Valuing studies in higher education: symbolic means and strategies of students negotiating their position in the library and information science field

Abstract

The library and information science field attempts to legitimize its position in higher education, in a ‘culture of uncertainty’, where boundaries are fluid. The position of LIS in the hierarchical classification of academic subjects is influenced by the changes in both the field of higher education and in the information environment, creating expectations for the emergence of new fields of study, research and professional practices. The purpose of this paper is to examine how LIS students position themselves in their field of study and the resources they use in processes of meaning-making. Data were obtained through semi-structured interviews with students from the three LIS departments operating in Greece at the undergraduate level. The results showed that the academic knowledge content of the object, the assignment of scientific characteristics to it, the signifier of the book, the form of professional practice and, above all, technology are the most prominent resources among those that most young people utilized in their effort to negotiate the symbolic class (i.e. the dominant cultural categories which give meaning to the social world).