Questioni di epistemologia biblioteconomica

Abstract

The essay takes its cue from some Italian contributions regarding the organization and management of some user-friendly librarian services and from the observation that the strategic objective of the majority of libraries seems to be that of increasingly adapting their character to that of the technological tools of information management. Starting from this, the author wonders about the consequences for librarianship of the acquisition of the principles and procedures borrowed from other disciplines. Among these he includes those of social economics and of information science, identifying a risk of reductionism in the emphasis put on even one of these areas. Epistemology of the disciplines that are considered capable of providing a conceptual and methodological support to librarianship does not seem to completely confirm the nomos and telos of a library, or, that is to say, of that particular object that those disciplines should be able to circumscribe with their categories. They bring only necessary, but not sufficient, elements to the question of librarianship.
Faced with this risk, the essay proposes a return to the essence of the activity of a library and to rediscovering its fundamental interpretative value. Hermeneutics, inasmuch as it is a science of interpretation, and even more in its modern version of which a brief overview is provided, appears able to provide the necessary epistemological framework for reusing the principles of the aforesaid disciplines. It also appears able to build a standard librarianship story, respectful of the nomos and telos of a library.
In this way, the positive contributions of social economics and information science, which are declined as typical precomprehensions of librarianship, are recovered. The hermeneutic connection that binds a library to the relative social environment is also identified, while the partiality of deterministic interpretations of this bond is emphasized.