1001 Australian Nights / Andrew Wright

Story, narrative, discourse, world-view ... were words conjured up before me when I sighted Andrew's topic. My curiosity was aroused as to how spinning tales can aid and abet one's professional undertakings as a librarian. From Fanon's lament of being possessed by another's language (read "story") in the sixties to the present cacophony of post-colonial literature, feminist writings of herstory and postmodern critical theory, it sometimes seems as though marginalised groups have seized back their space (read "centre"). But the dominant discourse is predominant not from want of nothing. Adept at accommodating to changing circumstances, such voices, no longer silenced, are heard but rarely heeded as they pan out as ritualised steam-letting within the larger social context.
Political maelstrom aside however, I agree the librarian should be all things to all people. Whether as story-teller, story told to or from, for or against, reasonable or absurd, we are all the authors of our fate as we make sense of our idiosyncratic sojourn and place in the world.

Sai-Kee Kek (SLWA)