Library staff, students, and faculty members participate in rituals of knowledge that take place in the academic library. This discussion uses ethnographic illustrations to place the social drama in the context of ritual analysis, focusing specifically on separation, liminality or transition, and transformation or reintegration. We see that the library creates a community, the library is part of an academic community, and knowledge and its acquisition are socially validated constructs in which ritual plays an active role. An awareness of rituals of knowledge helps to make aspects of the interchanges between patron and library staff more explicable. Such analysis also indicates directions that libraries and library staff should take to integrate technological advances into new social relationships and new rituals.
