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Myten om användaren - En studie av användardiskursen och dess visionärer


The myth of the user - a study of the user discourse and its visionariesThis study is a discourse analysis of the visions that implicitly are expressed in different texts about user-centered library theory. Several other studies have analyzed the discourse and conceptualization of how the user is expressed in the library debate. Therefore we have chosen to analyze the visions that are expressed by three different sources: the evaluation of the Swedish GÖK project, which was an reorganization of three different libraries in Sweden (Greenhalgh, Worpole & Landry 1995). The influential book by Michael E. Casey and Laura C. Savastinuk (2007) Library 2.0 : a guide to participatory library service and last but not least the work by F.W. Lancaster (1979, 1982, 1983) on library technology.Our analysis is based on the discourse theories of James Paul Gee (1999), Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau (2001). We are especially interested in the concept of hegemony and articulation that Mouffe and Laclau develop. Besides these theories we also use the book Mythologies by Roland Barthes (2007). Barthes is important for our research as we try to show which mythologies that give the user-centered library discourse meaning.We have concentrated on how the different texts that we use have articulated a myth and a discourse about their own necessity. In our analysis we have tried to answer our basic questions that are concentrated on how the discourse gives itself meaning. Our result is that the texts try to identify themselves with change and crisis. The texts are all based on a tautological process that legitimates their own meaning. This process first postulate that change is necessary and then it tries to hi-jack the concept of change and use it for its own means by trying to identify change with user-oriented change. The texts all have a vision about the future library as a library born by a crisis that the texts try to give meaning. We conclude that this change is most of all a myth and that therefore the visions are first and foremost a mythology.

Författare

Mårten Björk Jacob Ohlin

Lärosäte och institution

Lunds universitet/Avdelningen för ABM

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