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Academic Libraries and Knowledge: A Social Epistemology Framework
Academic Libraries and Knowledge: A Social Epistemology Framework by John M. Budd Available online 9 September 2004
Some questions persist about academic libraries and knowledge. This paper addresses them and suggests that social epistemology helps provide some answers to them. The library, defined broadly, plays an integral role in the goal of knowledge growth and the possibilities for it in the institutional context are explored.
John M. Budd, School of Information Science and Learning Technologies, University of Missouri-Columbia, 303 Townsend Hall, Columbia, MO 65211, United States [email protected].
his paper is not intended to be a detailed excursion into philosophy; the title does, however, suggest that it will be delving into some fairly meaty matters. How do we know what we know? At the outset it should be stated that the primary objective here is to explore some ways of ascertaining what role the library plays in the growth of knowledge. What is presented here will raise many more questions than provide answers, but the aim of the questioning is to begin a conversation about the conception of academic libraries. For this discussion, blibraryQ is taken to refer to the totality of the institution—people, services, collections, access to information, social space, etc. What does the library exist for? What endeavors does it support? Is it an end, a means, both? What do people want from a library; why do they go to it (admitting that bgoQ has both physical and virtual meanings)? Does an individual’s knowledge increase because of the library? Does our collective knowledge increase because of the library? Is a library a knowledge repository (and, if so, what on earth does that mean)? These questions strike at the heart of purpose, the reason, not only for the existence of the academic library, but for its place in the academy and its operation within the context of that place. These questions seem overwhelming; we can try to sort out a manageable way to approach them. Previous work has addressed the kinds of knowledge claims we make in our discipline and how we go about assessing those claims.1 This work entailed some examination of the intellectual history of our field and a suggestion for a path we might travel in the future. While some of the discussion of traditional epistemology has some relevance to the present topic, there are some more pertinent issues to focus on. An idea, that
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is mentioned in the abovecited book, and that has been addressed elsewhere, is social epistemology. It is argued here that a grounding in social epistemology can enhance the academic library’s mission and actions relating to the fundamental objective of the academy—knowledge growth, through both instruction and inquiry. As is true of most ideas, social epistemology has multiple definitions. We can explore some of those shortly, but it is essential for us to realize that the first articulation of bsocial epistemologyQ seems to have come from our own field. In a 1952 article published in Library Quarterly, Margaret Egan and Jesse Shera coined the term as a means for studying the library (or more specifically bibliography) as an integral component of a system of bproduction, distribution, and utilization of intellectual products.Q2 Shera explored this idea throughout his life. In many ways, Shera put his finger on a dilemma that has plagued the theory and study of knowledge for millennia. He wrote as early as 1968 that philosophy has focused entirely on the intellectual processes of individuals and has failed to recognize fully what he referred to as ban ordered and comprehensive body of knowledge about intellectual differentiation and the integration of knowledge within a complex social organization.Q3 It is difficult to communicate how monumental his observation was. He was correct that some philosophers, for many reasons (not the least of which is that they had tended to relegate any consideration of social or collective processes to sociology), ignored any idea of social epistemology. Philosophers from Plato and Aristotle to Descartes, to Hume, to many contemporary philosophers (such as Keith Lehrer and Robert Audi) have focused on knowledge and the individual. Some
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people, as we will see, have begun to integrate the social and the individual in seeking a more complete understanding of what knowledge is and how humans engage in the quest for knowledge. Now that Shera has been given his due, it has to be pointed out that he was not very successful in conceptualizing a social epistemology in any genuine or complete sense. Once he had acknowledged the shortcoming of philosophy, he himself reverted to a sociological approach to the nature of social aspects of knowledge. In fact, he (almost certainly unintentionally, given the entire body of his work) embraced a rather postmodern stance regarding social epistemology. He refused to admit to a difference between btrueQ knowledge and bfalseQ knowledge; he refused to consider truth at all. 4 In practical terms, Shera appears to have confused knowledge with awareness. It should be noted that philosophers have come very late to Shera’s work. Prominent proponents of social epistemology, including Steve Fuller and Alvin Goldman, have been unaware of Shera’s admission of the limitations of individual epistemology until very recently. Fuller wrote about Shera’s groundbreaking work in a 1996 article,5 and Goldman acknowledged a debt to Shera in his book Pathways to Knowledge, published in 2002.6 These philosophers though have made considerable progress towards Shera’s fundamental goal and have proffered ideas that can help inform academic libraries’ connection to knowledge and knowledge growth. Traditional epistemology has for some time tended to define knowledge as, at the least, justified true belief. Of course there are debates about the definition and some philosophers add elements to the definition, but it has held up over time and is a starting place for the study of knowledge. This foundation of a definition has a great deal of support among philosophers, and it must be admitted that this is a stringent set of criteria. It is not sufficient for someone simply to believe something; we all know that individual and even collective beliefs can be incorrect. It is not sufficient for someone to hold a true belief; that belief may have been formed accidentally. A person may observe one instance of a physical phenomenon and extrapolate from that to what happens to be a belief that happens by chance to be true. In addition to these criteria is the requirement of justification—philosophers do argue about justification, but
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almost all return to empirical and logical bases for it. As is noted above, these are stringent criteria; among other things, they imply that claims should be approached skeptically and with an apparatus that is aimed at (even in a weak form) corroboration. An integral part of that apparatus is the academic library. Enter social epistemology as philosophers have conceived and defined it. While there are multiple possible approaches, we can limit them to just a few. One, and this is one that shares the sociological bent of Shera to some limited extent, has been articulated by Steve Fuller. In one of the earliest fully formed programs of social epistemology, Fuller began by asking a probing question: bHow should the pursuit of knowledge be organized, given that under normal circumstances knowledge is pursued by many human beings, each working on a more or less well-defined body of knowledge and each equipped with roughly the same imperfect cognitive capacities, albeit with varying degrees of access to one another’s activities?Q7 Fuller paid particular attention to the production side of the activity he describes, seeking especially to understand better how systemic communication can be created and managed so that normative judgments about claims can be arrived at. It is in the system of production, dissemination, reception, and assessment that social epistemology resides. The academic library is an integral component of this system. The system is the outcome of a collective endeavor, with collective intentions and processes, and with both collective and individual results. That is, an enterprise such as science, for example, tends to have certain agreed-upon (though not necessarily universally agreed upon) goals and also means and ends. Scientists work within a structural milieu that embraces cooperation and competition, but rests on a shared body of prior work and a communicative devise that the participants employ and rely upon. No one scientist can break completely free of the system and still continue to function. Scientific journals provide one element of the structural system of communication. Other philosophers pay greater attention to social extensions of traditional epistemological concerns (perhaps especially justification). Angelo Corlett has maintained that there are two ways to envision social epistemology: (a) a col-
lective belief structure that is based on the same criteria applied to individual knowledge, but with the uniformity of shared belief being prominent, and (b) a social structure wherein individuals can use the tools and products of society to again realize the goals of individual epistemology.8 While the academic library could possibly contribute to the first conception Corlett speaks of (helping to bring about shared belief, at least regarding scholarly matters), the second conception, assisting the achievement of epistemic goals, better fits with the library’s purpose. Others, Alvin Goldman notable among them, have focused mainly on the second manifestation of social epistemology. In defense of his approach, Goldman said that there may be (and generally are) social factors that individuals employ in belief formation and also that, while justification may depend on psychological processes that are individual in nature, these processes of selection, choice, and access depend on social factors.9 Goldman’s conception is particularly attractive to an investigation of the library (in the broad sense described above) as a participant in belief formation, justification, and knowledge growth.
‘‘. . .the time is ripe. . .for us in librarianship to place the library into the social context within which knowledge is possible.’’ Within the realm of social epistemology, the time is ripe, given the evolving nature of higher education in curricula and in access, for us in librarianship to place the library into the social context within which knowledge is possible. This admonition is in no way intended as support for the claim that the library has been a passive repository of dead documents. For example, Hal Varian has been quoted as saying, bLibrarians got too narrow by defining themselves in terms of a particular social institution. They were organized around libraries rather than around information in general.Q10 The library is inevitably and necessarily a product of a complex and elaborate social dynamic that, at its heart, is teleological (it has a purpose, and that purpose is both established a priori and discovered individually by those who avail themselves of what a library has to offer). The claim further tends to assert that the
dead character of the library is potentially enlivened by emerging technologies that are interactive in ways the library has never been. Again, this is mistaken. First, the claimants fail to recognize, as Heidegger did decades ago, that technology is a human product and process and that it is created intentionally by us, for us.11 As Heidegger points out, from the time of classical philosophy, technology has been inseparable from knowledge; the ways humans construct things (material and intellectual) affect the ways we come to know things. Further, the claims of passivity almost willfully ignore the essential interaction that takes place constantly between mind and text (text being defined broadly here). Michel Foucault, perhaps more effectively than anyone before or since, described the power of the library and its relation to knowledge. In an essay originally published in 1967 Foucault, as a part of an examination of Flaubert’s The Temptation of Saint Anthony, suggested a then (nineteenth century) emerging understanding of the workings of the imagination. He wrote, [T]he visionary experience arises from the black and white surface of printed signs, from the closed and dusty volume that opens with a flight of forgotten words; fantasies are carefully deployed in the hushed library, with its columns of books, with its titles aligned on shelves to form a tight enclosure, but within confines that also liberate impossible worlds. The imaginary now resides between the book and the lamp. The fantastic is no longer a property of the heart, nor is it found among the incongruities of nature; it evolves from the accuracy of knowledge, and its treasures lie dormant in documents.. . . The imaginary is not formed in opposition to reality as its denial or compensation; it grows among signs, from book to book, in the interstice of repetitions and commentaries; it is born and takes shape in the interval between books. It is a phenomenon of the library.12
Foucault was describing the kind of social dynamic that is integral to Goldman’s idea of social epistemology. An individual knower avails herself of all, or at least the accessible, recorded thought as a means to knowledge. The title of Foucault’s essay is bThe Fantasia of the Library,Q which may, at first glance, seem a puzzling idea. Foucault, in this essay, is developing on Aristotle’s discourse on bphantasia,Q which is usually translated as either imagination or appearance.13 More particularly, phantasia simultaneously embraces
the phenomenon of appearance and the interpretation of the appearance by the person apprehending it. In other words, as Martha Nussbaum points out, an individual has the sensory experience of an object or an idea, and the individual retains the experience and subjects it to questioning and cogitation.14 The phenomenon of phantasia can be a tool that can contribute to practical wisdom (or bphronesisQ in Aristotle’s program). Foucault’s metaphor of the book and the lamp illustrates the phenomenon and emphasizes the active nature of the interaction of what the library offers and what the knowledge seeker engages in. The idea of phantasia can also be applied to the services, as well as the environment, of the academic library. A reference librarian responding to a patron’s query perceives the question as a sensory experience and reflects on it critically before venturing an answer. The critical interchange between librarian (and library) and patron contains the possibility of knowledge growth. There is something implicit here that should be made explicit, and Shera’s work helps do just that. Shera said that bthere can be no knowledge without a knower. Knowledge does not exist, indeed I think it cannot exist, in the abstract sense.Q15 There are some philosophers, such as Karl Popper, who claim that it is possible for there to be knowledge without a knowing subject. Popper has, over a very long and productive career, contributed greatly to a number of serious challenges, including his description of bworld 3,Q which he defines as bthe world of the logical contents of books, libraries, computer memories, and suchlike.Q16 It is this world 3 that is the locus of objective knowledge, knowledge without a knowing subject. There is no doubt that the logical contents Popper writes of contributes to knowledge growth, but it is the removal of the knower that creates a rift between him and other philosophers. To complicate his assertion, Popper used the library in his argument in favor of his claim. In his book, Objective Knowledge, he related a thought experiment: bAll our machines and tools are destroyed, and all our subjective learning, including our subjective knowledge of machines and tools, and how to use them. But libraries and our capacity to learn from them survive. Clearly, after much suffering, our world may get going again.Q17 There are some difficulties with this thought experiment that have to be addressed within the context of social epistemology and the academic library.
Let us grant that libraries hold information on how to build machines and tools; however, along with the loss of our subjective knowledge related to them may come the loss of our ideas of what the tools and machines are for (what their purpose is). That functional purpose tends to be social; tools and machines that are used to construct a building are predicated on our agreement on what we need a building for. In other words, the invention of such objects is the product of design for use, particularly explicit and purposeful design. Moreover, the library is not, as has been noted, a passive information repository; it is a locus of the social phenomena that contribute to knowledge. Popper’s experiment appears to rely on the existence of technique, in a very particular sense of the word. Jacques Ellul defined technique essentially as the human creation of machines that then shape human action and thought.18 This idea of technique is a complex one and depends on acceptance of the drive and ingenuity that led to the creation of machines, but also the reliance on machines to guide and direct social structures, including the likes of libraries and education. Ellul’s description is informative, even if it is too deterministic. If we take the germ of his notion and develop it, we can see that technique is much more than technology—it is the society that conceives of and constructs the technology. It is also the society that is influenced by the technology to the point that it is difficult, if not impossible, to envision the society without the technology. His notion has implications for knowledge and knowledge growth, especially within the context of the academy, that are beyond the scope of this paper. Following Ellul, if we broaden the experiment from instrumental tools to social tools, such as the mechanics of a form of government, we can see further challenges inherent in Popper’s idea. If there are, within the surviving libraries, multiple and contradictory instructions for building machines, the members of the society can, by trial and error, find the blueprint that allows them to accomplish what they want (providing, of course, they can conceive of what they want to accomplish). If, though, they would like to construct a government following the apocalypse, the selection from what the library has to offer is not so straightforward. For simplicity’s sake, let us assume that they have access to the writings of Machiavelli, but nothing else, they would
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be influenced to construct a particular type of governmental structure and practice. Suppose then that they have access to the writings of Machiavelli, John Locke, and John Rawls. On what grounds would they determine which advice to take? To put the question another way, what social epistemic operations would they employ as they assess the alternatives? This example may force us to confront the challenges that less mature cognizers face in seeking knowledge. In reality, the present state of academic libraries does provide choice; the key, as will be presented later, is also providing a reliable way to choose what may be true. The primary utility of a critical assessment of Popper’s experiment is to illustrate that the consideration of the role social epistemology can play in knowledge growth and the library’s epistemic role are placed in stark relief.
‘‘. . .the academic library exists to make manifest and tangible the products of social processes aimed at putting us on the path to knowledge.’’ So far, we are on our way to answering, at least in part, the first question posed here—What does a library exist for? If we buy into social epistemology as presented so far in this paper, the academic library exists to make manifest and tangible the products of social processes aimed at putting us on the path to knowledge. It is clear that this is not the sole purpose of the library, but it can be argued, and it is argued here, that this is a purpose of the library, and perhaps especially the academic library. In suggesting this answer to the library’s purpose and the uses to which it may be put, another important question arises: How does the library enable or facilitate an individual coming to some sort of justified true belief? Here again, philosophers debate the means by which claims can be justified. Two particular ways are pertinent as we consider the library’s role in knowing—veritism (this term comes from Goldman, but others have picked up on it) and reliability (this idea has been around for some time in connection with individual epistemology). We can address veritism first. Goldman elaborated on this idea in his book, Knowledge in a Social World.19 In a nutshell, what he means by veritism is
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how social practices (including publishing and information production) can and do contribute (or fail to contribute) to true belief. One example of how this process may work includes the library. An individual employing rational means is presented with a proposition. This person may almost immediately develop some belief regarding the proposition; it may sound plausible and may cohere with other beliefs the individual holds, for instance. Being skeptical, the individual seeks a stronger basis for believing the proposition. That person turns to the library as a source of evaluations of the stated proposition, critiques of it, counterpropositions, and conflicting propositions. Each of these items is offered by someone (singular or plural) who has (or lacks) qualifications to make a statement on the subject and who offers reasons for making that statement. The qualifications and the reasons are weighed by the skeptical individual as part of the quest for knowledge. That individual may pay more attention to sources who have studied the matter with some depth and rigor in the past, although that prior study may not lend a veritistic basis for the sources’ statement. The individual, in the interests of rationality, may weigh the reasons given for making the statement more heavily. In reviewing multiple (though, realistically, not all) evaluative, agreeing, and competing statements, the individual reaches a conclusion about the proposition and its truth-bearing potential. This is a complicated, though necessary, way of describing how someone may seek a true belief with the aid of a library. Another example may illustrate more concretely and more clearly what Goldman means. Joel Best, in Damned Lies and Statistics, offered a personal anecdote that entails veritistic judgment.20 He was serving as a member of a doctoral dissertation committee. The dissertation prospectus began with a quotation from a documented source: bEvery year since 1950, the number of American children gunned down has doubled.Q At a glance, this statement may not be troubling, but after doing a little arithmetic it becomes apparent that, if it were true, then in the year 1995 a total of thirty-five trillion children would have been shot, if one child had been shot in 1950. The student’s source was an article in a reputable journal, and the statement was quoted accurately. Application of just a bit of critical acumen shows the claim to be absurd; the credibility of the source is
demolished. The original source of the data reveals the distortion that led to the disputed claim: bThe number of American children killed each year by guns has doubled since 1950.Q Let’s assume that the original concern was the magnitude of the problem of child gunshot victims in the United States. The first, ridiculous claim is no help at all in reaching a conclusion. The second is more helpful, but not in and of itself. The rational enquirer would perhaps also examine general population growth over the same time period in order to place the accurate statistic in a more informative context. That enquirer may further examine socioeconomic factors, geographic location, and other elements that can help one form a veritistic belief about this issue. The other way to consider the library and knowledge is on the grounds of reliability, or more appropriately in philosophical terms, reliabilism. It should be stated here that reliabilism does not refer to accuracy of sources or completeness of evidence. It refers more generically to the process by which we seek and locate justification for beliefs. A process is reliable if it is substantially more likely to lead to true beliefs than to false ones. The process itself involves logical analysis and (what is of most importance here) a means for examining supporting and potentially refuting evidence for the belief. We can quite readily see how the library can fit into potentially reliable processes and why people in an academic community would bgoQ to the library. Given that there are numerous claims, supports and counters to claims, and disputes to claims within the content of the library, it can be employed as a part of a set of processes that can possibly lead to true beliefs. Be warned, though: The library does not inherently or necessarily provide a reliable process. A major component of the process is not the library’s, it is the individual’s. If a person decides to search for information in such a way that only, or a preponderance of, works supporting one particular claim are retrieved, then the process used is not likely to be reliable. If, on the other hand, a person makes use of retrieval tools in such a way that all works related to (including in refutation of) a claim are retrieved, then the rational assessment of the works may indeed lead to true beliefs. Further, if a person eschews the services that a library can offer—which can enhance the reliability of that person’s information search—then the process employed by the person might be problematic.
Veritism and reliabilism are not absolutely distinct; the two processes can, and perhaps should, work in conjunction. Following Goldman’s idea of twostage reliabilism,21 a set of standards for assessing reliability is first selected, then deployed. These two stages can be employed as a means to arrive at veritistic belief. It is essential to remember that reliabilism entails establishing a way to define and use reliable tools and sources; that is, it is a way to minimize imposition or intrusion of agenda-laden processes aimed at rhetorical force (persuasive power). Veritism entails minimizing forces that lead to false belief, including seeking evidence from socially created sources for the justification of the beliefs. With both veritism and reliabilism, the potential of the library as a means to justified true belief is apparent. Likewise apparent, however, are potential pitfalls in the path of justified true belief. The pitfalls can be expressed as a couple of core questions: does the library provide a veritistic source of belief; does the library provide a reliable process leading to true belief? As you might guess, the larger question of how we know what we know depends on answers to these two questions. A resolution also depends on answers to the questions that began this paper.
‘‘. . .does the library provide a veritistic source of true belief; does the library provide a reliable process leading to true belief?’’ The examples offered so far indicate, to some extent, the magnitude of the question we are faced with. If the library is engaged in the process that is social epistemology, then we have to wonder if it is an active or a passive participant. If it is active, then is the library a speaker, does it itself make claims? Does the library lend verity to the justification process? Is the library the locus of a reliable process? We should reexamine some of the seemingly foundational assertions to try to answer these questions. The observations presented here are not final answers; if there are final answers, they should emerge from an extensive dialogue that includes as many discussants as possible. The reexamination
should embrace all aspects of the library— collections, access, services, physical space, virtual space, etc. One way to continue the appraisal of libraries and social epistemology is with the collection, especially since collections have been built intentionally over extended time periods. There may be statements in policies, or articulations of other sorts, that indicate why some works have been selected for inclusion in collections and other works have not. Whether explicitly or not, where intentional decisions have been made about selection, the collection obtains a voice. It speaks to the users of libraries, about the intentions if nothing else. It also speaks to the nature of knowledge claims though. Some are obviously deemed worthy of inclusion and some are excluded, either purposely or accidentally. It may be that the intentionality that informed the selection decisions over time included some assessment that may be akin to justification. That is, an ostensibly rational process led to the decision to acquire some particular works while the same process led to the decision not to acquire other works. It should be emphasized that this is an ostensibly rational process. The rationality is actually open to question. For one thing, how rational can the process be; what do we know about each work prior to making the selection decision? Something might surmised on the basis of authors’ previous works, reviews (when possible), publishers’ histories and reputations, the content of approval plan profile profiles, and other purposeful mechanisms. To reiterate, once a work is in a library’s collection, it speaks to library users. Perhaps our professional aim is to allow each work to speak as one voice among many. As Peggy Johnson reminds us, bLibrary collections document and preserve viewpoints, perceptions, and interpretations and are social, artistic, and political expressions,Q but she also adds, bThough librarians espouse unbiased selection, each decision reflects a personal perspective, made within the context of the dominant or dominating cultures.Q22 A challenge in academic libraries rests on the tension between the reality of the collection as expression and as human activity of building and managing the collection. Within the academic environment, the guiding forces in managing the collection are the curricular and research needs of the community. In the traditional sense of
collection management, the library (again, defined broadly) plays a gatekeeper role; some information is available locally, and some is not. Collection management as it has existed in academic libraries for many decades has taken the gatekeeper role very seriously, and most often in a particular way. The academic library has tended to operate according to what might be called a free-market (or perhaps common-market is a better term) stance. Ideas of all stripes are presented in such a way that what Goldman refers to as a maximized veritistic value is achieved (by allowing a free form of speech regulation rather than a structure of constraints and exclusions).23 In some ways, the environment of electronic information (including the bundling of information in licensed and purchased packages) has added to the veritistic value, but in some important ways it has made veritistic judgment more difficult. In the social arena, Steve Fuller maintains that the assessment of some information producer bhavingQ knowledge is a matter of credibility, which depends on others testing the producer’s work or finding it fruitful.24 Credibility is inextricably tied to access; someone must be aware of a producer’s work in order to test it and learn from it. The tension mentioned above becomes clear when there is what is possibly an overabundance of information, rendering human absorption and evaluation of it extremely difficult. Discussion within academic librarianship about the problem of bundling may focus primarily on economic constraints, but the social epistemic constraints are no less real. Grounding in social epistemology can enhance the position of the profession in arguing in favor of greater local, and professional, discretion with regard to the intentional inclusion of information in a library’s collection and can strengthen veritism as an outcome collection use by the academic community. We may possibly assume that users are open to all of the voices and will attend most studiously to those that speak not only with authority, but with justification. This assumption is of course potentially problematic. Goldman, in working through his ideas of social epistemology, considered the role experts may play in the complicated task of assessing knowledge claims.25 For the time being, let us focus on undergraduate students who come to the library with
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questions they would like answers to. These students are, it is safe to say, novices when it comes to assessing knowledge claims; after all, one of the reasons why they are attending the college or university is to become better epistemic justifiers. Let us further stipulate that coming to knowledge, as it is defined here, is far from simple and easy. If selection decisions are made in part on the basis of some evaluation of authority (an author has published prior works; the author holds a position of responsibility in some prestigious place; the work has been favorably reviewed; etc.), then the student may be attempting to assess the claims of bexperts.Q To make matters even more difficult, such experts do not always agree with one another, so the student has to place trust in the claim of one expert over another making a competing or alternative claim. How might the student decide? A more pointed question for our purposes here is bWhat can the library do to help the student decide?Q As part of our collective history, a kind of principle of neutrality has governed our profession for many years; the presumed goal has been to present multiple alternatives and then allow users to evaluate them. One articulation of this principle can be found in the American Library Association’s Code of Ethics. One element of the Code urges librarians not to ballow our personal beliefs to interfere with fair representation of the aims of our institutions or the provision of access to their information resources.Q26 The job of the library and the librarian has been, according to some interpretations of the principle, to point to the various alternatives. In some subject areas, this principle has been necessary; when it comes to legal and medical matters, for example, there is no other practicable choice. Can the same be said about literature, sociology, history, or other subjects? If selection decisions are made on the basis of a set of criteria that may include the author’s reputation, the publisher’s track record, and/or the content of reviews, has the principle of neutrality been violated? Is the principle of neutrality a myth? Many academic libraries employ subject specialists. Their job may be interpreted as helping users assess competing claims to determine which will become part of the library’s voice. Their job may also be to direct students and others to some works in preference to others on the
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basis of, perhaps, epistemic justification. If the library does indeed speak to users, these interpreting users may assume that the library intends to lead them to some claims in preference to others. Selection policies and practices may support such an assumption. If users are relying on the library as a voice and as an authority, then we have no choice but to confront Philip Kitcher’s warning. He has stated, bOnce we have recognized that individuals form beliefs by relying on information supplied by others, there are serious issues about the conditions that should be met if the community is to form a consensus on a particular issue— questions about the division of opinion and of cognitive effort within the community, and issues about the proper attribution of authority.Q27 The library does supply information to its users; the conditions necessary to foster a genuinely informed community (including, perhaps, veritism and reliabilism) must be considered.
‘‘If the library does indeed speak to users, these interpreting users may assume that the library intends to lead them to some claims in preference to others.’’ We return to some of the large and daunting questions we began with. Is the library’s function to represent knowledge? If so, then should a collection include only works that make justified true claims? An alternative purpose might be to represent knowledge claims, in which case the task of justification is delayed, and possibly sloughed off to the users of the library. Is the library’s function to enable or create to possibility of knowledge growth? Such a purpose entails somewhat different responsibilities. Envision library instruction (or information literacy, if you prefer), which tacitly argues for a kind of social epistemic approach and recognizes knowledge-based decision-making processes. According to the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), one goal of information literacy programs is to enable students to evaluate binformation and its sources criticallyQ and incorporate bselected information into his or her knowledge base and value system.Q28 This begs the question of what is
required to evaluate critically. It is a significant question though, and it is one that has to have an answer if we are to achieve the goals we set for ourselves. If evaluation relates directly to knowledge, as the ACRL statement indicates it should, then what we are talking about here today is no longer purely theoretical but quickly enters the realm of the practical. And if such evaluation is so important, perhaps every library user should be required to go through such a program. The idea and pragmatic application of social epistemology can have a formal place in higher education and academic libraries. An explicit social epistemic focus on the parts of academic libraries could be incorporated into policies and practices that essentially define the library (again taken to be the broad place and people) as it fits into the institution’s goal of knowledge growth. Some specific elements of the library can readily integrate the kinds of objectives that Shera, Goldman, Fuller, and others speak of. ! Collection management: While the common market approach to acquiring and presenting information to the academic community has clear merit, a clearer recognition of the veritistic and reliabilist value of the disparate and sometimes contradictory (or at least dialectic) information objects can be achieved. This is not to say that questionable, or even false, statements would not be acquired, but the critical assessment of all statements could more explicitly become part of every student’s and faculty member’s cognitive apparatus. ! Information literacy: The ACRL goals could be adopted within a social epistemology framework, with the understanding of testimony, expertise, evidence, and corroboration becoming integrated into a program that might aim at reaching all students. ! Information services: The interactions between librarians and students/faculty can be informed by the kinds of goals that Goldman in particular advocates. In essence, each interaction can become an exercise in the critical appraisal on information. ! Administration: The top management of the library can transmit the appreciation of social epistemic goals and
create ways for the librarians to explore and share ways to imbue all functions and operations of the library with the goals. This short list is not intended to be exhaustive. It does, however, point to ways of answering some of the questions this paper began with: The library can indeed support the critical evaluation of knowledge claims, both individual and collective knowledge growth, and the space where people can engage in the social connections that make knowledge, as defined above, possible. All of the questions asked here can be reduced to two fundamental ones: What constitutes a library, and what is a library’s telos or purpose? If bknowledgeQ features in the response to either of these questions, then there follow some inevitable and necessary considerations. Social epistemology can help offer a beginning to some meaningful answers. As is presented here, a social epistemic grounding for the academic library informs collection management, access to information, services to users, and (on a larger scale) contribution to the knowledge growth that is at the heart of the academy’s educational and research programs. NOTES AND REFERENCES 1. John M. Budd, Knowledge and Knowing in Library and Information Science: A Philosophical Framework (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2001). 2. Margaret E. Egan, Jesse H. Shera, bFoundations for a Theory of Bibliogra-
phy, Q Library Quarterly 44 (July 1952): 133 – 134. 3. Jesse H. Shera, bAn Epistemological Foundation for Library Science,Q in The Foundations of Access to Knowledge: A Symposium, edited by Edward B. Montgomery (Syracuse: Syracuse University, 1968), p. 8. 4. Jesse H. Shera, Sociological Foundations of Librarianship (Bombay: Asian Publishing House, 1970), p. 97. 5. Steve Fuller, bRecent Work in Social Epistemology,Q American Philosophical Quarterly 33 (April 1996): 149 – 150. 6. Alvin I. Goldman, Pathways to Knowledge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 198. 7. Steve Fuller, Social Epistemology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), p. 3. 8. J. Angelo Corlett, Analyzing Social Knowledge (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), pp. 82 – 83. 9. Goldman, Pathways to Knowledge, pp. 164–181. 10. Quoted in Brian C. Caulfield, bMorphing the Librarians: Fighting off Extinction in the Information Age,Q Wired 5 (August 1997), 64. 11. Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), pp. 4 – 7. 12. Michael Foucault, bFantasia of the Library, Q in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, edited by Donald F. Bouchard (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977) pp. 90 – 91. 13. Aristotle, bDe Anima,Q in Introduction to Aristotle, edited by Richard McKeon (New York: Modern Library, 1992), pp. 226 – 230 (427b–429a8). 14. Martha Nussbaum, Aristotle’s de Motu Animalium (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978).
15. Shera, Sociological Foundations of Librarianship, pp. 92–93. 16. Karl R. Popper, Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach, revised edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 74. 17. Ibid., pp. 107–108. 18. Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society (New York: Knopf, 1964). 19. Alvin I. Goldman, Knowledge in a Social World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 87 – 94. 20. Joel Best, Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), pp. 1 – 4. 21. Goldman, Pathways to Knowledge, p. 35. 22. Peggy Johnson, Fundamentals of Collection Management (Chicago: American Library Association, 2004), p. 19. 23. Goldman, Knowledge in a Social World, p. 194. 24. Fuller, Social Epistemology, p. 30. 25. Goldman, Pathways to Knowledge , pp. 139–163. 26. American Library Association, Code of Ethics, Available: http://www.ala.org/ala/ oif/statementspols/codeofethics/coehistory/ codeofethics.pdf (accessed January 22, 2004). 27. Philip Kitcher, bContrasting Conceptions of Social Epistemology,Q in Socializing Epistemology: The Social Dimensions of Knowledge, edited by Frederick F. Schmitt (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994), p. 114. 28. Association of College and Research Libraries, Objectives for Information Literacy Instruction: A Model Statement for Academic Librarians, Available: http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlstandards/ objectivesinformation.htm (accessed January 22, 2004).
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Some questions persist about academic libraries and knowledge. This paper addresses them and suggests that social epistemology helps provide some answers to them. The library, defined broadly, plays an integral role in the goal of knowledge growth and the possibilities for it in the institutional context are explored.
John M. Budd, School of Information Science and Learning Technologies, University of Missouri-Columbia, 303 Townsend Hall, Columbia, MO 65211, United States [email protected].
his paper is not intended to be a detailed excursion into philosophy; the title does, however, suggest that it will be delving into some fairly meaty matters. How do we know what we know? At the outset it should be stated that the primary objective here is to explore some ways of ascertaining what role the library plays in the growth of knowledge. What is presented here will raise many more questions than provide answers, but the aim of the questioning is to begin a conversation about the conception of academic libraries. For this discussion, blibraryQ is taken to refer to the totality of the institution—people, services, collections, access to information, social space, etc. What does the library exist for? What endeavors does it support? Is it an end, a means, both? What do people want from a library; why do they go to it (admitting that bgoQ has both physical and virtual meanings)? Does an individual’s knowledge increase because of the library? Does our collective knowledge increase because of the library? Is a library a knowledge repository (and, if so, what on earth does that mean)? These questions strike at the heart of purpose, the reason, not only for the existence of the academic library, but for its place in the academy and its operation within the context of that place. These questions seem overwhelming; we can try to sort out a manageable way to approach them. Previous work has addressed the kinds of knowledge claims we make in our discipline and how we go about assessing those claims.1 This work entailed some examination of the intellectual history of our field and a suggestion for a path we might travel in the future. While some of the discussion of traditional epistemology has some relevance to the present topic, there are some more pertinent issues to focus on. An idea, that
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is mentioned in the abovecited book, and that has been addressed elsewhere, is social epistemology. It is argued here that a grounding in social epistemology can enhance the academic library’s mission and actions relating to the fundamental objective of the academy—knowledge growth, through both instruction and inquiry. As is true of most ideas, social epistemology has multiple definitions. We can explore some of those shortly, but it is essential for us to realize that the first articulation of bsocial epistemologyQ seems to have come from our own field. In a 1952 article published in Library Quarterly, Margaret Egan and Jesse Shera coined the term as a means for studying the library (or more specifically bibliography) as an integral component of a system of bproduction, distribution, and utilization of intellectual products.Q2 Shera explored this idea throughout his life. In many ways, Shera put his finger on a dilemma that has plagued the theory and study of knowledge for millennia. He wrote as early as 1968 that philosophy has focused entirely on the intellectual processes of individuals and has failed to recognize fully what he referred to as ban ordered and comprehensive body of knowledge about intellectual differentiation and the integration of knowledge within a complex social organization.Q3 It is difficult to communicate how monumental his observation was. He was correct that some philosophers, for many reasons (not the least of which is that they had tended to relegate any consideration of social or collective processes to sociology), ignored any idea of social epistemology. Philosophers from Plato and Aristotle to Descartes, to Hume, to many contemporary philosophers (such as Keith Lehrer and Robert Audi) have focused on knowledge and the individual. Some
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people, as we will see, have begun to integrate the social and the individual in seeking a more complete understanding of what knowledge is and how humans engage in the quest for knowledge. Now that Shera has been given his due, it has to be pointed out that he was not very successful in conceptualizing a social epistemology in any genuine or complete sense. Once he had acknowledged the shortcoming of philosophy, he himself reverted to a sociological approach to the nature of social aspects of knowledge. In fact, he (almost certainly unintentionally, given the entire body of his work) embraced a rather postmodern stance regarding social epistemology. He refused to admit to a difference between btrueQ knowledge and bfalseQ knowledge; he refused to consider truth at all. 4 In practical terms, Shera appears to have confused knowledge with awareness. It should be noted that philosophers have come very late to Shera’s work. Prominent proponents of social epistemology, including Steve Fuller and Alvin Goldman, have been unaware of Shera’s admission of the limitations of individual epistemology until very recently. Fuller wrote about Shera’s groundbreaking work in a 1996 article,5 and Goldman acknowledged a debt to Shera in his book Pathways to Knowledge, published in 2002.6 These philosophers though have made considerable progress towards Shera’s fundamental goal and have proffered ideas that can help inform academic libraries’ connection to knowledge and knowledge growth. Traditional epistemology has for some time tended to define knowledge as, at the least, justified true belief. Of course there are debates about the definition and some philosophers add elements to the definition, but it has held up over time and is a starting place for the study of knowledge. This foundation of a definition has a great deal of support among philosophers, and it must be admitted that this is a stringent set of criteria. It is not sufficient for someone simply to believe something; we all know that individual and even collective beliefs can be incorrect. It is not sufficient for someone to hold a true belief; that belief may have been formed accidentally. A person may observe one instance of a physical phenomenon and extrapolate from that to what happens to be a belief that happens by chance to be true. In addition to these criteria is the requirement of justification—philosophers do argue about justification, but
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almost all return to empirical and logical bases for it. As is noted above, these are stringent criteria; among other things, they imply that claims should be approached skeptically and with an apparatus that is aimed at (even in a weak form) corroboration. An integral part of that apparatus is the academic library. Enter social epistemology as philosophers have conceived and defined it. While there are multiple possible approaches, we can limit them to just a few. One, and this is one that shares the sociological bent of Shera to some limited extent, has been articulated by Steve Fuller. In one of the earliest fully formed programs of social epistemology, Fuller began by asking a probing question: bHow should the pursuit of knowledge be organized, given that under normal circumstances knowledge is pursued by many human beings, each working on a more or less well-defined body of knowledge and each equipped with roughly the same imperfect cognitive capacities, albeit with varying degrees of access to one another’s activities?Q7 Fuller paid particular attention to the production side of the activity he describes, seeking especially to understand better how systemic communication can be created and managed so that normative judgments about claims can be arrived at. It is in the system of production, dissemination, reception, and assessment that social epistemology resides. The academic library is an integral component of this system. The system is the outcome of a collective endeavor, with collective intentions and processes, and with both collective and individual results. That is, an enterprise such as science, for example, tends to have certain agreed-upon (though not necessarily universally agreed upon) goals and also means and ends. Scientists work within a structural milieu that embraces cooperation and competition, but rests on a shared body of prior work and a communicative devise that the participants employ and rely upon. No one scientist can break completely free of the system and still continue to function. Scientific journals provide one element of the structural system of communication. Other philosophers pay greater attention to social extensions of traditional epistemological concerns (perhaps especially justification). Angelo Corlett has maintained that there are two ways to envision social epistemology: (a) a col-
lective belief structure that is based on the same criteria applied to individual knowledge, but with the uniformity of shared belief being prominent, and (b) a social structure wherein individuals can use the tools and products of society to again realize the goals of individual epistemology.8 While the academic library could possibly contribute to the first conception Corlett speaks of (helping to bring about shared belief, at least regarding scholarly matters), the second conception, assisting the achievement of epistemic goals, better fits with the library’s purpose. Others, Alvin Goldman notable among them, have focused mainly on the second manifestation of social epistemology. In defense of his approach, Goldman said that there may be (and generally are) social factors that individuals employ in belief formation and also that, while justification may depend on psychological processes that are individual in nature, these processes of selection, choice, and access depend on social factors.9 Goldman’s conception is particularly attractive to an investigation of the library (in the broad sense described above) as a participant in belief formation, justification, and knowledge growth.
‘‘. . .the time is ripe. . .for us in librarianship to place the library into the social context within which knowledge is possible.’’ Within the realm of social epistemology, the time is ripe, given the evolving nature of higher education in curricula and in access, for us in librarianship to place the library into the social context within which knowledge is possible. This admonition is in no way intended as support for the claim that the library has been a passive repository of dead documents. For example, Hal Varian has been quoted as saying, bLibrarians got too narrow by defining themselves in terms of a particular social institution. They were organized around libraries rather than around information in general.Q10 The library is inevitably and necessarily a product of a complex and elaborate social dynamic that, at its heart, is teleological (it has a purpose, and that purpose is both established a priori and discovered individually by those who avail themselves of what a library has to offer). The claim further tends to assert that the
dead character of the library is potentially enlivened by emerging technologies that are interactive in ways the library has never been. Again, this is mistaken. First, the claimants fail to recognize, as Heidegger did decades ago, that technology is a human product and process and that it is created intentionally by us, for us.11 As Heidegger points out, from the time of classical philosophy, technology has been inseparable from knowledge; the ways humans construct things (material and intellectual) affect the ways we come to know things. Further, the claims of passivity almost willfully ignore the essential interaction that takes place constantly between mind and text (text being defined broadly here). Michel Foucault, perhaps more effectively than anyone before or since, described the power of the library and its relation to knowledge. In an essay originally published in 1967 Foucault, as a part of an examination of Flaubert’s The Temptation of Saint Anthony, suggested a then (nineteenth century) emerging understanding of the workings of the imagination. He wrote, [T]he visionary experience arises from the black and white surface of printed signs, from the closed and dusty volume that opens with a flight of forgotten words; fantasies are carefully deployed in the hushed library, with its columns of books, with its titles aligned on shelves to form a tight enclosure, but within confines that also liberate impossible worlds. The imaginary now resides between the book and the lamp. The fantastic is no longer a property of the heart, nor is it found among the incongruities of nature; it evolves from the accuracy of knowledge, and its treasures lie dormant in documents.. . . The imaginary is not formed in opposition to reality as its denial or compensation; it grows among signs, from book to book, in the interstice of repetitions and commentaries; it is born and takes shape in the interval between books. It is a phenomenon of the library.12
Foucault was describing the kind of social dynamic that is integral to Goldman’s idea of social epistemology. An individual knower avails herself of all, or at least the accessible, recorded thought as a means to knowledge. The title of Foucault’s essay is bThe Fantasia of the Library,Q which may, at first glance, seem a puzzling idea. Foucault, in this essay, is developing on Aristotle’s discourse on bphantasia,Q which is usually translated as either imagination or appearance.13 More particularly, phantasia simultaneously embraces
the phenomenon of appearance and the interpretation of the appearance by the person apprehending it. In other words, as Martha Nussbaum points out, an individual has the sensory experience of an object or an idea, and the individual retains the experience and subjects it to questioning and cogitation.14 The phenomenon of phantasia can be a tool that can contribute to practical wisdom (or bphronesisQ in Aristotle’s program). Foucault’s metaphor of the book and the lamp illustrates the phenomenon and emphasizes the active nature of the interaction of what the library offers and what the knowledge seeker engages in. The idea of phantasia can also be applied to the services, as well as the environment, of the academic library. A reference librarian responding to a patron’s query perceives the question as a sensory experience and reflects on it critically before venturing an answer. The critical interchange between librarian (and library) and patron contains the possibility of knowledge growth. There is something implicit here that should be made explicit, and Shera’s work helps do just that. Shera said that bthere can be no knowledge without a knower. Knowledge does not exist, indeed I think it cannot exist, in the abstract sense.Q15 There are some philosophers, such as Karl Popper, who claim that it is possible for there to be knowledge without a knowing subject. Popper has, over a very long and productive career, contributed greatly to a number of serious challenges, including his description of bworld 3,Q which he defines as bthe world of the logical contents of books, libraries, computer memories, and suchlike.Q16 It is this world 3 that is the locus of objective knowledge, knowledge without a knowing subject. There is no doubt that the logical contents Popper writes of contributes to knowledge growth, but it is the removal of the knower that creates a rift between him and other philosophers. To complicate his assertion, Popper used the library in his argument in favor of his claim. In his book, Objective Knowledge, he related a thought experiment: bAll our machines and tools are destroyed, and all our subjective learning, including our subjective knowledge of machines and tools, and how to use them. But libraries and our capacity to learn from them survive. Clearly, after much suffering, our world may get going again.Q17 There are some difficulties with this thought experiment that have to be addressed within the context of social epistemology and the academic library.
Let us grant that libraries hold information on how to build machines and tools; however, along with the loss of our subjective knowledge related to them may come the loss of our ideas of what the tools and machines are for (what their purpose is). That functional purpose tends to be social; tools and machines that are used to construct a building are predicated on our agreement on what we need a building for. In other words, the invention of such objects is the product of design for use, particularly explicit and purposeful design. Moreover, the library is not, as has been noted, a passive information repository; it is a locus of the social phenomena that contribute to knowledge. Popper’s experiment appears to rely on the existence of technique, in a very particular sense of the word. Jacques Ellul defined technique essentially as the human creation of machines that then shape human action and thought.18 This idea of technique is a complex one and depends on acceptance of the drive and ingenuity that led to the creation of machines, but also the reliance on machines to guide and direct social structures, including the likes of libraries and education. Ellul’s description is informative, even if it is too deterministic. If we take the germ of his notion and develop it, we can see that technique is much more than technology—it is the society that conceives of and constructs the technology. It is also the society that is influenced by the technology to the point that it is difficult, if not impossible, to envision the society without the technology. His notion has implications for knowledge and knowledge growth, especially within the context of the academy, that are beyond the scope of this paper. Following Ellul, if we broaden the experiment from instrumental tools to social tools, such as the mechanics of a form of government, we can see further challenges inherent in Popper’s idea. If there are, within the surviving libraries, multiple and contradictory instructions for building machines, the members of the society can, by trial and error, find the blueprint that allows them to accomplish what they want (providing, of course, they can conceive of what they want to accomplish). If, though, they would like to construct a government following the apocalypse, the selection from what the library has to offer is not so straightforward. For simplicity’s sake, let us assume that they have access to the writings of Machiavelli, but nothing else, they would
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be influenced to construct a particular type of governmental structure and practice. Suppose then that they have access to the writings of Machiavelli, John Locke, and John Rawls. On what grounds would they determine which advice to take? To put the question another way, what social epistemic operations would they employ as they assess the alternatives? This example may force us to confront the challenges that less mature cognizers face in seeking knowledge. In reality, the present state of academic libraries does provide choice; the key, as will be presented later, is also providing a reliable way to choose what may be true. The primary utility of a critical assessment of Popper’s experiment is to illustrate that the consideration of the role social epistemology can play in knowledge growth and the library’s epistemic role are placed in stark relief.
‘‘. . .the academic library exists to make manifest and tangible the products of social processes aimed at putting us on the path to knowledge.’’ So far, we are on our way to answering, at least in part, the first question posed here—What does a library exist for? If we buy into social epistemology as presented so far in this paper, the academic library exists to make manifest and tangible the products of social processes aimed at putting us on the path to knowledge. It is clear that this is not the sole purpose of the library, but it can be argued, and it is argued here, that this is a purpose of the library, and perhaps especially the academic library. In suggesting this answer to the library’s purpose and the uses to which it may be put, another important question arises: How does the library enable or facilitate an individual coming to some sort of justified true belief? Here again, philosophers debate the means by which claims can be justified. Two particular ways are pertinent as we consider the library’s role in knowing—veritism (this term comes from Goldman, but others have picked up on it) and reliability (this idea has been around for some time in connection with individual epistemology). We can address veritism first. Goldman elaborated on this idea in his book, Knowledge in a Social World.19 In a nutshell, what he means by veritism is
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how social practices (including publishing and information production) can and do contribute (or fail to contribute) to true belief. One example of how this process may work includes the library. An individual employing rational means is presented with a proposition. This person may almost immediately develop some belief regarding the proposition; it may sound plausible and may cohere with other beliefs the individual holds, for instance. Being skeptical, the individual seeks a stronger basis for believing the proposition. That person turns to the library as a source of evaluations of the stated proposition, critiques of it, counterpropositions, and conflicting propositions. Each of these items is offered by someone (singular or plural) who has (or lacks) qualifications to make a statement on the subject and who offers reasons for making that statement. The qualifications and the reasons are weighed by the skeptical individual as part of the quest for knowledge. That individual may pay more attention to sources who have studied the matter with some depth and rigor in the past, although that prior study may not lend a veritistic basis for the sources’ statement. The individual, in the interests of rationality, may weigh the reasons given for making the statement more heavily. In reviewing multiple (though, realistically, not all) evaluative, agreeing, and competing statements, the individual reaches a conclusion about the proposition and its truth-bearing potential. This is a complicated, though necessary, way of describing how someone may seek a true belief with the aid of a library. Another example may illustrate more concretely and more clearly what Goldman means. Joel Best, in Damned Lies and Statistics, offered a personal anecdote that entails veritistic judgment.20 He was serving as a member of a doctoral dissertation committee. The dissertation prospectus began with a quotation from a documented source: bEvery year since 1950, the number of American children gunned down has doubled.Q At a glance, this statement may not be troubling, but after doing a little arithmetic it becomes apparent that, if it were true, then in the year 1995 a total of thirty-five trillion children would have been shot, if one child had been shot in 1950. The student’s source was an article in a reputable journal, and the statement was quoted accurately. Application of just a bit of critical acumen shows the claim to be absurd; the credibility of the source is
demolished. The original source of the data reveals the distortion that led to the disputed claim: bThe number of American children killed each year by guns has doubled since 1950.Q Let’s assume that the original concern was the magnitude of the problem of child gunshot victims in the United States. The first, ridiculous claim is no help at all in reaching a conclusion. The second is more helpful, but not in and of itself. The rational enquirer would perhaps also examine general population growth over the same time period in order to place the accurate statistic in a more informative context. That enquirer may further examine socioeconomic factors, geographic location, and other elements that can help one form a veritistic belief about this issue. The other way to consider the library and knowledge is on the grounds of reliability, or more appropriately in philosophical terms, reliabilism. It should be stated here that reliabilism does not refer to accuracy of sources or completeness of evidence. It refers more generically to the process by which we seek and locate justification for beliefs. A process is reliable if it is substantially more likely to lead to true beliefs than to false ones. The process itself involves logical analysis and (what is of most importance here) a means for examining supporting and potentially refuting evidence for the belief. We can quite readily see how the library can fit into potentially reliable processes and why people in an academic community would bgoQ to the library. Given that there are numerous claims, supports and counters to claims, and disputes to claims within the content of the library, it can be employed as a part of a set of processes that can possibly lead to true beliefs. Be warned, though: The library does not inherently or necessarily provide a reliable process. A major component of the process is not the library’s, it is the individual’s. If a person decides to search for information in such a way that only, or a preponderance of, works supporting one particular claim are retrieved, then the process used is not likely to be reliable. If, on the other hand, a person makes use of retrieval tools in such a way that all works related to (including in refutation of) a claim are retrieved, then the rational assessment of the works may indeed lead to true beliefs. Further, if a person eschews the services that a library can offer—which can enhance the reliability of that person’s information search—then the process employed by the person might be problematic.
Veritism and reliabilism are not absolutely distinct; the two processes can, and perhaps should, work in conjunction. Following Goldman’s idea of twostage reliabilism,21 a set of standards for assessing reliability is first selected, then deployed. These two stages can be employed as a means to arrive at veritistic belief. It is essential to remember that reliabilism entails establishing a way to define and use reliable tools and sources; that is, it is a way to minimize imposition or intrusion of agenda-laden processes aimed at rhetorical force (persuasive power). Veritism entails minimizing forces that lead to false belief, including seeking evidence from socially created sources for the justification of the beliefs. With both veritism and reliabilism, the potential of the library as a means to justified true belief is apparent. Likewise apparent, however, are potential pitfalls in the path of justified true belief. The pitfalls can be expressed as a couple of core questions: does the library provide a veritistic source of belief; does the library provide a reliable process leading to true belief? As you might guess, the larger question of how we know what we know depends on answers to these two questions. A resolution also depends on answers to the questions that began this paper.
‘‘. . .does the library provide a veritistic source of true belief; does the library provide a reliable process leading to true belief?’’ The examples offered so far indicate, to some extent, the magnitude of the question we are faced with. If the library is engaged in the process that is social epistemology, then we have to wonder if it is an active or a passive participant. If it is active, then is the library a speaker, does it itself make claims? Does the library lend verity to the justification process? Is the library the locus of a reliable process? We should reexamine some of the seemingly foundational assertions to try to answer these questions. The observations presented here are not final answers; if there are final answers, they should emerge from an extensive dialogue that includes as many discussants as possible. The reexamination
should embrace all aspects of the library— collections, access, services, physical space, virtual space, etc. One way to continue the appraisal of libraries and social epistemology is with the collection, especially since collections have been built intentionally over extended time periods. There may be statements in policies, or articulations of other sorts, that indicate why some works have been selected for inclusion in collections and other works have not. Whether explicitly or not, where intentional decisions have been made about selection, the collection obtains a voice. It speaks to the users of libraries, about the intentions if nothing else. It also speaks to the nature of knowledge claims though. Some are obviously deemed worthy of inclusion and some are excluded, either purposely or accidentally. It may be that the intentionality that informed the selection decisions over time included some assessment that may be akin to justification. That is, an ostensibly rational process led to the decision to acquire some particular works while the same process led to the decision not to acquire other works. It should be emphasized that this is an ostensibly rational process. The rationality is actually open to question. For one thing, how rational can the process be; what do we know about each work prior to making the selection decision? Something might surmised on the basis of authors’ previous works, reviews (when possible), publishers’ histories and reputations, the content of approval plan profile profiles, and other purposeful mechanisms. To reiterate, once a work is in a library’s collection, it speaks to library users. Perhaps our professional aim is to allow each work to speak as one voice among many. As Peggy Johnson reminds us, bLibrary collections document and preserve viewpoints, perceptions, and interpretations and are social, artistic, and political expressions,Q but she also adds, bThough librarians espouse unbiased selection, each decision reflects a personal perspective, made within the context of the dominant or dominating cultures.Q22 A challenge in academic libraries rests on the tension between the reality of the collection as expression and as human activity of building and managing the collection. Within the academic environment, the guiding forces in managing the collection are the curricular and research needs of the community. In the traditional sense of
collection management, the library (again, defined broadly) plays a gatekeeper role; some information is available locally, and some is not. Collection management as it has existed in academic libraries for many decades has taken the gatekeeper role very seriously, and most often in a particular way. The academic library has tended to operate according to what might be called a free-market (or perhaps common-market is a better term) stance. Ideas of all stripes are presented in such a way that what Goldman refers to as a maximized veritistic value is achieved (by allowing a free form of speech regulation rather than a structure of constraints and exclusions).23 In some ways, the environment of electronic information (including the bundling of information in licensed and purchased packages) has added to the veritistic value, but in some important ways it has made veritistic judgment more difficult. In the social arena, Steve Fuller maintains that the assessment of some information producer bhavingQ knowledge is a matter of credibility, which depends on others testing the producer’s work or finding it fruitful.24 Credibility is inextricably tied to access; someone must be aware of a producer’s work in order to test it and learn from it. The tension mentioned above becomes clear when there is what is possibly an overabundance of information, rendering human absorption and evaluation of it extremely difficult. Discussion within academic librarianship about the problem of bundling may focus primarily on economic constraints, but the social epistemic constraints are no less real. Grounding in social epistemology can enhance the position of the profession in arguing in favor of greater local, and professional, discretion with regard to the intentional inclusion of information in a library’s collection and can strengthen veritism as an outcome collection use by the academic community. We may possibly assume that users are open to all of the voices and will attend most studiously to those that speak not only with authority, but with justification. This assumption is of course potentially problematic. Goldman, in working through his ideas of social epistemology, considered the role experts may play in the complicated task of assessing knowledge claims.25 For the time being, let us focus on undergraduate students who come to the library with
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questions they would like answers to. These students are, it is safe to say, novices when it comes to assessing knowledge claims; after all, one of the reasons why they are attending the college or university is to become better epistemic justifiers. Let us further stipulate that coming to knowledge, as it is defined here, is far from simple and easy. If selection decisions are made in part on the basis of some evaluation of authority (an author has published prior works; the author holds a position of responsibility in some prestigious place; the work has been favorably reviewed; etc.), then the student may be attempting to assess the claims of bexperts.Q To make matters even more difficult, such experts do not always agree with one another, so the student has to place trust in the claim of one expert over another making a competing or alternative claim. How might the student decide? A more pointed question for our purposes here is bWhat can the library do to help the student decide?Q As part of our collective history, a kind of principle of neutrality has governed our profession for many years; the presumed goal has been to present multiple alternatives and then allow users to evaluate them. One articulation of this principle can be found in the American Library Association’s Code of Ethics. One element of the Code urges librarians not to ballow our personal beliefs to interfere with fair representation of the aims of our institutions or the provision of access to their information resources.Q26 The job of the library and the librarian has been, according to some interpretations of the principle, to point to the various alternatives. In some subject areas, this principle has been necessary; when it comes to legal and medical matters, for example, there is no other practicable choice. Can the same be said about literature, sociology, history, or other subjects? If selection decisions are made on the basis of a set of criteria that may include the author’s reputation, the publisher’s track record, and/or the content of reviews, has the principle of neutrality been violated? Is the principle of neutrality a myth? Many academic libraries employ subject specialists. Their job may be interpreted as helping users assess competing claims to determine which will become part of the library’s voice. Their job may also be to direct students and others to some works in preference to others on the
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basis of, perhaps, epistemic justification. If the library does indeed speak to users, these interpreting users may assume that the library intends to lead them to some claims in preference to others. Selection policies and practices may support such an assumption. If users are relying on the library as a voice and as an authority, then we have no choice but to confront Philip Kitcher’s warning. He has stated, bOnce we have recognized that individuals form beliefs by relying on information supplied by others, there are serious issues about the conditions that should be met if the community is to form a consensus on a particular issue— questions about the division of opinion and of cognitive effort within the community, and issues about the proper attribution of authority.Q27 The library does supply information to its users; the conditions necessary to foster a genuinely informed community (including, perhaps, veritism and reliabilism) must be considered.
‘‘If the library does indeed speak to users, these interpreting users may assume that the library intends to lead them to some claims in preference to others.’’ We return to some of the large and daunting questions we began with. Is the library’s function to represent knowledge? If so, then should a collection include only works that make justified true claims? An alternative purpose might be to represent knowledge claims, in which case the task of justification is delayed, and possibly sloughed off to the users of the library. Is the library’s function to enable or create to possibility of knowledge growth? Such a purpose entails somewhat different responsibilities. Envision library instruction (or information literacy, if you prefer), which tacitly argues for a kind of social epistemic approach and recognizes knowledge-based decision-making processes. According to the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), one goal of information literacy programs is to enable students to evaluate binformation and its sources criticallyQ and incorporate bselected information into his or her knowledge base and value system.Q28 This begs the question of what is
required to evaluate critically. It is a significant question though, and it is one that has to have an answer if we are to achieve the goals we set for ourselves. If evaluation relates directly to knowledge, as the ACRL statement indicates it should, then what we are talking about here today is no longer purely theoretical but quickly enters the realm of the practical. And if such evaluation is so important, perhaps every library user should be required to go through such a program. The idea and pragmatic application of social epistemology can have a formal place in higher education and academic libraries. An explicit social epistemic focus on the parts of academic libraries could be incorporated into policies and practices that essentially define the library (again taken to be the broad place and people) as it fits into the institution’s goal of knowledge growth. Some specific elements of the library can readily integrate the kinds of objectives that Shera, Goldman, Fuller, and others speak of. ! Collection management: While the common market approach to acquiring and presenting information to the academic community has clear merit, a clearer recognition of the veritistic and reliabilist value of the disparate and sometimes contradictory (or at least dialectic) information objects can be achieved. This is not to say that questionable, or even false, statements would not be acquired, but the critical assessment of all statements could more explicitly become part of every student’s and faculty member’s cognitive apparatus. ! Information literacy: The ACRL goals could be adopted within a social epistemology framework, with the understanding of testimony, expertise, evidence, and corroboration becoming integrated into a program that might aim at reaching all students. ! Information services: The interactions between librarians and students/faculty can be informed by the kinds of goals that Goldman in particular advocates. In essence, each interaction can become an exercise in the critical appraisal on information. ! Administration: The top management of the library can transmit the appreciation of social epistemic goals and
create ways for the librarians to explore and share ways to imbue all functions and operations of the library with the goals. This short list is not intended to be exhaustive. It does, however, point to ways of answering some of the questions this paper began with: The library can indeed support the critical evaluation of knowledge claims, both individual and collective knowledge growth, and the space where people can engage in the social connections that make knowledge, as defined above, possible. All of the questions asked here can be reduced to two fundamental ones: What constitutes a library, and what is a library’s telos or purpose? If bknowledgeQ features in the response to either of these questions, then there follow some inevitable and necessary considerations. Social epistemology can help offer a beginning to some meaningful answers. As is presented here, a social epistemic grounding for the academic library informs collection management, access to information, services to users, and (on a larger scale) contribution to the knowledge growth that is at the heart of the academy’s educational and research programs. NOTES AND REFERENCES 1. John M. Budd, Knowledge and Knowing in Library and Information Science: A Philosophical Framework (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2001). 2. Margaret E. Egan, Jesse H. Shera, bFoundations for a Theory of Bibliogra-
phy, Q Library Quarterly 44 (July 1952): 133 – 134. 3. Jesse H. Shera, bAn Epistemological Foundation for Library Science,Q in The Foundations of Access to Knowledge: A Symposium, edited by Edward B. Montgomery (Syracuse: Syracuse University, 1968), p. 8. 4. Jesse H. Shera, Sociological Foundations of Librarianship (Bombay: Asian Publishing House, 1970), p. 97. 5. Steve Fuller, bRecent Work in Social Epistemology,Q American Philosophical Quarterly 33 (April 1996): 149 – 150. 6. Alvin I. Goldman, Pathways to Knowledge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 198. 7. Steve Fuller, Social Epistemology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), p. 3. 8. J. Angelo Corlett, Analyzing Social Knowledge (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), pp. 82 – 83. 9. Goldman, Pathways to Knowledge, pp. 164–181. 10. Quoted in Brian C. Caulfield, bMorphing the Librarians: Fighting off Extinction in the Information Age,Q Wired 5 (August 1997), 64. 11. Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), pp. 4 – 7. 12. Michael Foucault, bFantasia of the Library, Q in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, edited by Donald F. Bouchard (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977) pp. 90 – 91. 13. Aristotle, bDe Anima,Q in Introduction to Aristotle, edited by Richard McKeon (New York: Modern Library, 1992), pp. 226 – 230 (427b–429a8). 14. Martha Nussbaum, Aristotle’s de Motu Animalium (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978).
15. Shera, Sociological Foundations of Librarianship, pp. 92–93. 16. Karl R. Popper, Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach, revised edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 74. 17. Ibid., pp. 107–108. 18. Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society (New York: Knopf, 1964). 19. Alvin I. Goldman, Knowledge in a Social World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 87 – 94. 20. Joel Best, Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), pp. 1 – 4. 21. Goldman, Pathways to Knowledge, p. 35. 22. Peggy Johnson, Fundamentals of Collection Management (Chicago: American Library Association, 2004), p. 19. 23. Goldman, Knowledge in a Social World, p. 194. 24. Fuller, Social Epistemology, p. 30. 25. Goldman, Pathways to Knowledge , pp. 139–163. 26. American Library Association, Code of Ethics, Available: http://www.ala.org/ala/ oif/statementspols/codeofethics/coehistory/ codeofethics.pdf (accessed January 22, 2004). 27. Philip Kitcher, bContrasting Conceptions of Social Epistemology,Q in Socializing Epistemology: The Social Dimensions of Knowledge, edited by Frederick F. Schmitt (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994), p. 114. 28. Association of College and Research Libraries, Objectives for Information Literacy Instruction: A Model Statement for Academic Librarians, Available: http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlstandards/ objectivesinformation.htm (accessed January 22, 2004).
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