| "...tinkering repairs (OCLC et. al.) to America's library system are no longer adequate, and the time has come for a major overhaul." With this challenge, library and information science is brought to task in this dissertation. The purpose of this dissertation is to make a beginning in overcoming the biggest problem in librarianship. This investigation is concerned with the development of a philosophy and a methodology for library and information science (referred to hereafter as LIS). The unthinkable must be thought, there must be a facing up to LIS's "nonissue, even sacred" basic assumptions--this is why, since Plato, it is a process which, unfortunately, is if philosophic, painful. Three points are pertinent. First, the primary unsolved problem in the profession of LIS is the absence of a universally accepted philosophy of librarianship. Second, there are no philosophical building blocks close at hand with which a philosophy of LIS may be built by a respected philosopher. Third, there is no methodology to stimulate these primary sources, these fundamental philosophical building blocks with which someday a philosopher's philosopher will construct the philosophy of LIS.;The Humanistic Method is derived and used in this dissertation for the first time in any discipline, and although employed at first for LIS, it is conceived as the general Humanistic Method. Mythological dialogues were inspired by eight prominent library educators and philosophers, some of whom participated in the beginning of a dialogue: Jose Ortega y Gasset, Alphonse Trezza, J.C.R. Licklider, John Lorenz, Jay Daily, Anthony Debons, Allen Kent, and Jesse Shera. By this dissertation's own, very strict criteria, the attempt to apply the Humanistic Method was as unsuccessful as Bacon's pitiful efforts to apply the Scientific Method he fathered.;The methodology was inspired by a talk given by Allen Kent to the fifth mid-year meeting of ASIS in Nashville, Tennessee, 1976, involving his metamorphosizing list of information science "unsolvables." Investigation into philosophy was inspired by Jesse Shera's remark in the dissertation, "We have lost our way. Philosophy itself has lost its way." The finding was that Shera was right.;The Humanistic Method is similar to the Delphi technique in that there is feedback, consisting of an exchange of questions around the basic question of the sine qua non of librarianship after an initial taping session. It differs from the Delphi technique in that the objective is not to produce a consensus, rather to strengthen individual emphasis on basic philosophic subjects. This result is to be accomplished by the exchange of questions and input of a state-of-the-art paper by the interviewer. Catalyst for crystallizing a dialogue is the essence of the Humanistic Method. To maximize its effectiveness, interviewees must publish within six months their answers to their colleagues' questions: they retain their taped interviews. Hopefully, it will make a first step to approximating even a small nucleus of the power and beauty of a Socratic dialogue's philosophical induction.;In this dissertation the methodology is derived from the oral history technique, which itself was derived from the interview method of the social sciences. Librarianship is not completely one of the social sciences. To some librarians, even the father of social epistemology, Jesse Shera, as well as his predecessor, Pierce Butler, it has a humanistic standard as well. In the search for a philosophy of librarianship, a methodology had to be found which was every bit as productive and precise as the Scientific Method has proven since Francis Bacon elaborated its slow inductive rise in small steps up to the next highest truth. |
