CONVENTIONS OF SUBORDINATION: AN INTERPRETATIVE ANALYSIS OF TEXTS THAT DEFINE THE PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY OF ACADEMIC LIBRARIANS

The change in professional identity from library science to library-and-information-science is analyzed from the conceptual framework of hermeneutics. A 1983 statement by a prominent librarian, Jesse Shera, recants his and the profession's assertion that information science is the theoretical and intellectual basis for librarianship. What social and ideational values led to that original and now rejected assertion?;Throughout the literature defining librarianship, we see the influence of external agents: Coupled with occasional conflicts with faculty has been the ambition to be known as faculty. The Carnegie Corporation of New York studies added to the desire to separate clerical from professional duties. Carnegie donations founded the Graduate Library School (GLS) of the University of Chicago which in turn promoted the ideas of "research" and "science." Elites of the profession have been associated with GLS or influenced by its graduates. Librarians noted the status extended to documentalists, who performed library-like work in the service of science, industry, and government but who escaped the burden of the library name. Computer applications in Documentation (later changed to information science) promised similar status to librarians who would adopt those procedures.;Interpretative conventions of subordinate status have unwittingly reproduced subordination for librarians. The movement into information science has been done without understanding either the latter's origin and nature as a governmental control agency or the nature of scholarly research and use of library resources.;Analyzing the conventions of interpretation employed by librarians, one finds that although they have incorporated such mythical phrases as "scholar-librarians," or "the library is the heart of the university," their interpretative conventions reveal a subordinate academic and social standing. An ill-defined "science" and "research" promise to elevate the profession but instead become interpretative conventions that lead the profession to adopt the equally ill-defined specialty, information science, as a model. That information science is a governmental policy of control of access to ideas has escaped the purview of librarians.