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Bookworms as information literacy? How Henri Lefebvre's spatial triad encouraged OCAD University to re-place the art library through site-interventions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2018

Daniel Payne
Daniel Payne*
Affiliation:
Head, Instructional Services, Dorothy H. Hoover Library, OCAD University, 100 McCaul Street, Toronto, Ontario, CanadaM5T 1W1dpayne@ocadu.ca
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Abstract

Does the art library need re-placing? Using the commentary of an OCAD University faculty member concerning “a perception issue with the library and its use,” librarian Daniel Payne uses theorist Henri Lefebvre's spatial triad to decode, in general terms, undergraduate students’ understanding of libraries as articulated in the OCLC Perceptions of libraries surveys. In an attempt to re-align concepts of the library as place at OCAD University, an exhibition review interpretation of student site-interventions demonstrates how visual communication can offer more insightful “spatial practices” for both students and library staff. In the process, librarians were challenged to accommodate student creative voices that pushed both policy boundaries and comfort zones. Although a small-scale information literacy initiative in which no formal quantitative data was collected, the ability of having conceptual models of librarians interact and even clash with those of students helped realign both stakeholders’ understandings of libraries as complex spatial entities.

Type
Research Article
Information
Art Libraries Journal , Volume 43 , Issue 3 , July 2018 , pp. 153 - 160
Copyright
Copyright © ARLIS/UK&Ireland 2018 

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References

1. Lefebvre, Henri, The Production of Space, trans. by Nicholson-Smith, Donald (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1991), 59Google Scholar.

2. Ranganathan, Shiyali Ramamrita, The Five Laws of Library Science (Madras: The Madras Library Association, 1931), 382Google Scholar.

3. The OCAD University library is now known as the Dorothy H. Hoover Library in honour of the first professionally accredited librarian who worked in the space from the early 1950s through to 1972.

4. Anonymized email to author, June 1, 2017.

5. De Rosa, Cathy, et al. “By Community: College Students,” Perceptions of Libraries, 2010: Context and Community (Dublin, OH: OCLC, 2010)Google Scholar, www.oclc.org/content/dam/oclc/reports/2010perceptions/collegestudents.pdf.

6. Ibid.

7. Lefebvre, Production of Space, 40.

8. Ibid., 36–38.

9. Ibid., 33, 34, 40.

10. It is worth noting that 27% of students surveyed ended up at a library website after using a search engine and 80% of this latter group used the library's online resources. In a resounding endorsement, 34% were able to access at least one source, while an additional 65% used other sources during the visit. Added together this represents a 99% success rate for those students who stayed on the library's site.

11. As an example of the disjunction created by flawed spatial practices, one might point to the Pari shōkōgun (Paris Syndrome) phenomenon noted primarily by Japanese tourists visiting Paris, France. The shock of having life-long perceived notions confronted with realities of the actual lived space of the city can lead to both psychiatric and psychosomatic symptoms. Although not particularly studied in scientific literatures, the syndrome is widely covered in social media and - as to be expected - has a Wikipedia entry.

12. For more information see: Daniel Payne, “Exhibiting Information Literacy: Site-Specific Art and Design Interventions at the Ontario College of Art & Design,” Art Libraries Journal 33, no. 1 (2008): 35–41. Also: “Library Site-Interventions,” Dorothy H. Hoover Library, last modified November 22, 2017, http://ocad.libguides.com/LibraryInterventions

13. “DRPT 4C08: Painting in the Expanded Field,” OCAD University Course Calendar 2014–2015, accessed November 1, 2017, http://coursecatalogue.ocadu.ca/historical_calendar/undergraduate/archive/OCAD_U_Course_Calendar_2014-2015_Accessible.pdf

14. Grenby, Matthew Orville, “Pay, Professionalization and Probable Dominance? Women Writers and the Children's Book Trade,” Women's Writing, 1600–1830: Feminisms and Futures (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 117Google Scholar.

15. Baudrillard, Jean, Simulacra and Simulation (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

16. Foucault, Michel, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Routledge, 2002), xxiii-xxviGoogle Scholar.

17. Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhaĭlovich, “Discourse in the Novel” in The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, vol.1 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 274Google Scholar.

18. Kafka, Franz, The Metamorphosis, trans. Bernofsky, Susan, intro. Cronenberg, David (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2014Google Scholar. It should be noted that this was not the library's copy of the publication with the LC call number PT2621 A26 M3.

19. McLuhan, Marshall, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), 7Google Scholar.

20. Jacobs, Jane, Dark Age Ahead (New York: Random House, 2004)Google Scholar.

21. “Statement on Intellectual Freedom and Libraries,” Canadian Federation of Library Associations/Fédération canadienne des associations de bibliothèques, last modified September 27, 2015, http://cfla-fcab.ca/en/guidelines-and-position-papers/statement-on-intellectual-freedom-and-libraries/