Towards a postmodern context for information and library education

Abstract

Debates about the future of information and library education are often framed by assumptions about progress associated with a promised “information society”. This paper presents an alternative perspective which characterises contemporary society as complex, fragmented and “postmodern”. It suggests that conventional librarianship and information science are infused with “modern” concepts of enlightened social progress based on “public knowledge” and that they have thus found it difficult to adapt to such postmodern times. Information and library education has, as a result, become preoccupied with the “management” of information and knowledge and its associated technologies of performance maximisation. The paper argues that such a focus on information management needs to be balanced by new, reconceptualised information science curricula. Such curricula, it is claimed, need to be responsive to the flux and creative potential of the postmodern / networked age, but also underpinned by principles of humanism, empowerment and critical distance.