Worlding the Library: Language, Nationality and Translation in Two Multilingual Libraries
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Cecilia Schwartz [1]
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[1] Universidad de Estocolmo
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- Localización: Comparative Critical Studies, ISSN 1744-1854, Vol. 16, Nº. 1, 2019, págs. 31-55
- Idioma: inglés
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Resumen
Drawing on Venkat Mani's concept of bibliomigrancy, and his suggestion to interconnect the study of libraries with the study of world literature, this article analyses two libraries with an explicit multilingual profile: The Nobel Library of the Swedish Academy and the International Library, both located in Stockholm. The primary aim is to examine the agency of these libraries in the construction of world literature, i.e. how foreign works are amassed and arranged with respect to nationality and language. The study begins with a comparison of the two libraries in terms of accessibility, users and acquisition policies. Special attention is then given to the arrangement of their online catalogues of literature from the perspective of nationality, translation and, in particular, language. The most frequent languages of each library's holdings are compared to their linguistic capital both in the global language hierarchy and specifically in Sweden, as well as to their literary capital. These comparisons reveal substantial differences between the libraries and call into question certain assumptions about the impact of location on the construction of world literature.
