This paper aims to reflect upon existing definitions of library science and our taken-for-granted attitudes towards it through a revisit to the embryonic stage of the discipline and a phenomenological reduction of existing definitions. It first examines the nascent disciplinary focus of the ancient Alexandria Library and identifies three different foci: on the way to ensure document search and access as the discipline’s fundamental issue, on the library itself as the discipline’s research object, and on the operation of the library as the discipline’s content. It then examines the definitions of library science as espoused by Schrettinger, Dewey and the Graduate Library School (GLS) at the University of Chicago and argues that Schrettinger’s definition aligns primarily with the focus on library’s operation as the discipline’s contents, while GLS’s with the focus on library as the discipline’s research object. Having bracketed these definitions in a phenomenological manner, this study concludes that library science needs to redirect itself to deal with information search and access as the discipline’s fundamental issue. Keywords Library science, The embryonic stage of library science,
Yu Liangzhi, Fan Zhenjia
. Callimachus’s Time Travel and Reflections on the Definitions of Library Science[J]. Libraly Journal, 2020
, 39(12)
: 4
-13
.
DOI: 10.13663/j.cnki.lj.2020.12.001
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