The theory of narrative identity presented by Paul Ricoeur is suggested as a basis for understanding the notion of person. The action of reading is considered as an analogy to understand not only how we make an account of an individual or corporate life, but also how we as persons live inside an identity as an ongoing consciousness. Some implications for an ethics of librarianship are explored.

This article reports the results of using a specially designed scaled questionnaire to investigate the dualistic properties of epistemic style. The scale is introduced as a measure of individual difference in epistemic style, conceptualized within the framework of dual-process notions of cognitive function. The study examined several psychometric components of the measure, including dimensional structure, distributional characteristics, and indications of construct validity. The instrument, called the Epistemic Preference Indicator, was found to be a reliable and valid measure of two dimensions (...) that are negatively related-each reflecting incompatible epistemic assumptions and approaches to solving knowledge-dependent problems. Theoretical speculations are made concerning the nature of epistemic dualism and the dimension of cognitive processing that may underlie the two proposed epistemic preferences or styles. (shrink)