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Editorial

Editorial

Universidades, bibliotecas, imprentas y cárceles: espacios de educación, lectura y obra teórica del intelectual revolucionario del proletariado, por: Felipe Meneses Tello (MÉXICO), p. 52.

Ensayos

Tendencias conformistas en el discurso y en la realidad laboral de los bibliotecarios en México, por: José Ángel González Castillo; Carlos Alberto Martínez Hernández (MÉXICO), p. 64.

¿Y si el bibliotecario fuera académico? La problemática laboral de los bibliotecarios que trabajan en universidades públicas estatales, por: Horacio Cárdenas Zardoni (MÉXICO), p. 78.

Libros de la UNAM a través de Google: dos años después, por: Gonzalo Clemente Lara Pacheco (MÉXICO), p. 104.

Editorial

Library and Information Science Critique reaches its third volumen launching its double number (volume 2, no. 3 & volume 3, no. 1), by: Zapopan Martín Muela-Meza (MEXICO)

Dear reader,

Library and Information Science Critique: Journal of the Sciences of Information brings you its third double number (corresponding to its number 2 of the volume 2 and the number 1 of the volume 3). We want to give you an apology in advance for the delay we had, but we appeal and thank you for your understanding since our editorial project is an independent Open Access project conducted with a collective and international effort of volunteers, which is not free from all the viscicitudes faced by its participants. And in this case the edition has been conducted completely by Zapopan Martín Muela-Meza. However, the wait has been worthwhile, and we thank you for that earnestly, here you have the third double issue. And our journal thanks to you keeps alive and kicking, and arrives reinvigorating to its third volume launching its double number (Vol 2 No. 2 & Vol. 3 No.1). For the next numbers keep in mind these important dates: December 30, 2010 deadline to receive contributions for the no. 2 of vol 3 (July-December 2010 issue) to be published on January 30, 2011; May 30, 2011 deadline no.1 of vol 4 (Jan-Jun 2011); October 30, 2011 deadline for no.2 of vol.4 (Jul-Dec 2011).

What are the contents of this issue of LIS Critique? In this number you will find 6 contributions (3 articles and 3 essays) of 7 authors (6 Mexican and 1 Argentinian) who were kind enough to collaborate with this number. To learn more about the credentials of these authors, at the end of each contribution is appended their biographical profiles.

Zapopan Martín Muela-Meza (MEXICO) begins the critical debates of the Articles section with his contribution: “The social class struggles concept with an interdisciplinary approach: a paramount concept for research in library and information science (LIS).” In this paper he addresses that this concept emerged as part of the theoretical framework of his doctoral thesis (Muela-Meza, 2010): An Application of Community Profiling to Analyse Community Information Needs, and Providers: Perceptions from the People of the Broomhall Neighbourhood of Sheffield, UK. The relevance of his contribution, besides the fact of bringing forward the concept of social class to the international debate in the sciences of information recorded in documents, like library and information science (LIS), is the fact of being configured as stuggles in the Marxist sense, social class struggles (Marx and Engels, [1848] 1976a). However, in addition to this philosophical concept that is politically and ideologically very controversial and broadly denied in LIS research, other social sciences and the humanities, the

author has complemented it with the concept of dominance hierarchy from the natural sciences (Hauser, 2006; Sagan and Druyan, 1992). This concept configured and complemented with such approaches helped the author in his doctoral thesis to understand better the underlying controversial issues behind social classes and human conflicts. It also helped him to understand better the contradictions between people (e.g. LIS users with contradictory and mutually exclusive information needs to be provided by libraries and other institutions of information recorded in documents), and how these intensify when these are interrelated with the social class they belong to (Muela-Meza, 2007).

Another relevant aspect of this contribution is that the author not only explains the arguments that are in favour to the data and results that emerged in such doctoral research, but also he includes those contrasting arguments to confront his analysis. Hence, he addresses a sound critique against the partisans of the capitalist or bourgeois class who through their rhetorical ploys such as “social capital” and “community cohesion” of the postmodernist pseudoscience the pretend fallaciously to deceit LIS theorists and practitioners. He also criticizes rigorously the pseudoscience of postmodernism and its ideologues and followers because they pretend to undermine the rational logic fundamental to LIS and the rest of sciences. And he suggests that LIS theorists and practitioners employ the social class struggles concept as configured here in order to understand better contradictions, conflicts, and struggles within LIS theory and practice, and also to search for broader epistemological aims such as justice and wisdom (Fleissner and Hofkirchner, 1998), concealed by the capitalist or bourgeois and middle classes for their benefit against working class.

Federico Zeballos (ARGENTINA), with his contribution: “The banning of reading in Cordoba (Argentina): Elements for its study,” conducted a thorough and well grounded critique to the banning of reading in libraries of Cordoba, Argentina, by analysing documents since the Spaniard colonization up to the recent past related to the military dictatorships of extreme right in such country. He presents some cases of censorship in different types of libraries: university, public, school, popular and particular, where he highlights two of the first public bonfires of “forbidden books” carried out in Cordoba, pyromaniac practice to be later reproduced in numerous cities of Argentina and America (the whole American continent not U.S.A.). The paper is supported with accounts from directors and top managers who worked in libraries in those days; photographs of book bonfires and records of banned books; institutional documents such as royen and school resolutions, and statutory notes.

As part of the analysis that he conducts of the happenings in Cordoba, he makes a strong critique against such fascist oppression against Argentinian citizens, in this case through their memory recorded in documents:

“A common characteristic to all totalitarian regimes of the world, through all times, and from the most diverse ideological inclinations, has been (and it is) the systematic destruction of the heritage of culture and identity that they consider their enemy (either “external” or “internal”), as a basic strategy of domination against the opponent.

Thus, the bibliographic pyres aroused as a strong intimidatory message sent to all the community. Within this they included the public exposure of the kidnapped books, the exordium of some

authorities, the shooting of photographs before and during the burnings, and the later propaganda of the happening in various communication media.”

Felipe Meneses-Tello (MEXICO), who since this number has become a new member of the Editorial Board of our journal, closes the Articles section, and he continues with the critical debates with his contribution: “Universities, libraries, presses, and jails: spaces of education, reading, and theoretical work of the revolutionary proletarian intellectual.” In this he makes a critical examination of how universities, libraries, presses, and jails through their documents (books, periodicals, pamphlets, etc.) have served the revolutionaries of all times, but in particular to those of the proletariat, of whom he makes a sound recount of the Bolshevik Revolution. However, from a vast array of institutions, he highlights that libraries have had more preeminence in such self-taught instruction and theoretical possession of the proletarian intelligentsia:

Without fear to be mistaken, the most representative and praised institution between the revolutionary thinkers of the working class has been the library –underground and legal--, since it has been the space where they have spent considerable time of their lives. The various biographic works about the plethora that has lead the labour movement in the world support this statement. Hence, the intense work in a huge diversity of libraries is an essential phenomenon to study and analyse the central leaders of the revolutionary intellectuality.

Jose Angel Gonzalez-Castillo and Carlos Alberto Martinez-Hernandez (MEXICO), open the section of Essays with their contribution: “Conformist trends in the laboring discourse and reality of librarians in Mexico.” These authors have conducted a thorough critique against some of the most notorious and pernicious elements of the invasion of the capitalist and bourgeois ideas and practices in the theory and practice of librarianship in Mexico. Their critique comprises the current Mexican federal government of Felipe Calderon; the General Directorate of Libraries (DGB) of the National Network of Libraries (RNB) of the National Council for Culture and Arts (CONACULTA) from that government; LIS education at the Department of Library and Information Science of the School of Philosophy and Letters of the Mexico National Autonomous University (UNAM), and the National School of Library and Information Science and Archives (ENBA) of the Secretary of Public Education (SEP) of the Mexican federal government. They mainly focused their critique on two commentators (Hernández Pacheco, 2007; Arriola Navarrete, 2006) whom through their library practice openly hold the political ideologies of the capitalist and bourgeois right within librarianship. They argue that such capitalist and bourgeois discourse fosters a conformist attitude amongst LIS theorists and practitioners, that charichaturises LIS theory, and that even worst, that affects the labour rights of the personnel of the Mexican public libraries.

Horacio Cárdenas Zardoni (MEXICO) continues with the critical debates with his essay: “What if librarians became professors? The labour problems of librarians that work in state public libraries.”In this essay he makes a comprehensive and critical literature review related to job descriptions of library personnel from 20 Mexican public universities, and he makes a sound critique to the fact that librarians are not considered with faculty (professorship) rank, but only as a mere managerial worker, without the recognition or advantages of the former and without the possibilities for the betterment of the latter.

Gonzalo Clemente Lara Pacheco (MEXICO), closes the section of Essays with his contribution: “Books of the Mexico National Autonomous University (UNAM) through Google: two years later.” The author continues a debate he started himself in our journal two years ago (Lara Pacheco, 2008). He criticizes and questions the corporate discourse of Google with UNAM –as well as with all other libraries in the world that already have agreements with them--, that after two years of established such agreement the UNAM community has not received any benefits. In addition, he criticises that the digitization processes conducted by UNAM have been more efficient than those of Google, thus he also criticises and questions the technological capacities of Google as deficient, at least as compared with those of UNAM.

Hence, without further preface, we leave you at your hands with this sound collective and international effort for you to submit it to your rigorous critique and analysis. Get involved reading the debates offered in these three numbers since 2008, and even more, get involved in our editorial project by submitting your critical contributions.

Thank you for keeping our journal alive with your critical reading and even better with your critical contributions too!

References

Arriola Navarrete, O. (2006) Evolución de bibliotecas: un modelo desde la óptica de los sistemas de gestión de calidad. México. México. Colegio Nacional de Bibliotecarios.

Fleissner, P. & Hofkirchner, W. (1998). “The making of the information society: driving forces, ‘Leitbilder’ and the imperative for survival. BioSystems. (46), pp. 201-207.

Hauser, M. D.  (2006). Moral Minds: How Nature Designed our Universal Sense of Right And Wrong. New York: Ecco; Harper Collins.

Hernández Pacheco, F. (2007) Nuevos paradigmas para la formación de los recursos humanos en bibliotecas y centros de documentación. Documentación de las Ciencias de la Información. Vol. 30,  65-99

Lara Pacheco, G.C. (2008). Libros de la UNAM a través de Google. Crítica Bibliotecológica: Revista de las Ciencias de la Información Documental, vol. 1, no. 1, jun.-dic., pp. 122-126. Disponible en línea: http://eprints.rclis.org/15015/2/c.b.vol.1.no.1.lara-pacheco.pdf. [Consultado 30 agosto 2010].

Marx, K. & Engels, F. (1976a). Karl Marx and Frederick Engels Collected Works. Vol. 5.  London: Lawrence & Wishart; Moscow: Progress Publishers; Institute of Marxism-Leninism Moscow. (Marx and Engels: 1845-47).

Sagan, C. & A. Druyan. (1992). Shadows Of Forgotten Ancestors: A Search For Who We Are. London: BCA. CB.