Organised by Christian Meyer, project The Invention of the Modern Religious Bookshelf: Canons, Concepts and Communities, Research Area 3: "Future Perfect". This event is part of the lecture series The Invention of the Modern Religious Bookshelf

Bibliographical classification systems are fundamental tools for structuring knowledge in a library physically on a bookshelf as well as digitally in the knowledge infrastructure space of a university library (catalogue, discovery systems, repository a.s.o.). However, as much as they are instruments of bringing order into the wide ocean of knowledge, they are also deeply rooted in the worldview of their developers, their terminology and way of describing "the world".

This lecture analyses the "invention of the modern religious bookshelf" from an Area Studies librarian’s point of view and gives an introduction into the classification practice as well as challenges for religious literature on/from East Asia. In connection with the current "decolonising the library"-movement it puts into question the "global view" on religion within classification systems of the Global North. Thereby, it aims to deepen library-faculty collaboration for the task of a better representation of (academic) knowledge from the Area Studies and "non-Latin script world" in digital knowledge infrastructures.

Online participation is possible via Cisco WebEx Meetings:

https://fu-berlin.webex.com/fu-berlin/j.php?MTID=mf74bfb72cc87ba8db69ba9f0143e2f21