Librarianship as intellectual craft: The ethics of classification in the realms of leisure and waged labor

Abstract

This paper develops an ethical conception of library labor as an intellectual craft that can serve as an alternative to a deterministic discourse of technological transformation. In this paper, the author proposes a model of librarianship as an intellectual craft that can be used as an "ideal type" in comparison to recent transformations in the practice of librarianship. This paper then examines the rise of participatory classification in the realm of leisure in user-generated classification schemes (e.g., folksonomies) as a way of examining some of the difficult ethical questions that this ideal of intellectual craft poses when applied to contemporary conditions. Marx's concept of surplus value is used to examine how donated labor adds to the general knowledge. This paper concludes by advocating for the general expansion of leisure coupled with the promotion public institutions that support the craft of those who organize information in a broadly defined public interest. In an era of dramatic change, such a framework offers a positive ethical account of librarians and information professionals' labor that is not wholly dependent on a discourse of market exchange.