An Observation
I can’t help but notice that most of your research tends to the primary source end of the spectrum. Do we want to utilize any contemporary papers dealing with this issue?
Also, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the course this paper might take. Do we want to take a side on the issue, or present as many perspectives as we can without overtly stating which we agree with? Regardless, I think perhaps we should begin with an historical survey of opinions and legislation on homelessness, (from the book you want to draw the title from) and then move into the issues we wish to address in the modern environment.
I guess I still have two questions about this paper. The first is, what is it that we want our paper to ask and answer? Obviously it deals with a lot of “social awareness” issues, but is it a social awareness paper? (those were both one question. Tricky tricky punctuation.) The second is more convoluted. When writing for publication, we’re often told to know who our audience will be. Are we writing this for other library professionals, for other academics? Both?
Obviously, that’s a broad question of audience. More specifically, what journal are we looking to have the paper published in? I think answering this second part of my second question will also answer a lot of questions and ambiguities along the lines of content, format and length.
My research and interest in this area have largely been centered on issues of space: theoretical, metaphorical and physical. Do you think we can work these issues into the paper? Perhaps we can see if the SLIS program will let us use the Wimba software for the DE courses to have a brainstorming session. It couldn’t hurt right?
Some research: (which hopefully isn’t duplicated, I tried to avoid posting any sources you already had.)
Kohn, Margaret. Brave New Neighborhoods: Privatization of Public Spaces. New York: Routledge, 2004. (Monograph)
Classism in the Stacks: Libraries and Poor People.
Reading the Homeless: The Media’s Image of Homeless Culture.
The Dilemma of Urban Library Service for the Homeless.
(Among others, but I’m not entirely sure they’d be relevant for the direction you want to take the paper. If you want them I can post them later.)
September 12, 2006 at 5:12 pm
I’m glad you are working on “space.”!
I have found some good more “primary” stuff. I gues I can’t help it: I am trained as an historian and tend to find the primary first, read widely in the secondary as backup once the analysis begins. I have 4 articles from the news I found just yesterday, and two from nonpeer reviewed prof journals.
I need to ILL several more philosophical stuff for my own reading! right now, I think we agree that it needs to be advocacy, yet thoroughly researched in order to present a sound argument to the readers/reviewers. In other words, not a cherry-picked “oh, the poor homeless”, but a sound intellectual overview that comes to the conclusion that from a philosophical viewpoint, access to information, whether by de jure or de facto exclusion from collection, i.e., censorship of content or of phsical access to content is anathema to the profession.
I have been working for PDA (progressive democrats of america) and on my friend’s dissertation this past week and had a vital meeting last week that I had to prepare for. Sorry I haven’t been working much this past few. I am still fired up, though! Also tried to smooze my 3 alma maters for a job! I don’t like smoozing that much, but I did it…
NMH