What Do They Do and What Does It Mean: Identical Practices in the Socio-cultural Discourse of the Library of Congress

Abstract

In this paper, in an example of the Library of Congress, it has been shown how one can influence on the formation and preservation of a national identity, using the socio-cultural discourse of national libraries. This is significant because the role of libraries in the process of forming a national identity is underestimated and remains beyond the attention of scholars. At the same time, the meanings that are disseminated by libraries are an instrument for identifying key accents of the concept of national memory, which will further create the informational basis of national consciousness. So the approaches to formation and specificity of socio-cultural discourse of the Library of Congress have been examined. The analysis focuses on the main semantic trends of the socio-cultural discourse of the Library of Congress. We substantiate the democratic approach in the constraction of the socio-cultural discourse of the Library of Congress, participation of experts, librarians and users in this process, who have an opportunity to influence on what meanings are disseminated by the library and stored in the national memory. That is, the formation of a national identity takes place both from above – through the institute of the library, and from below – by the community itself. This approach allows us to speak about the socio-cultural discourse, presented by the Library of Congress as an instrument not only for preserving national memory, strengthening and preserving identity, but also as an instrument for their transformation and development. We also argue that the democratic approach to creation a socio-cultural discourse of the library makes it possible to determine its main meanings as a reflection of social transformations.

Keywords

• the library of congress
• national library
• socio-cultural discourse
• national memory
• identity
• american memory