John Buschman, "Libraries, Classrooms, and the Interests of Democracy: Marking the Limits of Neoliberalism" (Scarecrow Press, 2012)

Summary

John Buschman is the author of Libraries, Classrooms, and the Interests of Democracy: Marking the Limits of Neoliberalism (Scarecrow Press 2012). Buschman is Dean of University Libraries at Seton Hall University. His book examines the changing place of libraries in democratic society. Once free from advertising, libraries, and other educative institutions, are now awash with commercial marketing. Libraries are now used as a place to market goods and services, a source of revenue for the university, but in exchange for what exactly? The book ponders what we sacrifice when we permit these incursions without question or open debate. Buschman offers a theoretically grounded response that draws on Tocqueville, Habermas, and Dewey, but the book is also rooted in pressing contemporary challenges to the state or higher education today.

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