Best books and excited readers : Discursive tensions in the writings of Melvil Dewey
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Abstract
The ambivalences and tensions in Melvil Dewey's writings on the library's delivery of best books to readers reveal the contests for control of intellectual resources in his day. His writings mix support for the library's service to high culture with a modern technobureaucratic and managerial approach to librarianship which was seen by several of Dewey's antagonists as a threat to their authority over books and readers. The tensions in Dewey's texts show how the discourses of high culture are undermined by the discourses of technobureaucratic procedure. The kind of librarianship described in the language of commodities, markets, and readers' excited desires conflicts with one described in the language of high culture. Dewey's writings on best books reveal the contours of a newly emerging social order wherein authority over culture and intellectual resources shifts to managers of intellectual capital.