Marks of usage: discerning information literacy practices from medieval European manuscripts
| Date | 18 October 2023 |
| Pages | 337-353 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-05-2023-0098 |
| Published date | 18 October 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
| Author | Andrew Whitworth |
Marks of usage: discerning
information literacy practices from
medieval European manuscripts
Andrew Whitworth
Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
Abstract
Purpose –This study aims to discern medieval information literacy (IL) practices through scrutiny of
medieval manuscripts: both the content and the “marks of usage”evident therein.
Design/methodology/approach –Analysis of the writing of scribes. Engagement with selected primary
texts (manuscripts) and prior scholarly investigations.
Findings –Ample evidence exists of the practice of IL in the medieval era, and how it was transmitted and
negotiated across time and space. Popular guides for scholars, including Hugh of St. Victor’sDidascalicon, and
the marks of usage left on manuscripts by readers/scribes, are evidence of how members of scholarly
communities engaged in collaborative metacognitive work, helpi ng each other with tasks such as
understanding the ordinatio (organisation) of texts; cross-referencing; locating information; and making
judgments about relevance, amongst others. New practices were stimulated by key historical transitions,
particularly the shift from ecclesiastical to secular settings for learning.
Research limitations/implications –This is a preliminary study only, intended to lay foundations and
suggest directions for more detailed future investigations of primary texts. The scope is Eurocentric, and
similar work might be undertaken with the records of practiceavailable elsewhere, e.g. the Arab world, South
and East Asia.
Originality/value –Some previous work (e.g. Long, 2017) has investigated medieval scholarly communities
by retrospectively applying notions from practice theory, but no prior work has specifically focused upon IL as
the practice under investigation.
Keywords Information literacy, Content analysis, Practice, Metacognition, Manuscripts, Medieval era
Paper type Article
Introduction
This paper undertakes an investigation of the history of information literacy (IL), by
attemptingto discern its manifestations in the medievalmanuscript era. This era is definedby
the emergence of the book,or codex, c.700–1400, that is, prior to the introduction of printing.
The paper will present evidence for the performance of IL within and between medieval
scholarly and book-producing communities, exploring the practices thatemerged as a result.
These will be considered in relation to changes in the nature of scholarship and the
developmentof the first universities. Thesehad a significant influence on the waythe common
stockof information, the content of the manuscriptsthemselves was overlaidwith new “layers”
of the informationlandscape that “sedimented”out of the practiceof scholars (cf. Lloyd, 2010).
There has been much prior study of the histories of information (e.g. Blair et al., 2021);
of literacy (see the summary in Bawden, 2001b, pp. 222–3); of informational devices such as
marginalia (Teeuwen and van Renswoude, 2018); and of the development of reference works
(McArthur, 1986). However, most histories of IL (e.g. Bawden, 2001a;Rader, 2002;Markless
and Streatfield, 2007) omit mention of the period prior to Zurkowski (1974). This paper is,
therefore, an attempt to reconnect the history of IL with its pre-digital past.
Marks of usage
337
Thanks are due to all the staff at the London Rare Books School in 2022, but particularly Professor
Michelle Brown, who offered valuable inspiration and help. Geoff Walton of Manchester Metropolitan
University, and the two anonymous peer reviewers, gave useful feedback on earlier versions.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0022-0418.htm
Received 22 May 2023
Revised 23 August 2023
Accepted 7 September 2023
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 80 No. 2, 2024
pp. 337-353
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-05-2023-0098
Certainly, IL research is aware of its debt to the long academic and intellectual history of
fields that, amongst others, include pedagogy, library and information science and critical
theory (summarised in Whitworth, 2014 as well as works already cited). A few studies have
retrospectively applied principles from practice theory (Schatzki, 1996: see the next section) to
analyses of medieval records. Long (2017), using epistolary sources (the correspondence of
monks and abbots), considers how Wenger’s ideas of the community of practice (1998) help
characterise the monastic world as a holistic learning community. Christophersen (2015,
p. 109) seeks to reformulate the medieval urban, professional space “as a dynamic social space
in which diverse everyday routines were intertwined in patterns, bundles and complexes”.
But these are studies undertaken by medievalists and archaeologists. Nothing detailed seems
to have yet been written about medieval IL in terms of how it was practised (though see the
discussion of the 14th-century Hereford Mappa Mundi in Whitworth, 2020,p.33–39).
This paper lays the groundwork for such a project, though should be considered
preliminary work only. More extensive and direct study of the manuscripts themselves is
needed to take forward this approach to understanding the history of IL. And while the scope
is presently Eurocentric, one intention is to inspire work by more linguistically qualified
scholars into how these practices emerged in other contexts, including (but not limited to) the
Arab world, South and East Asia.
Background: IL as a social learning practice
Discussing terminologies of information, Bawden (2001a, p. 96) puts the key point simply
enough:
The definition of information technology as beginning with the digital computer leads to the
confident assumption that no intellectual tools for information organisation, or procedures for
information handling, predating the computer are of relevance. This is far from the case.
The claim is not that these “intellectual tools”were perceived to not have existed but rather
that their relevance is no longer appreciated: that there is no longer a perceived continuity
between practices of the past, and how information technology —by extension, IL —is
perceived in the present. And yet the proposition that there must have been IL practice before
the digital era is inherent in Zurkowski’s initial formulation of the concept. While IL was first
named by him (1974), he must have been describing something that already existed,
demonstrated by his estimate that one-sixth of the US population (in the “medical,
governmental, business, sci/tech”industries) were already “information literates”
(Zurkowski, 1974, p. 7).
This proposition is reinforced by the theories of Lloyd (2010). She defines IL not as generic,
predefined skills, residing in individuals, but as practices negotiated in the relations between
people, in specific social contexts. Every social site is permeated by a “practice architecture”
(Kemmis and Grootenboer, 2008), a nexus of spaces, technologies, policies and beliefs “set up
to facilitate the efficient and coordinated performance of ... constituent actions”(Kemmis
and Grootenboer, 2008, p. 114). Within these architectures, information and ways of
accessing, handling and transmitting it, are negotiated over time by practitioners. People
working in a practice setting, and its architecture, come to understand what to say and do;
there are rules and precepts that they must learn; to a greater or lesser extent, they share goals
and aspirations with colleagues (Schatzki, 1996, p. 89).
Thus, practice architectures —and the conduits for learning within those architectures —
shape what it means to be an information literate actor in a given social setting, and these
actors’practices in turn influence the quality of the local “information landscape”(Lloyd,
2010). IL is something that one must perform, not just knowledge that one possesses.
Information landscapes, “created by people who co-participate in a field of practice”
JD
80,2
338
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