http://handle.tamu.edu/1969.1/2488 http://handle.tamu.edu/1969.1/88061 Aristotle's Contribution to Scholarly Communication (corrected dissertation) Bales, Stephen This historical study examines the Aristotelian foundations of the Library and Museum of Alexandria for the purpose of (1) understanding how the Library and Museum differed from preceding ancient Near Eastern information institutions (i.e., “protolibraries”) and (2) how Aristotle’s methodologies for producing scientific knowledge were carried out in Alexandria. While protolibraries served as safeguards for maintaining a static cultural/political “stream of tradition” and created, organized, and maintained “library” documents to this end, the Library of Alexandria was a tool for theoretical knowledge creation. The Library materialized Aristotelian pre-scientific theory, specifically dialectic and served the scholarly community of the Museum in its research. Following the Library, collections of materialized endoxa, or recorded esteemed opinions, became a necessary tool for use by scholarly communities. The Library established the post-Aristotelian paradigm under which academic libraries still operate. Although the Library of Alexandria represented a fundamental shift in the meaning and purpose of collections of recorded documents, a feminist critique of the post-Aristotelian library shows that the academic library, while used in knowledge creation, is rooted in a foundationalist philosophy that validates and maintains the status quo. This is the corrected version of the doctoral dissertation (as of Oct 9, 2009): Bales, Stephen. “Aristotle’s Contribution to Scholarly Communication.” PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2008. Corrections were made to remedy minor errors as well as substantive errors and citation errors. A list of corrections appears at the end of this document. The original, uncorrected version is catalogued at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and by OCLC (#444510431). Mon, 12 Oct 2009 21:53:00 GMT http://handle.tamu.edu/1969.1/88026 The Post-Aristotelian Library and Exclusion Bales, Stephen Aristotle’s scientific method shifted the purpose of library collections from a paradigm of cultural/political maintenance to one of theoretical knowledge creation. In spite of its modified role, the “post-Aristotelian library” ultimately served a conservative socio-political function as pre-Alexandrian information institutions. This study examines the intellectual basis of the academic library as a tool for control and argues that the post-Aristotelian library is a tool for entrenching hegemony. This paper presents elements of research from, and corrects errors to, the unpublished dissertation: Bales, Stephen. "Aristotle's Contribution to Scholarly Communication." University of Tennessee 2008. Wed, 23 Sep 2009 20:56:25 GMT http://handle.tamu.edu/1969.1/86481 Meeting Our Users Where They Conference: A Texas A&M Model to Support Librarian Attendance at Subject-Specific Conferences Seeger, Christina Wan, Gary Hankins, Rebecca Melgoza, Pauline Today’s academic librarian is frequently called upon to function as a subject specialist, with or without advanced degrees in other disciplines. One method of monitoring trends within a given field is to study its literature; another is to attend conferences in the discipline. Discipline-specific conference attendance by academic librarians provides opportunities to interact with faculty in their disciplines that result in an increased communication with faculty, improved reference expertise, and more focused collection development. This paper describes the Texas A&M University Libraries’ support for conference attendance and examples of the resulting benefits. Copyright Holder, 2009: This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of 'Copyright Holder' for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Public Services Quarterly, Volume 5 Issue 2, April 2009. doi:10.1080/15228950902837541 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15228950902837541) Tue, 31 Mar 2009 22:58:59 GMT http://handle.tamu.edu/1969.1/86480 Oral History, Civil Rights and the Archival Role Hankins, Rebecca The years 2003 to 2006 will witness the anniversaries of many of the events that represent the Modern Civil Rights Movement. With the 50th anniversary celebration of the historic Brown v Board decision, the court order to desegregate the Boston Public schools in 1974 and the ensuing convulsions it caused. Couple with this the city of Birmingham, Alabama having experienced its most violent period of civil right activities during the 1950s and 60s, which many of those organizations and institutions in Birmingham will be commemorating from 2004 to 2006. The March on Washington and the 100th anniversary of the publication of W.E.B. DuBois’s Souls of Black Folks behind us, this is an appropriate subject for our series. This issue of Africa Rising will chronicle how those professionals called archivist, charged with collecting, preserving, and making these important resources available to the public, view their role in this endeavor. This issue will show how oral histories have become a central component in the ongoing struggle to document, revise, and append the stories of the Modern Civil Rights Movement. This paper has been revised from its original version presented at the 2004 International Oral History Association Conference in Rome, Italy. Sun, 18 Jul 2004 22:58:59 GMT