Beyond ‘impressionability’ and ideology: the ‘narrative turn’ and the analysis techniques for ‘social librarianship’

Abstract

‘Narrative turn’ is the phrase used to refer to the success that narrative approach has been having in humanities since the Nineties. Our field is not foreign to this phenomenon: during these last years a narrative approach to the library is emerging, based upon myths built around shared, motivating and positive messages and undisputable values.
Starting from this evidence, the article deals with the narrative turn in Italian librarianship:
1) from the historical point of view: since the Forties of the twentieth century, in the United States, the ideology supporting the public libraries’ central role of in society was studied under the name of ‘library faith’;
2) from the methodological point of view in all its different aspects: the one using storytelling as a means of advocacy; the other using stories as a knowledge production tool.
The last part of the essay introduces the automatic text analysis as a method our field could use to better understand ‘library phenomenon’ and build up stories that are more coherent and tied to facts and data.
Six experts have been involved in a debate about the specificity of this method, described as part of a wider discussion about social librarianship’s analytical tools.