Reworking Myth : casting lots for the future of library workplaces

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Date

2009

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Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to provide understanding regarding the future of library workplaces by, first, establishing the relationship between Joseph Campbell's functions of mythology in traditional cultures and workplace texts, and then showing libraries as workplaces with such texts. With this framework in place, it is possible to pick-out the fundamental cycle inherent in library workplace cosmology, highlight pedagogical cycles inherent in library texts, and generate an informed understanding of future cosmological and pedagogical trends using educated extrapolation of such cycles. These steps all serve to lay further groundwork in understanding library workplace mythology and its sociological effects, and, using the relationship between ever-moving cosmological and pedagogical cycles, it becomes possible to form an educated picture of future library sociology. In the end, library workplace mythology has no new revelations about the direction of library workplace sociology, only new ways of dispelling predictions often made about the future of libraries and their workplaces. By looking at library workplaces as sites of mythology, this work offers expectations that the same cycles inherent in past and present library workplaces will continue to overcome changes in the technological, political, and social constructs of future library workplaces.

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