Learning at the Library » britain http://gottesman.pressible.org Research tips, event recaps, how-to's and best kept secrets from TC's Gottesman Libraries. Tue, 21 May 2013 16:07:22 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.5 The Expansive Moment: The Rise of Social Anthropology in Britain and Africa, 1918-1970 http://gottesman.pressible.org/victorialebron/the-expansive-moment-the-rise-of-social-anthropology-in-britain-and-africa-1918-1970 http://gottesman.pressible.org/victorialebron/the-expansive-moment-the-rise-of-social-anthropology-in-britain-and-africa-1918-1970#comments Tue, 14 Jun 2011 12:47:19 +0000 Victoria Lebron http://gottesman.pressible.org/?p=10509

Title: The Expansive Moment: The Rise of Social Anthropology in Britain and Africa, 1918-1970

Author: Goody, Jack

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Call No.: GN345 .S35 2010

From the Publisher:

Jack Goody’s book explores the development of the discipline of social anthropology through its key practitioners and how far its concerns interacted with the political and ideological debate of the interwar years. It is a study of the different ideological and intellectual approaches adopted by the emerging subject of social anthropology and how far these views were incorporated into and defined by the structures and institutions in which they developed. However it is also an analysis of how far the subject was created by its own response to key issues of the time: colonialism – specifically Africa, anti-Semitism and communism. Goody’s approach is characteristically personal: Malinowski dominates the discussion, as well as Fortes, Radcliffe-Brown and Evans-Pritchard, and his own experience, gathered over a wide-ranging life of fieldwork informs the conclusion of the book.

About the Author:

Jack Goody (c.1918-) is one of the major figures in British anthropology. He was William Wyse Professor in Cambridge and has written many books on kinship, literacy, culture and many other subjects. (From http://www.alanmacfarlane.com/ancestors/Jack_Goody.html).

On the Web:

]]> http://gottesman.pressible.org/victorialebron/the-expansive-moment-the-rise-of-social-anthropology-in-britain-and-africa-1918-1970/feed 0 The Secret Life of Libraries http://gottesman.pressible.org/pamela/the-secret-life-of-libraries http://gottesman.pressible.org/pamela/the-secret-life-of-libraries#comments Mon, 02 May 2011 15:18:09 +0000 pamela http://gottesman.pressible.org/?p=9333 I came across this article at The Guardian recently and found it thoroughly delightful. It offers some thoughts and anecdotes about libraries, as their funding comes under attack in Britain as it has in the United States.

For instance, did you know that some books were once stored off of the shelves not due to space limitations but because they were considered indecent?

“In the 60s, before the Lady Chatterley trial,” says Ian Stringer, “you used to get block books – literally, wooden blocks in place of any books the librarians thought were a bit risqué, like Last Exit to Brooklyn. You had to bring the block to the counter and then they’d give you the book from under the desk. So of course you got a certain type of person just going round looking for the wooden blocks.”

These veteran librarians offer wise comments regarding the subject of a previous post, measuring the value of a library:

“”Libraries are always trying to prove themselves because what they provide is so intangible. How do you quantify what someone gets from a book or a magazine?” Attempts to do so often end up in trouble. “The council once asked us for an assessment of outcomes, not output,” says Ian Stringer. “Output was how many books we’d stamped out, and outcome was something that had actually resulted from someone borrowing a book. So say someone took out a book on mending cars and then drove the car back, that’s an outcome; or made a batch of scones from a recipe book they had borrowed. It lasted until one of the librarians told the council they’d had someone in borrowing a book on suicide, but that they’d never brought it back. The council stopped asking after that.”"

Despite its humorous components, the article draws a serious conclusion:

“The libraries’ most powerful asset is the conversation they provide – between books and readers, between children and parents, between individuals and the collective world. Take them away and those voices turn inwards or vanish. Turns out that libraries have nothing at all to do with silence.”

Do you find opportunities for conversation and social contact at the library? Do you agree that this is the purpose of a library in the first place? And have you had any other humorous library experiences? :-)

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