The readings today were posted by the Bibliographical Society of America to familiarize readers with the history and various definitions of bibliography. Personally, I was unaware of Belanger’s various types of bibliography which was vastly different from my understanding of bibliography as simply a list of citations. I would argue that the banking method of education as coined by Paulo Freire illustrates the reason why enumerative bibliography is so much more popular than analytical bibliography. For context, the banking method of education is a liberation pedagogy which states that students are treated as receptacles to be filled with information as opposed to human beings with the ability to critically think and learn.
Analytical bibliography encourages subjective interpretation as opposed to enumerative and descriptive bibliography, which seem to study books in a denotative and scientific manner. This encourages very little critical thinking because it is all observation. The information input and output has little subjectivity of human experience. “Analytical bibliography may deal with the history of printers and booksellers, with the description of paper or bindings, or with textual matters arising during the progression from writer’s manuscript to published book…” all of which require students of the book to analyze with their subjective and heavily experiential knowledge of history, people, technology, and much more.
Analytical bibliography is less easily utilized by a banking method of education because it is harder to treat students as receptacles to be filled with information when they are actively encouraged to use their knowledge which is informed by their experiences. I think it is very important to teach students the differences between various forms of bibliographies because it can be the difference between teaching books (and thus, most science and literature) in an alienated versus human manner. Additionally, students being taught how to approach information in books contextually paves the path for a more critical analysis of concepts otherwise seen as objective.
The readings spoke tragically little regarding Liberation Bibliography from Spires and the connections between critical theory and bibliography as written by Maruca and Ozment, however, these are texts I suspect would discuss similar topics to Freire and I would like to delve into at another time.