sense 
> often refers specifically to the laws, practices and technologies that 
> determine how goods are produced, distributed and their producers 
> compensated. Congruent to goods without origin and signifiers without 
> referents, the /future/ is the /Other/ time when the enormous changes 
> present everywhere on a gigantic scale will become manifest in 
> concrete, immediately discernible form; the referent that 
> /globalization/ ultimately signifies.
>
> In 1989, Joyce Nelson’s _Sultans of Sleaze_ correctly anticipated that 
> the forces arguing for relaxed trade barriers would also initiate a 
> regime of reduced public services. The hope is that a /public/ 
> conceptualized as consumers, tax-payers, or in recent nomenclature, 
> /library customers/ can also be seen as citizens, audiences and 
> witnesses, even through a technology that both facilitates and screens 
> the work at the other end. As Keith Head notes, corporate 
> globalization is dependent not only on an open market but also on 
> cheap air transport and falling communications costs. Similarly, 
> library items available through the click of a mouse are removed from 
> a shelf, loaded into a truck, scanned, labeled and shelved once more 
> by information workers, (many designated as clerk/caretakers) who 
> also--when necessary--shovel snow.
>