Link to the prof's ALISEpaper.

Students are responsible for knowing the contents of this syllabus and completing all assignments in accordance with the schedule herein. If it is in here, you are expected to know it.

This version of the syllabus is a work in progress as of 12/10/96. The official and final word, syllabus-wise is to be found on the course web page at:

http://www.sir.arizona.edu/sp97/500.html

In cases of conflict between the printed and electronic syllabi, the web page is the authoritative version.

This course focuses on information as it is used, and defined, by society. The primary lens, or theoretical background, used in this investigation is the notion of "cultural hegemony," proposed by Antonio Gramsci. We will study information as both a reflection and shaper of society, and society as a reflection and shaper of information. The relationship of libraries and other information agencies to the state, and the role of information professionals in the political and cultural spheres are central themes in the course.

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

The student should gain an introduction to the relationship of information and society, and understand that the two shape each other.

The most important objective of all: the development and demonstration of critical thinking skills.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

1. Informed participation in class (5%).

1. Short Paper (25%). Students will select a portion of either a subject access scheme (subject thesaurus, subject descriptors, etc.) or a classification scheme (Dewey, LC, etc.) and in no more than 10 pages examine that scheme through the Gramscian lens. What biases or assumptions does the scheme make? What prejudices are exhibited? How might this affect library or information system users? This paper is due March 25^th.

3. Mid Term Exam (20%) (Take home)

4. Semester Paper (50%). Select an information agency or structure^*. How does that agency or structure reflect (or not) the cutural hegemony of that portion of society it is designed to serve? If it is designed to serve the entire population, does it, in fact, do so? What can we learn about both the agency/structure, and its contextual society, by looking at both through the concept of cultural hegemony? The final paper is due May 15 no later than 11 a.m.

*by information structure I mean a system designed to provide access, or deliver, information that can be used across a number of agencies. A classification scheme would be an example of an information structure. So would the copyright system, or a public library, or…..

Pay particular attention to "How to Write for This Course" later in the syllabus. Obviously for 50% of your grade I expect an in-depth treatment, with appropriate structure and presentation.

GRADING

Letter grades are awarded on the following basis:

93 = A

83-92 = B

73-82 = C

73 = abject failure

Grades are calculated using a spreadsheet program. There is no rounding up for computing final grades.

Work completed in a competent and timely fashion receives a grade of B. The grade of A is reserved for truly outstanding work. In graduate school a grade of C can be regarded as a failure.

Text and Assigned Readings

Sasson, Anne Showstack. Gramsci's Politics. 2nd. ed. University of Minnesota Press, 1987.

Landy, Marcia. Film, Politics, and Gramsci. University of Minnesota Press, 1994.

There are a myriad of Gramsci books around. These two are a.) in print, b.) in paperback, and c.)readable. Gramsci himself wrote in Italian, and in the sometimes tortured language of the Italian far left of the 1920s. Marxist language is often laden with terminology that is not always obvious to non-practitioners of that end of the spectrum. Some of Gramsci's later writings had to be published under the watchful eye of Mussolini's fascist government which didn't do too much for clarity. A fair number of Gramsci's works have been translated. If you get interested there is a bibliography available here on the web version of this syllabus, or via FTP from Jafar.sir.arizona.edu. The version on Jafar is in both WinWord 6 and 7, and as an RTF or HTML document.

It is expected that students will do a considerable amount of reading outside of the assignments.

Schedule of Events and Readings.

R 1/16: Introduction: The School, the Class, various concepts.

READINGS: Start working on the readings. I would start with Harris ["State, Class and Cultural Reproduction: Toward a Theory of Library Service in the United States" Advances in Librarianship 14 (1986) pages 211-252] and Lears ["The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities" American Historical Review vol 90., no. 3, (June, 1985), pages 567-593], and then move to the texts, starting with Landy, where the critical bits are all before page 99, although the material after page 99 is well worth reading too, particularly if you like movies. In Sassoon you can probably start at page 109, although you should probably read the Introduction as well.

NOTE: The professor is well aware that some of this is heavy going. I'm still wrestling with some of this and I've been at it a lot longer than you have. There are a lot of concepts and language here that might not be familiar. Stick with it, and as we get to the pieces things should start coming together. As I find them I will try and alert you to other writings/WWW pages that might help. You might start here which contains a lot of leftist theoretical explanations. There's also an article by Michael Apple here that is probably worth looking at. Apple is a frequent author on Gramscian topics, and this is one for which we don't need copyright permission. Other links will appear as I locate them.

T 1/21: Information I: Various things you should think about.

R 1/23: Information II

T 1/28: Society Way Back When

R 1/30: The Emergence of the Modern State

T 2/4: The Concept of Cultural Hegemony

READINGS. By now you should have read Harris, and T. Jackson Lears.

R 2/6: More on Gramsci and Hegemony.

T 2/11-R 2/13. I will be at the ALISE conference, delivering a talk on Gramsci (as it happens.) This is time for you to think about and get ready for:

T 2/18: Discussion Session: Cultural Hegemony and the Role of Information Professionals

R 2/20: Overt Societal/State Control: Censorship

T 2/25: More on Censorship

R 2/27: The Hegemony at Work: Influences on the Organization of Knowledge I.

Readings: Berman, Sanford. "The Jewish Question" The Joy of Cataloging (1981) pages 113-123.

Rogers, Margaret N. "Are we on Equal Terms Yet?" Library Resources and Technical Services (April, 1993) pages 181-196.

Rollins, Richard M. "Words as Social Control: Noah Webster and the Creation of the American Dictionary" American Quarterly, vol 28, no. 4 (fall, 1976): 415-430.

T 3/4: The Organization of Knowledge II: Native tribes in Classification and Subject Analysis.

R 3/6: The Library as a Social Construct I

T 3/11: The Library As a Social Construct II.

R 3/13: Mid Term Exam

T 3/18-R 3/20. Spring Break but no break for you, as the short paper is due on Tuesday the 25^th.

T 3/25: The State as Information Hunter-Gatherer II

NOTE: The short paper is due today.

R 3/27: The U.S. Government and Information I

T 4/1: The U.S. Government and Information II

R 4/3: The U.S. Government and Information III

T 4/8: The Economics of Information

READING: Stein, E.W. "Organizational Memory: Review of Concepts and Recommendations for Management" International Journal of Information Management, vol. 15., no. , pp 17-32.

R 4/10: More Economics

READING: The National Information Infrastructure: Agenda for Action. (Public domain). For the latest stuff, poke around at here , or chop off the NII-Table-of-Contents.html part to see what is new.

Kettinger, William J. "National Infrastructure Diffusion and the U.S. Information Super Highway" Information & Management 27 (1994) pp. 357-368.

Konigsberg, E.L. "The Newberry Sells Books" New York Times Review of Books

T 4/15: The Impact of Economics (& Class Structure?)

R 4/17: The Geography of Information

READING: Wilson, Louis Round. "Aspects of Geography and Population" chapter 13 of his The Geography of Reading ALA and the University of Chicago Press, 1938, pages 325-354.

Walford, Rex, and Peter Haggett. "Some Speculations for the 21st Century" Geography vol. 80, no. 1, 1995, pages 3-13.

T 4/22: More Geography, Some Economics.

READING: Mitchelson, Ronald L., and James O. Wheeler. "The Flow of Information in a Global Economy: The Role of the American Urban System in 1990" Annals of the Association of American Geographers vol 84, no. 1, (1994) pages 87-107.

R 4/24: Geography III

READING: Rushton, Gerard. "Human Behavior in Spatial Analysis" Urban Geography vol. 14, no. 5, (1993) pages 447-456.

T 4/29: Intellectual Property I: The Origins of Copyright

R 5/1: Intellectual Property in a Technological Age

READINGS: The University of Arizona Intellectual Property Policy August, 1993. (Public domain)

Perritt, Henry H. "Protecting Intellectual Property Rights on the Information Superhighway" Journal of Academic Librarianship vol. 20, 1994, pages 321-323.

Karajala, Dennis S. "Misappropriation as a Third Intellectual Property Paradigm" Columbia Law Review (1994), pages 2594-2609.

Steidlmeir, Paul, and Cecilia Falbe. "International Disputes over Intellectual Property" Review of Social Economy vol. 52 (1994) pages 339-360.

T 5/6: The Future of Libraries and Information Agencies; Last Class.

Usually in this class I take any questions that are unanswered somewhere along the line. If you can get them to me in writing, or email, by Thursday, May 1 it would be appreciated. If nothing gets sent in, there is no telling what I will do. Think about it.

Thursday, May 15, NLT 11 a.m. the final paper is due

COMMUNICATIONS

I will check my email several times a day. You can leave a message for me in my mailbox. If the announced office hours are inconvenient, please see me for an appointment.

A listserv is setup for the class. The name is LIS500. All students are required to subscribe to the listserv, and are encouraged to use it. I expect you to be on the listserv by the end of the first week of classes. At the end of each week the professor will pose a question on the list and expects debate to ensue. All grades, changes in the schedule, and any other important information will be distributed via the listserv.

In addition to the above the SLS maintains a general listserv for student use. ARIZSLS@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU may be subscribed to by sending a subscription message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU. The message should read: subscribe arizsls (your name). Use your name, not (your name).

Listservs are the primary communications tool used by the School, and your professor. If information was imparted on the lists, and you missed it, you have only yourself to blame.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION :

1. Late papers will be graded down. No exceptions.

2. We expect papers to be typewritten in clear, concise, and grammatically correct English. Papers not meeting these standards will be redone until they do so, losing points along the way. Suggestions on how to write for this course are attached.

3A. If your word processor/computer combination supports true proportional spacing you may use full justification. If your equipment does not, or you don't know what this means, don't use full justification. I prefer a ragged right margin to funny spacing in the lines.

3B. If your word processor/computer combination supports true proportional spacing you may use full justification. If your equipment does not, or you don't know what this means, don't use full justification. I prefer a ragged right margin to funny spacing in the lines.

3A is correct according to the directions. 3B is incorrect. Kindly take this seriously.

4. THE FOLLOWING POLICY APPLIES TO WORK DONE FOR THIS CLASS:

Students assume full responsibility for the content and integrity of the academic work they submit. The guiding principle of academic integrity shall be that a student's submitted work, examinations, reports or projects must be that student's own work. Actions constituting a violation of the Code shall include those outlined below. Students shall be guilty of violating the Code and be subject to proceedings under it if they:

a.. Represent the work of others as their own.

b. Use or obtain unauthorized assistance in any academic work.

c. Give unauthorized assistance to other students.

d. Modify, without faculty approval, an examination, paper, record, or report for the purpose of obtaining additional credit

e. Fail to meet other conditions of academic integrity as required by a faculty member for a specific course.

This material is excerpted from the University of Arizona Code of Academic Integrity, as printed in the University Handbook for Appointed Personnel. There are also excerpts from the Code in the SLS student organization handbook. See also http://w3.arizona.edu/~studpubs/handbook/policy.html if you have any questions.

If you are not sure what any of this means, find out. I interpret this very strictly. Unless specific permission is granted for group, or team projects, we expect that your work will reflect only you own efforts.

I further expect you to know the meaning of the term "plagiarism," and make very sure you understand how to properly use, and cite, the work of others in your papers. This is a zero tolerance situation.

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HOW TO WRITE FOR THIS COURSE

"Say a thing in one sentence as straight as it can be made, and then drop it."

William James

I expect that papers for a graduate level course will be written as if for publication. Not only must the basic facts of the subject be mastered, and all the relevant sources explored, but the text must be written clearly:

1. Who, what, where, when, and exactly how much must always be obvious.

Know what you wish to say, and say only that; define new terms or new uses of old ones.

2. Avoid ambiguity.

"You can't put too much water in a nuclear reactor."

3. Link sentences and paragraphs logically and intelligibly. The reader shouldn't have to rearrange your ideas to make sense out of them.

4. Sentences should not be so long that the reader loses his or her way. Otherwise you are likely to lose the readers attention, as so often happened with the prose of 19th century essayists such as Oliver Wendell Holmes, who was not only a doctor, professor, and novelist, but also the father of the famous Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (an intriguing character who combined the ideals of New England humanism with the prejudices of the upper­class, wealthy society in which he moved)...and before you know it you will have wandered very far afield.

For practice, read lots of Jesse Shera. Or Winston Churchill.

5. Avoid irrelevant or tangential topics. Stick to the point.

[see number 4}

6. No obstacle should come between you and your reader.

When revising, imagine the reader over your shoulder and apply the rules listed above before typing your final product.