The vital principle of the library: knowledge and learning as common goods

Abstract

The essay analyzes the idea of knowledge and learning as common goods that structure and build non-local communities is examined moving from a number of titles: Giovani di montagna, giovani di città (1956) by Don Lorenzo Milani; What makes a library big (1928) by Rabindranath Tagore; The Five Laws of Library science by S.R. Ranganathan in its first edition (1931).                               

From the points of intersection between the three quotational epigraphs in the introduction to the Five Laws, the three distinct formulations of the Second Law in chapters 2–4 and the stage dialogues that illustrate it, and the presence, in chapter seven, dedicated to the Fifth Law, of a little-known work by H.G. Wells, Men like gods (1923), a powerful vision of the future emerges with all clarity as a peculiar trait of the Five Laws, a vision completely unaccountable to the current preceptual interpretation of the mainstream.

Ranganathan describes and interprets the transition from the 'old' Laws to the 'new' ones. The latter are value principles unifying the historical and social experiences of the Library Movement on a global scale. They fulfil an anticipatory function as they read within the 'signs of the times'.

The transition from one Law to the other (Books are for preservation vs. Books are for use: Law 1; Books are for (chosen) few vs. Books are for all: Law 2, in the initial formulation of chapter 2) expresses a radical change in the social perception of the goals, modes of use and organization of the library service.

There is a still largely unexplored connection with the Tagorian vision of education and library service, the influence of John Dewey's pedagogical thought on the role of learning in the regeneration of communities, and the transcendentalist legacy of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau .

It is the focus of two little-known writings by Don Lorenzo Milani: Lettera dalla montagna (Letter from the Mountain, 1955) and Giovani di montagna, giovani di città (Mountain youth, city youth, 1956). If in the former the theme was the right to water as a common good, the latter is one of the founding texts of Milani’s pedagogy with its vision: knowledge (the "Word") as a condition of sovereignty.