Evaluation of Rhetorical Situations

Libraries and eSociety

Bolt, Nate "Who Needs Books?" (9/22/2011) via Flickr. Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic License

In this post, I have gathered three different opinionated public speech acts that relate to my potential research questions for Project 2. I have analyzed the rhetoric of each article in the table below.

	A Long Way From Wax Cylinders, Library Of Congress Slowly Joins The Digital Age	The Next Step in Librarianship: Is The Traditional Library Dead?	Those kinds of books: religion and spirituality in young adult literature
Author / Speaker	Brian Naylor is a Washington Desk Correspondent for NPR. He has previously served as White House Correspondent, congressional correspondent, foreign correspondent, and newscaster. Naylor has filled in as a host for many NPR programs. His reporting contributed to NPR’s 1996 Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia Journalism award for political reporting. He has a BA of Arts from the University of Maine. Naylor’s experience makes me feel comfortable trusting his report. From his experience and cadence I can tell that he cares about integrity of information, journalism, and the availability of information to the public.	L.A. Ogunsola is the Deputy University Librarian at Obafemi Awolowo University in Nigeria. He has written multiple articles on the subject of libraries for various journals. This author is particularly difficult to find any other information on. He believes that traditional libraries can interact with, and even partially become, digital libraries. He makes this clear throughout the text.	Margaret Auguste has not only written scholarly articles, but has also authored a book called “A VOYA Guide to  Intellectual Freedom for Teens” which discusses different forms of censorship that can negatively impact youths. She is a VOYA Press author, a school librarian, and a contributor (blogger) for Literary Mama. Literary Mama publishes about the many faces of motherhood. Auguste’s reputation and speech in this text illustrate her belief that librarians should focus on good stories and content, and that they should never prevent a child from reading a book.
Audience	Listeners of NPR tend to be interested in the world around them and how it is changing. This story is specifically focused on listeners with an interest in information, the digital age, and libraries. He creates this audience by genuinely praising how “awesome” the Library of Congress is. This automatically eliminates anyone who isn’t enthusiastic or interested in the Library.	The audience of this article is academic, and the article (as well as the journal it’s published in) is geared towards a Librarian or library-oriented audience. The journal is called “Library Philosophy and Practice” and is most likely not immediately available to anyone through general media sources.	The audience of this article is mainly other librarians or other individuals in the fields of Library and Information Science. The opening line, “Are you sure it is okay to have those kinds of books in the library?” automatically makes it clear what the article is about. This line also puts the focus on the banning of religious books, which may narrow her audience even more.
Context	This story was published on May 7th, 2015 in both podcast and article form. The podcasts includes relevant sound bites, and the article is properly titled and formatted. This story was created in response to the digital age, and analyzes how the Library of Congress is embracing the digital age.	This article was published on May 1st, 2011 in a scholarly journal. It focuses on the differences between digital and traditional libraries, and comes to the conclusion that traditional libraries are partially embracing the digital library model. He recommends using digital methods of production to cut down on costs and increase use.	This article was published in July, 2013 in the Young Adult Library Services journal. It focuses on the taboo in libraries, especially school libraries, against using any kind of ‘religious’ book with children. Auguste argues that librarians shouldn’t be nitpicking at what children read, but should merely encourage them to read fascinating books, no matter if they are controversial or not.

Reflection: After reading Scott and Ann's Evaluations, I realized that while my evaluation was well-developed, it lacked some amazing components that they had incorporated. Scott hyperlinked to other sources that showed the author's credibility and gave more in-depth context for each subject. Ann included specific examples of other works produced by the author that really tied the content of the source to the author's experience and interests. This added to the situational context of the issue, giving a more complete background on the source. Scott's sources were a tad bit short, so they didn't really allow me to compare my sources, but a link in one of his articles led to a potentially better one. Anne's sources were all pretty great, but she had an article that incorporated examples, opinion, and length. My sources are all pretty good, but I wish I had found a source like that!