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Negotiating The Archive: Redefining The Event Of The Book Through Collaborative Engagement, Annie Smith, Christa Albrecht-Crane

Annie Smith

This collaborative paper draws on Jacques Derrida’s philosophical notion of the “archive” to argue that reading in the classroom becomes a historical and institutional activity that animates the archive as a method of organizing and referring to texts. Thus, instruction centers on intertextuality between and among texts—as in close reading, citation, quotation, and cross-referencing. The paper argues that undertaking library research means looking beyond the book to emphasize the contingent nature of the archive, focusing on the methods of information transmission and the cultural production of knowledge. Consequently, library instruction goes beyond basic searching skills to include a recognition of …