1 Quinn identifies a number of ways in which the four dimensions of McDonaldization-efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control (typically realized through the substitution of technology for human labor)-are evident in academic libraries. Tiered reference service, self-check machines, and self-guided tours all represent ways in which libraries have sought to become more efficient. "Just-in-time" approaches to collection development-including a greater reliance on interlibrary loan and document delivery services, part of a larger trend toward access over ownership-and standardized approaches to information literacy instruction also provide greater efficiencies. Calculability is represented in the focus on quantity, such as inputs (like financial resources, number of staff, gate counts, number of volumes) and outputs (for instance, circulation stats, online transactions), as a surrogate for quality. McDonaldization is also apparent in the growing predictability of academic libraries' collections resulting from the use of approval plans and journal aggregator databases. Likewise, Quinn suggests, most libraries offer the same suite of core services. Finally, in addition to their hierarchical structure and reliance on rules and regulations-typical of bureaucratic systems, and in itself a form of social control-the increasing use of technology in libraries serves as a mechanism of rationalization and control.Although Quinn concedes that "there are obvious advantages in maintaining a wellorganized and efficient work environment," ultimately, he sees the "bureaucratic, McDonaldized environment" characteristic of academic libraries as a form of irrationality:It is difficult to accomplish much that is innovative. Boldness, experimentation, and organizational responsiveness all suffer as a result. McDonaldized libraries are slow to respond, simplistic, and short-sighted because they are unable to engage the heads and hearts of their employees and are out of touch with the real needs of their users.
Time is a site of power, one that enacts particular subjectivities and relationships. In the workplace, time enables and constrains performance, attitudes, and behaviors. In this qualitative research study, I examine the impact of the values and practices of new public management on academic librarians' experiences of time when engaged in pink-collar public service (reference and information literacy) work. Data gathered during semi-structured interviews with twentyfour public service librarians in Canadian public research-intensive universities, members of the U15 Group, serve as a site of analysis for this study. Interview data were first analyzed using thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2006) within a constructionist framework. Sharma's (2014) theory of power-chronography-time as powerwas then used as an analytical framework. Findings suggest that, in keeping with research on the temporal experiences of faculty, academic librarians' temporal labor is structured and controlled by the logics and institutional arrangements of new public management. Moreover, like their faculty counterparts, academic librarians experience temporal intensification and acceleration. However, as marginal educators and members of a feminized profession, librarians also encounter "recalibration" (Sharma 2014), the need to modify the tempo of their own labor to be "in time" with the dominant temporalities of faculty and students.
Local sites and practices of information work become embroiled in the larger imperatives and logics of the global knowledge economy through social, technological, and spatial networks. Drawing on human geography’s central claim that space and time are dialectically produced through social practices, in this essay I use human/critical geography as a framework to situate the processes and practices—the space and time—of information literacy within the broader social, political, and economic environments of the global knowledge economy. As skills training for the knowledge economy, information literacy lies at the intersection of the spatial and temporal spheres of higher education as the locus of human capital production. Information literacy emerges as a priority for academic librarians in the 1980s in the context of neoliberal reforms to higher education: a necessary skill in the burgeoning “information economy,” it legitimates the role of librarians as teachers. As a strategic priority, information literacy serves to demonstrate the library’s value within the university’s globalizing agenda. While there has been a renewed interest in space/time within the humanities and social sciences since the 1980s, LIS has not taken up this “spatial turn” with the same enthusiasm—or the same degree of criticality—as other social science disciplines. This article attempts to address that gap and offers new insights into the ways that the spatial and temporal registers of the global knowledge economy and the neoliberal university produce and regulate the practice of information literacy in the academic library. Pre-print first published online 12/09/2018
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