Page 52 - PERPUSTAKAAN UNIVERSITAS AIRLANGGA

Kajian Dalam Bidang Ilmu Perpustakaan dan Informasi: Filosofi, Teori, dan Praktik

information in the cyberspace. It comes as little surprise that librarians
who do not deconstruct themselves and the role of librarianship will be
abandoned in due time by readers since an access to richer information in
the cyberspace now is available to them.
One of the fundamental steps that can be taken to drive a significant
change in librarians’ role is to follow what is recommended by critical
perspectives in social sciences, especially by Post-Structuralist theories,
that is, what Derrida refers to as deconstruction. Deconstruction, followed
by reconstruction, with a renewed spirit and innovation, will result in a
new orientation in the improvement of library services quality. Through
deconstruction principles, libraries and librarians alike will be enabled to
free themselves from the confinement of what is mainstream as well as old
habits perceived to prevent new, more promising changes. By exercising
deconstruction principles, it is hoped that the awareness of the existence of
restrictive structure will be able to introduce new perspectives on alternative
opportunities for library and librarians’ professionalism advancement.

B. Post-Structuralism, library, and librarianship

Although it has never been acknowledged or, in the librarianship and
library context it is rarely of a concern, that critical perspectives, such as
ones developed by Derrida, Foucault, and other Post-Structuralists, were
once used as an analysis reference in the discussion of where library’s
position is and how its role is supposed to be developed (Buschman, 2007;
Dewey, 2016; Radford, 1992; Radford, Radford, & Lingel, 2012; Radford,
2003). Back in 1972, Michael Harris actually wrote an essay entitled
“American Public Library”, which considers libraries to be inclined to
take on authoritarianism and elitism positions. His later writings on library
history even suggest that a critical approach be taken to measure and direct
librarian profession development. Stating in his earlier works (1986a,
1986b) that librarians tends to have unarticulated positivistic stand, Harris
then suggested criticality using a reflective/empiric approach to gain
understanding of problems surrounding librarianship. Wiegand (1999), on
the other hand, issued a call to address the “tunnel visions and blind spots”
which hampered discourses and studies of American librarianships at that
time.
Since then, particularly since 1990, onwards a fair number of studies
have been conducted using a critical approach to analyze problems
surrounding services and many things hidden behind librarianship and
library. Using the theories proposed by Antonio Gramsci, Pierre Bourdieu,
Jurgen Habermas, and Herbert Marcuse, experts like Pawley (1998), Budd
(2001, 2003), Benoit (2002, 2007), Raber (2003) and Pyati (2006) question

32 Decontruction And Recontruction of The Roles of Librarians ...